Poems written in 2013    


The Soul Seeks Itself

The soul is curious.
It berates itself with questions.
"Who am I? What do I want?" 

It is afraid because it lacks the discipline of love.
Often it seems that it has only itself to run to.
A shame of secrets may hide it from view.

As a child, the soul was fearless.
Its questions were simple.
Now they must be lived. 

The soul wants to proclaim itself,
But may be unsure of how to speak.
A listener must have skill beyond words.

Even a small conversation can liberate the soul,
One person a perfect mirror for another,
The soul in-camera, recognizing that it is known.

We hold ourselves back.
Sometimes it is hard to unburden ourselves,
To ask, dearly, to be heard.

Conversation exposes our vulnerability and fear,
As well as our wisdom and our striving,
Our tenderness for each other.

It is how we mature out of our loneliness,
And how we forsake it, standing in the mystery 
Of knowing and being known.
 
We are beginning to ask the same questions.
If they seem new and unfamiliar, 
we may feel an emptiness, a solitude.

Each of us learns them incrementally.
We are becoming reacquainted with ourselves,
The mirror of our ignorance softly prompting.

As we change, answers go out of focus.
We may doubt what we once believed.
What seemed ordinary and true can become a lie.

Yet if we speak to one another 
Our consensus will change.
The poverty of our ignorance will not seem so bleak.

What you love already is an answer and a beginning:
What you can recite without words;
What brings you timeless hours of undivided meaning.

We can praise ourselves for our resilient hopes,
Hopes that will shelter and lead us 
Through the secret passageway of self.

We are not broken,
And the world is not loveless.
Can you find the will to love it back?

If I can not yet answer you
Because of distance, real or imagined,
Let me say that we will find that ripe meeting
Sometime, when the right moment comes.






Who Do You Say That I Am?

Who do you say that I am?
Is it more than you believe?
If they ask, do you know me,
What answer will you give?

Did they tell you that I died,
And after that, what then?
You yourself are resurrected.
I have rolled away the stone.

I am son of the living God,
But who am I in you?
You have been anointed also.
My spirit lives in you.



No Sympathy

Since Adam, you have been running loose,
Exploiting naivety, misguiding weakness.
Apprehension and fear tighten the noose.
Many believe their life is worthless.

Yet how empty is your opposition!
Fear remains your only offering.
Our despair will cease, becoming fiction.
Your resistance will be seen as nothing.

We will no longer permit or allow
The harrowing of souls, your pretence of fear.
The soul renews in silence, and in sense's fallow,
To end devastation, your wasteland of terror.

You will no longer taunt and deceive.
We see you clearly behind enemy lines.
After two millennia of uneasy peace
We know your plans; we see your designs.





Awaiting Spring

Today, a mixed forecast of rain and snow,
A few hours of afternoon thaw.
Some buds have started to show on the trees.

Many confirm that Spring will come.
Their eyes have seen 
And their hands have touched.
They know that every flora will bloom.

Dandelions will not hide in shame.
Shrubs and herbs will discover their own heavens.
The honeysuckle will share their fragrance with the field.

The daffodil will not be forgotten in a year, 
The tardy sedum will not be refused its place,
And the noble rose will not live in the garden alone.




Giotto, Daddi, Pacino

The gallery light is dim.
It has become a tabernacle.
The background music is sacred, a hymn.
The inward gaze of saints stare back from the walls.

Purity shines through the strained and crackled paint.
Substance transfigured, glowing, alchemical.
Gold rises above the nimbus heads of the saints.
The gild adorns the wealth of their souls.

Mary's eyes are vulnerable, human.
A measureless love, serene, divine.
She has surrendered all for her Son.
Her grief fully rendered, her acceptance sublime.

Nuns nearby inspect each painting, while
Others offer academic remarks.
St. Francis has a vision of Christ as an angel.
We walk slowly around a Plexiglas box.

Who is it that I might have been?
A farmer, a servant, a man in the street?
Are these paintings I may have seen?
Was I an artisan, bookbinder, perhaps a priest?




 My Heart

I don't hurry myself in matters of love.
I resist its slow, indelible searing.
Affection contrives false when it is rushed.
The heart must pause, to overcome its caution.

If the wealth of love would become mine,
I must abandon claims to any sure course.
Disputing ownership of my oracle heart,
I listen instead for echoes of its confirmation.

