One Whom I Love Who drew that orange streak across the sky, Suffused with tints of pewter touched with teal, Was it the hem of God passing by Or phenomenon of science most surreal. I watch the birth and death of lovely things Of birds and animals, beloved friends And feel the joy the spirit's oneness brings The peace that through this woeful world extends. I feel the pain of others as my own And with less seeing eyes than those who are blind Know I am not I alone in the Alone That

Rose of God The poem Rose of God by Sri Aurobindo, one of the most beautiful and powerful of his shorter poems, was set to music by Ida Patterson. Ida founded the Sri Aurobindo Center in Minneapolis under her careful and devoted care, many people learned of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. During my first stay in the Ashram I was asked to sing Rose of God as a private concert for Nolini. I practiced with Olga, a stalwart of the Ashram school as a teacher and pianist. Nolini sent a message that he would come on a certain day. This was among my earliest m

The Gates of Night Sept. 30, 2005 Yes, I have read the poetry of death And eulogies so eloquent of life Yet drew in pain each shallow, lonely breath While sorrow cut me as a surgeon's knife Pierces the body's walls to heal the heart. I walk in a penumbra of the sun Or an eclipse from which I cannot part. Three years have passed, the healing scarce begun But slowly as I wander in a haze Of memories of bright and tranquil hours When the light of th

The World Remake There is nought here but leads us to the grave Or worse, a hungering unfulfilled. What greater loss than if the soul awake To darkness in the pits disbelief Having grown accustomed to the light. O pilgrim spirit refuse the ego-road Well-travelled, trod by countless erring feet, But on a lonely height stand unafraid For one who waits within thee is the guide. His hand shall stay the hordes at evil's call, His strength thy strength to face the foe and win From death the body's immortality, A compass ever fixed upon the truth, A mind enabled that sees the guise of sin, The heart become a universal heart To hold the suff

Prayer to Return and Serve I would not wish to disappear And end my love affair with life In some nirvanic atmosphere Devoid of struggle, free of strife. For One shall come, a promise keep In a body built of golden light. How could I wish to lie asleep In some serene eternal night? No, I shall come and purify Each atom and transform each cell To serve Him with all dignity As He allows, to serve Him well, And She who gathered us to share Divinity in human dress, Our Mother in whose gentle care My soul receives Her sweet largesse.

To Image Thee These are the currents of my life, Engulf them in Thy sea; The tangled threads of daily strife Reweave to image Thee,

Beneath the 'Service' Tree Beneath the 'Service' tree the pilgrims kneel, Whose branches hold more secrets than the stars. I saw the silent grief of life reveal Its open wounds, innumerable scars, And prayers that cloud-like rose with fragrant spires, Unvoiced requests in secret letters sealed Importuning God to grant the heart's desires, The aspiration of the soul to yield Beleaguered life to peace and unity. Faces radiant from depths within Breaking through the form-bound entity The offering of self through discipline, To find the truth that lies in us concealed, The psychic light not fully broken through The crust o

Timeless Vision Lancelot and Guinevere again My heart deceived, my soul from me did tear, Yet I shall travel with them through my pain Though each accorded me a world's despair. It is not love that separates, denies But desire's flame that burns and flares and sears, And lust that looms in hungry lust-filled eyes That can reduce the joy of life to tears. I ride with him once more as eons pass, My steadfast friend and brother on the field Who shields my back as the fierce legions mass, The light we carry hoping we might yield, The day to darkness and the age to death. O valiant ones, brave knights of the round Our world is gon

From Unnamed Stars The columns of Corinth modelled from a leaf, Who fashioned the scarab and the butterfly To grace the human form with their mystique? The flowers bedeck the graves of those who die Accepting at last death's insistent call. Our poetry is sorrow-filled for few Can sing of sunlit paths with tongues of bliss Announcing not the death of things but strew With flooding light the battered shores of time. The sage, the visionary and the seer Prophets all of all that is to be Bring down a fire, the change that most men fear As demons dread the truth that in us grows. I look now at the pain on Nature's face But witness too the buds

For She Has Come April 1, 2012 Even the song birds in their raucous joy Singing life, awake with the golden sun Fell silent as on silent feet she came, She who gathered all into the One. Earth felt her tread and bleeding welcomed her Amidst the devastation and the ruin Of Beauty that was born with its birth, Prayed her healing force might soon efface The evil hidden in the souls of men Who in their lust for worldly dominance, Their warped desires and their rampant greed, Forget their origin and the