On the Shining Roads of Time 1/1/08 As one held under water strives to rise Locked in the grip of a fierce relentless force Suddenly there appeared before my eyes As in a cinematic show the course My life had taken, and now my soul awakes. What glories in my arrogance I missed, The errant paths, the thousandfold mistakes The portents and the omens I dismissed In haste to build my dream on a finite base. I see a vision and a face sublime In timelessness beyond the bounds of space Who greets me on the shining roads of time.

A Figure Lone and Lost I saw sadness clinging to an age-worn face Its life-song spent, suffering more the loss In eyes that once had turned away from grace, Stood by the river of change that all must cross And had no strength to swim nor find a way To ford the rapids of his loneliness And from the easy paths turn away Daring the summit peaks and the abyss To seek the spirit's freedom and exhaust The karma of human error and conceit. I left him then a figure lone and lost The work for which he came incomplete.

He is Not Old 8/2/08 He is not old who lives himself apart From sorrow and the sting of hopelessness, But rather in the quietness of self Looks calmly on events without distress And sees beyond the limits of the mind, The turmoil of emotions that comprise Our waking state and trouble us in sleep, Who holds the wonder found in children’s eyes In the stillness of a heart grown wide and free. He is not old who having left the fields Of arrogance and greed and small desires No longer to the play of passion yields But knows the secret cave where love resides. He is not old who

In the Proximity of Seers Now the heart is full, it asks no more, Returning to a loved familiar place No longer needs to choose either, or As all is now contained in one embrace. The body weakened by the many blows Life offers to the spirit-quest of man, The breathing difficult, the life-force slows, But all is well and to the greater plan One looks and knows the world shall soon transform, A magnitude beyond the bounds of thought A cataclysm divin

Transforming Hour I am moved forward on an invisible course By one who hides his face in the veils of time, I feel but do not see the guiding force That breaks the seals of fate in my sole climb To a summit view I could not see before. My faults perceived are like an open book Many-sided, impossible to ignore, I find reflected in a glance or look Or word, the problem I must overcome. Now is the moment, the transforming hour In silence and in peace our depths to plumb From the unknown past rise to be the knower.

If One Allowed I would, if one allowed, like nothing more Than to wait upon the poem's descent Settling in a space above the mind, To see it formed, as when a veil is rent And ravishing beauty revealed to the naked eye, Etched in gold with ruby overlaid As if a view of some divinity Too perfect to be looked upon by man, A radiant god whose voice like music calls In metred pulse the human heart to love, Before whose beauty our beauty palls.

A Divine Unity I hide myself behind a flower's keel And watch the endless flow of passers-by, From its fragrant cup I see a pilgrim kneel As if before the feet of deity. The breezes billow and the pollen blows Across the landscape of enamoured light. If we could open and the heart disclose Its plenitude of love, then all delight Be ours and the blossoming begin, All ranges of the spirit to explore, Earth and

In Sri Aurobindo^s Room.htm In Sri Aurobindo's Room Soft I climbed the sacred stairs Silencing the thundering heart, Casting out mind's useless cares. Earth shall survive because thou art. Let desire be blown away Like dust in a desert storm All time become this single day In thee to shelter from all harm. Look now upon my soul and bless This humbled head before thee bowed, The world now lost in thy caress Before thy feet thou hast allowed Th

Every Being^s Goal.htm Every Being’s Goal He fills the nucleus with His great force And the unexplored immensities of space, He guides the planets in their unerring course And we His chosen recipients of Grace. He is the atom and the cosmic vast The universe a fractal part of Him, He lives in us and in all ages past, And all the worlds to come are only dim Reflections of the glory and the light He sheds upon the true aspiring soul. To shed the mantle of our human night And live in Him is every being’s goal.

The City Flowers I stood upon a tower of the world And watched the movements of a packed humanity, The stream of lights on endless avenues, Awake before the rising of the dawn. A long-awaited visit to a place That held the vibrant memories of youth Where vital life and energy once flowed Within this tenement of flesh and bone. I thought my heart would leap as in years past To know again excitement such as this — The towering mass of steel and glass, the stone Of ancient structures safe within their forms, The residue of rays where rivers shone Peaceful in the quiet evening’s flow. The crowded streets, the life-force here at play,