Love may spin counter to all my schemes,
And pull me gently from my guarded seclusion.
But I can allow myself to be happily led,
If it seems I follow some kind of path.

I am not indifferent to my fate,
But I find it better not to rush.
Though it seems to wander aimlessly about,
The bee knows it way back to the hive.




My Accounting Of Myself

I love and remember You.
This is my accounting of myself.
I swear to answer all my lapses 
With this intention.

I do not seek to renounce the world,
Any soul, or any thing,
I will not disengage from life.
I give myself to You.

Through Your blessing, 
The world becomes an open book,
A page held open to be read,
A sacred, fragile moment.

In my heart then, 
All becomes clear.
My long wait for 
A timeless moment is over.
New Clothing For The Soul

The day is long.
The soul insists
to stretch itself so far.

"New clothing", it says,
"New clothing for the sun and moon,
an ending to the war."

Silence whispers and confides,
"My venture is sound,
My way is sure and clear."

Yet it seems too wayward, 
formless, insecure,
strange, and unfamiliar!

The dream of self is emptying.
My heart palpates.
All is otherness. It opens.

Beyond a wall of dissonance
is timelessness;
love beyond emotion.

What I once thought
were golden fruit
are rust and tears and grief.

I am timid and estranged.
I can only trust.
It is an ending to belief.





Stopping The World

I want to put the World on pause.
To stop all that lives and  breathes, 
all we see and hold and touch
from moving for a good long while
--longer that you can hold your breath.

Long enough, 
in the spaciousness of that moment.
for an inner stillness and surrender to take place.
Long enough to feel the rush of time
as a prison or an enclosure.
Long enough for Being to ascend
and for doing, doing, doing 
to take some badly needed time off.

We would know radiant spiritual beings
intimately for that good while.
They would reveal themselves sublimely,
and the fierce separateness we often feel
would give way to a mirroring of love.

Then all clocks would be reset to zero
and time would begin again.




Like Stone Soup

Friends send me homemade photos,
The morsels of their life;
What occurred while they were walking,
Their children at play,
Their projects or works-in-progress,
The unpredictable antics of their pets,
The surprise of the seasons,
A pose of their loved one at rest.

Their snapshots form a random recipe,
The savoury snacks and delicacies
Of their loved and ordinary life.
A stone soup, a fragile legacy
Of brief moments keenly shared.






The Summer Of The Mind

I ask my God for a summer of the mind.
It's the season I most want again,
Though the breeze may turn and become fierce wind,
Or afternoon be nearly spoiled by tumultuous rain,
The sun brings light, and warms.

There the soul is always bright,
Steadily in bloom, it constantly flowers,
And the sun will still come out at night,
The mind happily busy, even in wee hours,
Untroubled that it once seemed alone.

Blizzard storms may come and bite the skin,
But the mind will rise and laugh it off.
The body may shiver (the veil is thin),
But the sun still holds the world aloft.
It blesses, and does not divide.

Seeds of love will sprout like songs,
Sung in chorus to the proper pitch.
None will proclaim that anything is wrong,
Or best, or better, saying which is which.
Harmony rules the summer of the mind.

And no one will say (as if confused),
That the sun must be shining somewhere else.
The mind will stop tinkering with words; the ruse
That heaven hoards and guards its wealth.
Our gratitude will be full.

Let that season last a thousand years,
And dance in time with heart and soul.
Upside down are all our fears,
No longer naive, that summer for fools
Will remind us always of the sun.




Sun Time/Invisible Time 

Future time waits 
patiently for your answer.
It is in no rush.

It rises like a sun 
that will never set.
It cannot pass you by.

Its courage will break over you,
and force you to change your life.
It does not doubt your strength.

It will make you disbelieve 
all the stories you once accepted.
You will grow accustomed to unfamiliarity.

If future time presses you into service,
you may never catch up.
It is deathless.




Autumn of the Soul

Autumn takes us where we do not want to go.
The body may seem like a tired puppet, 
Memory a phantom, a mirage.

We may not believe it at first.
We have reached a distant point.
The mind's threshold has changed.
We have begun lift-off.

Timelines go out of focus.
Where is our sun now setting?
We fight against endings.
Will our ripeness sour?
We want to remain who we have been.

