Sample Poems
A CLOTH OF FINE GOLD
You may think
that first lit flame
was the ultimate blaze,
the holy fire revealed.
What do you know
of furnaces?
This is a sun that returns
again and again, refining, igniting,
pouring your spirit
through a cloth of delicate gold
until all dross is taken
and you are sweet as
clarified butter
in god/the goddess’ mouth.
UNTIL EVEN THE ANGELS
What the heart wants
is to follow its true passion,
to lie down with it
near the reeds beside
the river,
to devour it in the caves
between the desert dunes,
to sing its notes
into the morning sky
until even the angels
wake up
and take notice
and look around
for their beloved.
A LANGUAGE YOU ONCE KNEW
There will be an invitation.
It will not come tied in ribbons
nor a message streaming down
from the sky.
There will be no Roman candles
sizzling
nor brilliant colors
exploding overhead.
Instead there will be a soft
whisper
in your ear,
something in a language
you once knew
and are trying to learn again.
In order to hear it,
you will need to
put down all your packages,
stop everything you are doing
and stand very still
then wait. . .
until something stirs inside.
| Preface
These
poems speak in many voices. Some are clearly of an overtly “spiritual”
nature, and the debt to Rumi and other early writers such as Kabir and
Mirabai will be obvious. Others are more secular in tone (poems on
contemporary poets and artists, as well as nature), and still others
are downright oracular, as if they were written by ancient priests or
prophets. We poets take whatever gifts may come.
But all are serious in their way, and all are intended
as
offerings which give us a larger perspective on how it is possible to
live, even to experience rapture itself, in a world where the divine
nexus so often seems to be broken.
As for the obviously
sacred verses, they unabashedly allude to the connection of human and
divine without trying to name the latter or present a fixed belief
system. Sometimes the poet even uses the word “god,” but note the term
bears no capital. In these passages, I am not speaking of the old god,
the thundering patriarch who drove our ancestors near mad with his
commandments and interdictions and who even today finds his followers.
I am speaking of that other, softer, more hidden reality, who led Rumi
to the sweet secrets of his poems, who met St. John in the darkness of
night where they consummated their sacred love tryst, who danced with
Mirabai on the roads.
This “god” is, of course, also the
goddess, for she is beyond gender. She is ultimate expression—the
divine presence, the undeniable essence, the pulsating stream of love
which informs everything that is, in blessing and joy when we open our
hearts sufficiently.
All of us yearn for this holy embrace,
to know more intimately the hidden mystery which hovers near. Sometimes
we catch glimpses through the door, taste a sip of something a bit
ambrosial, smell a whiff of some indefinable perfume. Traces of the
Beloved.
At times, however, the transition is more abrupt.
An unexpected event, a surprising occurrence triggers an awakening
beyond all we have known before. Katherine Anne Porter called such
pivotal encounters “the moment which changes everything.” Some years
ago I experienced such a moment. For me, it occurred through what is
called spontaneous Kundalini awakening, and its consequences have
rippled through and shaped my life ever since. It was then that I
discovered that the Beloved (the term which mystics so frequently use
to express the Divine Presence) was not a metaphor, but a reality, a
felt feeling in the blood, and a discovery convincing beyond all
textbooks or words.
Union with the Inner Beloved may involve
states of rapture unlike anything we experience in our ordinary life.
The awakened energies are often quite sensuous in tone, though they are
markedly distinct from sexual experiences. They can be intense or
gentle and soft, depending on the circumstances. In the early stages,
they can be quite dramatic, as the many feeling centers of the body
open.
As time passes, the sensations diminish, and
ultimately they are more like light playing through the body or perhaps
the echo from a peal of distant mountain thunder. The language which
poets traditionally use to describe these profound episodes is that of
human love. Some suggest that such experience is the end and goal of
all spiritual striving, final embrace by Infinite Love.
As all
mystics and seekers know, the spiritual journey (like life itself) does
not always advance in a fixed, logical progression of say, longing,
preparation, and final union. Rather, it shifts back and forth,
oscillates between yearning and apparent arrival, often to lead once
more to new beginnings and repeated struggle. So with these poems, for
they mirror how things really are on the long inward journey.
This
book contains both poems of the heart and verses of the mind, for both
are needed if we are to discover the resolution we are seeking. This
fusion of rapture and thoughtfulness will, I think, bring us to the
next stage of our ongoing evolution of consciousness, and transform us
and our world.
June, 2008/ San Francisco
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