Three Haiku for Mary Helen In The Ashram I saw you there, A vision in blue Passing before Her lotus feet. By the Lake Light on water Sparkles and moves And with it flows my silent soul. Autumn So many leaves These coloured days, Thoughts of death and peace and Spring!

I Will Remember You At night I will remember you When calm descends in solitude Or the wakeful eye of new morn burns And life from dreamlike sleep returns. When winter lays his icy hands Upon the drowsy breast of earth And silence nears and all is still In moonlight or in sudden chill. When Spring apparelled in leafy dress, No more the bareness of branch and twig, Colours with his wand the world And bulbs in glory burst unfurled, When joy returns with songbird call And melting rivulets like tears This new-born world invigorate Again on you I'll meditate. For have we not through these brief years The bliss of

Prayer and Consecration I pray the Presence to pierce this obdurate mind And in the well of the grief-torn heart instil The cleansing Force,, centre of peace and calm, Pure and strong inviolable Will To suffer change unmoved, unscathed by fire That burns away the remnants of the past, Whose heat is not impossible to bear, And I in total offering a last Irrevocable holocaust of self, A consecration of all I represent Unknown to me within this outer shell, A vessel cleansed, made ready for God's descent.

Poverty of Soul Elusive sleep why come you not tonight When all the dark enfolds me as I wait? A thousand thoughts within my brain alight, Unwelcome visitors who agitate And press for recognition as I lie Confounded by the world that men have wrought, Their hatreds cowled in religious piety The endless wars summing up to nought. A poverty of soul defines mankind, His power lust, desires uncontrolled, For few escape the prison of the mind Or ideologies grown quickly old. In truth there is no death the sages write Why then this vain attraction for the night?

Transformed by Beauty As we draw nearer the sustaining light And feel Her arms around us gently close Enveloping our souls with tender love, Of all resistant strains She will dispose. Have we not dreamed asleep amongst the stars Of joy's return to earth when we would wake And thrilled by the song of a flute-like voice Once more the Spirit's journey undertake. Are we not bound to Her with golden chains Willing servitors upon Her will, Obedient to Her call to serve again This destined world we must with beauty fill And truth the soaring eagle of our days, Vanquishing the battlements of night, In oneness at their feet o

What is Important What is important is never to forget That an unspeakable grace upholds the world And we are cogs in the immensity Of the Wheel, it only turns by us, But always to remember gratitude To one who steers our course among the stars. He peoples the skies with haloes of his light And fills each hollow with the breath of life. For me the mystery too deep to sound Is a gold hawk brushing my head with its wings Or iridescent drakes befriending me Who sleep secure not three feet from my door, The fragrances that immortalize my days The warmth of greeting

How Many Flowers A thing so indescribable is caught Beyond the fishing net we know as mind, A look, a touch, a light within the eyes Of one familiar or in passing strange. We see outside ourselves but look within. Music is a vocabulary of soul, All dance is spirit reveling in joy And poetry the distillation of love. We have travelled far from where our quest began But farther still the goal we cannot see. How many flowers we have yet to grow.

Decrypt The Complex Code Of Being 4/2/07 I found what I was looking for Among the thousand songs I heard But could not claim it as my own, Yet saw that flesh was born from Word. I knew then what I came to do But life in me was turbulent And blinded in the ways of men Down Desire's path I went. I laboured in the sun, the rain And pushed the body incessantly No rest and no escape allowed, The work of works my destiny. The one I knew as father and friend Spared n

Mother of the Eternal Smile As the vanguard of our spirit's march to light She the Mother of the eternal smile, The beacon that obliterates the night Against the forces of the world's denial, Who heals our mortal wounds and in her eyes We see the joy that made the world for love. She opens the flaming doors of Paradise And towards her truth ours souls from darkness move.

Look, World Perhaps an evil waiting in the streets Inhabiting this city known for sin Chose the hour when the storm came in To flood the alleyways and dark retreats, Its beastly covenants of lawlessness Enact among the animal types that prey Upon the weak who in their helplessness They maim and rape and violently slay. The world condemns and hears the plaintive cries, Powerless or callously it waits While the violence and hate of centuries Unleashed on the downtrodden masses sates. But look, world, peer into your heart And see the darkness resident within Know that every soul is also kin And no one, even the purest, lives apart