But here is a new blessing:
An unfamiliar wind comes in,
Pushing bitterness away.

How we hear may change:
We listen to stories differently;
More tragedy, more comedy,
More innocence, more worry,
More matter-of-fact.

We bend with more than stubborn strength.
Courage slowly billows in us,
So that death will not take us by surprise.





Yourself, Sometime Later

Who is it that waits for you
at the limits of your own self?
How can you meet who you will be?

Much of your conditioning will remain, 
following you beyond death.
But you will feel alive in a way that
you may have been unable to feel before.

You will see that all trials were meant to help,
arranged with care and great dominion,
not only for your benefit.

When you ask God for courage over your fears,
armies of goodwill will arrive,
showing defiant and imperturbable force.

All knowing is intimate then;
Who you are and who you've been,
who you must become, and with whom.

And always a love,
a love you have ever known,
healing all the ways of the soul.





Children Know Why They Get Out Of Bed

Mornings often make plans while you sleep.
Messes and spills later appear out of nowhere.
Things get out of hand.
Events have an unfamiliar rhythm.
They go against your will.

Evenings may be dreamy, 
but mornings are abrupt and in-your-face.
They can go all-out or full-stop.
It's nice if you have someone watching your back.

Mornings can be intimate or adventurous.
They can make love or make war.
Mornings are bad times for arguments.
It is better to wait until things have settled,
--You may say something you regret.

Mornings tell you:  'Get ready. Prepare yourself.'
But heavy mornings, when you can not sing or dance,
Will still carry you forward to noon.
Then you can make lunch, or do something sensible.

Mornings are for joy.
They want to test you, then convince you that you can do it.
If you go back to bed, don't feel defeated.
Life, as they say, goes on.


2014 Poems

Epiphany

When I look from the shore
–how far the water reaches out!
The waves are repetitive and familiar.
So much of life is like this.

Yet today, the Sun greets us
with an intimate warmth,
blessing from inside out.

It does not pretend not to care.
Its concern is a steady wave;
Forgiveness and gentle chastisement.
A call to attend to spirit,
An invitation to forgiveness,
A time for the soul to surrender
And meet the spirit from whence it came.

When Christ Returned

Before He left, He had not known
Of the darkness of the sun’s descent;
The bracing chill of the morning air;
Or the sound of rain at night.

He had not tasted of freshly fallen fruit,
or bread prepared with human hands and fire.
He was not familiar with flesh’s soft warmth,
Or how the fingers press firm against one another.

Yet He saw how heaven is veiled,
And returning, He said,
“Father, forgive them.
I will help them to remember You,
Until the end of time.”

Childhood Self

I was once a childhood self,
sleeping awake in an unknown world.
My life was tiny.

I was only known
where I could walk or was taken.
My soul was much quieter then.
My thoughts were simple and undemanding.

I found many descriptions and names
for things and how they work.
Yet, over time these words became lifeless.
My story of self and world was changed.

Sometimes now,
I remove my self from words,
and live within my own being.

My childhood self is also there,
and the earlier time before words;
My self before I was born.

Memories Sweet– a song for Archie and Irene L.

Memory itself is sweet
When all that’s bitter has found release.
When warm tears have fallen and flushed the wound,
Memory’s sweetness is coming through.

Chorus
Grief is bitter, it’s bittersweet.
Remember the people you were happy to meet.
God will join, and God divide,
Yet one day soon, we will be side by side.

Death holds its secrets behind a veil.
Those we love—it hides them well.
But we will join with those who wait.
When we end our turn on this wheel of fate.

Chorus
Grief is bitter, it’s bittersweet.
Remember the people you were happy to meet.
God will join, and God divide,
Yet one day soon, we will be side by side.

You may feel that you are all alone
When they pass into the great unknown,
But if you remember them as they were,
You may find sweetness in memory’s cure.

Chorus
Grief is bitter, it’s bittersweet.
Remember the people you were happy to meet.
God will join, and God divide,
Yet one day soon, we will be side by side.
Yes, one day soon we will be side by side.

The Social Ballast

I spend much time listening to
the parts of myself that want reparation.
They wrestle and fight; top dog/underdog;
A constant re-education of identity.

I find the social ballast everywhere
The daytime self holds sway.
Events and opinions pass through the moment;
Past and future, figure/ground.

Rarely am I asked questions
that are difficult for me to answer.
I can hide in plain sight.

Those I counsel have the same dilemma;
Of their soul and its confession.
“Who can I tell my story to?
How can I say it whole?”

I do not want to take anything away from them.
What they say cannot harm me,
Though their story may become my own,

And sometimes their nameless soul rises
Above the cluttered debris of their daily lives;
The ballast that has weighed them down,
So they can be known for who they are.

Small Things

I am aware of my smallness.
I seem diminished by creation,
And often hanker to be bigger, more, a larger size;
Impressive, flamboyant, a study in ambition and success.

Sometimes in humility or shame or confusion,
I want to shrink myself down
And make myself insignificant, small, a nothing,
But not always sincerely.

And at times I’ve asked God to super-size me,
To make me as LARGE AS HIMSELF,
But in between there lies an abyss, a bridge;
From something to nothing,
From being someone to THE ONE.

But mostly I pray to make myself smaller;
Small enough to fit into tight spaces,
And uncomfortable situations.
I ask that I ask for less, yet be more present.

I am not a hunger artist
In a cave, or cage, or monastery.
It is life I want to fit into and to fill
–All the darkened corners of my life,
Dividing my separation with joy.

Otherness     (a memory)

This is what otherness is for;
the fleshy meeting of surfaces,
a soft yielding and tumescence,
a brief and intimate journey to joy,
from me to you and back
knowing outside and in
touching and pressing
rubbing and tickling,
the friction and innocent fire of passion
each bonded by affection
and curiosity about the other
becoming so familiar in wordless ways.

Emptying Out

Dissatisfaction endless; random from want to want.
Restlessness—a phantom bridge; morning, evening discontent.
A facade of pleasure haunts my soul
Enjoyment empty, entirely predictable.
Yet sometimes, these hours are offered as sacrifice,
And I yield, at peace again with my life.

What Has Been Given

I sometimes yearn for an earlier season,
But a fire goes out with little to burn.
Emptiness follows with its anaemic reasons:
That time has passed, and can never return.

My life now seems awkward and off the pace,
But past reward cannot now be earned.
Happiness and auspicious grace
Were early lessons, once eagerly learned.

But want for pleasure is now a restless search
That only sows discontent and sorrow.
Seemingly held beyond my reach,
Even its memory is stilted or borrowed.

My strength now fails, weaker by half
Of its pride and former ascendancy,
So I release my ties to a fallen past,
And abandon fruitless memory.

All my past joys are buried in the earth;
Their sweetness soured, or set apart.
I have no idea of anything’s worth,
But I want a an encore, a reprise, a start.

When I rested high and free upon a perch
I could fly–and all my dreams would follow.
I had no pain or need of a crutch;
I wandered wherever my dreams allowed.

Though I no longer demand the loose privilege of youth,
I can open my wings this evening song,
And comfort, nurture, calm and soothe
Some few others who also worry, and falter along.

I will make peace with what has gone.
And more, with what lies before me.
I can sing chorus both at morning and evening song,
Without falseness or sentimentality.

My heart insists that it can still go on,
Opposing wayward, indulgent fear,
Free of confusion, of regret and wrong;
Its love is present, and always near.

Fragile In Our Soul

It is difficult to be with this present,
This here, this how,
without wanting something else.

We extend the reach of our minds,
but cannot stay long in one place,
the place of inner knowing.

The mind bobs upon its own sea,
Wanting to leave confusion,
And longs to swim to shore.

We all seek landmarks of meaning;
What is constant and true.
Yet we seem lost in ourselves,

The prescription of grace evades us.
How to be our better self?
Our doubt must take up its bed and walk.

The world is here so that
We may overcome ourselves.
It can not measure our success.

In the same way that we are born with sight,
We are called to oneness,
Yet we are slow to call the other, self.

In our heart we learn the names of things,
The shore of every sea.
The peace that stills the storm.

Yet the soul sees only shifting images
Until it becomes a lens,
magnifying beauty and splendid order.

The mind, lost in reflections
of what it wants and what it knows.
must bring focus, without waver.

Light can shine through our being,
So that all can rest
On the shore of our heart.

In our heart are the forgotten
Spellbound names of things,
Their living and intimate names.

Each and every thing calls out
In its fullness and its mystery,
Confirming the truth of own being,

When the mind brings love as a question,
The heart trains the mind,
To quietly notice what each reveals.

When the mind leaves the shore of stillness,
It acts without full care.
Emotion can not rest.

The infirm soul circles in fearful steps.
Reaction can take hold,
And lead us to falter blindly.

Dispassion can lift our tethered soul,
Yet root us deeply in the earth,
Bearing our humanity without strain,

We belittle our own strength;
Our capacity for bold, undivided wisdom,
And acceptance of our trials.

Wanting to unburden ourselves;
Denying our intransigent weaknesses,
and the core of our suffering

We did not see how we can share the cross,
Lifting its burden from each other,
Offering up our self-concern.

We all share in this coming into being.
Living, so that spirit can be realized;
Consciousness in matter.

Christ is the Gate,
The Way through this World,
How becoming is made whole.

He will calm the troubled waves of feeling,
the tides of insensible desire
and the wayward laments of our heart.

It seemed that we did not have a guide.
Our way always slow and unsure.
This will change, as all will change.

Like Paul before he was blinded,
We are convinced of our righteousness.
We defend the gods that we know.

You cannot discount what comes
Toward us with violence and purpose.
What thwarts us and turns us back, adrift.

You must protect your soul!
Protect it from clamour and indecision.
Protect it from mean pleasures that consume.

Face what brings prejudice and harm,
The soul-drowning wrath of false light.
Seek a calm and unsentimental trust in life.

Forgive all malice that comes
Toward you from other human beings.
Restrain the tempest of sorrows in your heart.

Bind all ignorance with the light of compassion.
Allow that you and others will sometimes fail,
Yet advance through the wisdom gained.

Against the emerging heartlessness take heed.
Despair will come to you, wanting a home.
Fear and selfishness will petition you.

At times, there may be nothing that you can do.
Yet, the Good will endure.
Invite it to guide you.

When there is war, pray for peace.
Pray for the Peace of Christ.
Pray that it be known.

When you are suffering, and in pain,
Pray for the health of all,
that they be restored to wellness.

Let your will be changed by Him.
Offer up your weaknesses.
Let your heart return His grace.

The All is on your side
If you surrender to It.
This is your daily lesson.

Brace yourself against distraction.
Patience is the fallow field of the soul,
The water that turns into wine.

Even if you cannot still the mind,
Direct your thoughts to good outcomes.
Let your deeds testify.

Anchor your will in bedrock faith,
so that your courage can renew.
Allow misfortune to excuse itself in time.

Light will always turn away darkness.
Trust in the All-Sustaining.
Let the intention of your work be clear.

Through overcoming, the self emerges,
Witness of all that has been,
The journeyman master of soul.

We have been convinced of our aloneness,
The seeming indifference of the world.
Perhaps this has been our hardest trial.

How to define our identity when
Only others inform us of ourselves?
We must seek what cannot be seen.

We have had many names.
Memory can not restore them to us.
Time divides us into fragments.

I am my own enemy.
My cousin incarnations all have faults.
I am oppressed and hounded by them.

Success is marked by the instillation of virtue,
The harmony I bring to my character.
The integration of wisdom.

Why believe in a false mortality?
This veil must fade.
Life is what allows us to become whole.

Death is the completion of all cycles
and the beginning of the new.
We must become intimate with death.

Each of us must find the door to self,
But we wildly knock and at random,
Wanting to confirm known pleasures.

Will death announce our becoming,
The self that seemed confined,
The essence of our being?

Each life must fully testify.
Can we answer death in life;
Not following blindly, but be led?

Were we given over to the eternal?
Did we recognize what seemed obscured?
Did we open the door?

Salvation is to bear witness
To what is undying in us,
And has no pretence.

To reconcile as timeless witness
is to reach beyond paradox
and behold how all is grace.

The small and restless self
Confines itself to pasture.
It wants to be fenced-in, protected.

Rarely does it command itself to order,
or call out to grace.
It wants to avoid all tests and annunciations.

But knowing world laws and means
Brings no respite from the Divine,
Its fullness, and its revelation.

Emptiness is the opening of your heart;
The beginning of surrender.
All doctrine fails on this doorstep.

This is the meaning of the Earth;
How grace is found;
And what time is granted for.