by
Davis Taylor
For Listeners
at the Outposts
of Silence
A Note to Readers
In “Five Seasons,” I tell the story of how Meher Baba called my wife, Becky McDowell, and me from our home in Herbster, Wisconsin, to the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I write mostly from my point of view but occasionally from hers too. Since the poems tell a story, I think that they are best read from start to end in one or two sittings.
In “A Garland,” I write from a more transpersonal point of view. Although the poems don’t tell a story, they develop themes and are also best read in order. They were written in Herbster, Myrtle Beach, and Bayfield, where we now reside in northern Wisconsin.
Do not desire union with God; but long for union till you go beyond longing for union, and long only for the will and pleasure of Beloved God.
Meher Baba, November, 1962
1.
A wintry spring has warmed to summer,
a long awaited, dear latecomer,
and now the apples start to round
toward heaviness and toward the ground.
You’ll find me busy doing chores,
a good excuse to be outdoors,
except at dawn when for an hour
I sit in silence and brave its power.
For me, Meher Baba shows the way;
for you, some other Master may.
Now reader, since you’ve read this far,
pretend you’re here with me. You are.
The place is Herbster, a Finnish farm
out Bark Point Road where traffic’s calm.
Come in. I’ll show you round my lot,
an acre fenced for apricot,
cherries, apples, beans and peas.
You’re not intruding. Be at ease.
To Baba’s hut, let’s now repair
to breathe the fragrance of Meher,
a flower found in everyone,
eager to open in the sun.
2.
Baba, winds that shook the night
blew dirt into Your hut,
and though I shut the windows tight,
a scum lies underfoot.
I can’t just sweep. I need to mop
the sticky filth away
and til the floorboards shine can’t stop
to meditate and pray,
but really, Lord, had I to do
all that cleaning here
to sit in quiet now with You
and let my mind grow clear?
Although I think You’d answer, “no,”
see how the floorboards shine,
and for Your sake, I like them so,
or maybe it’s for mine.
3.
Baba, this morning I’m exhausted.
You kept me up all night.
My body says I’m nearly dead,
my soul, how sweet’s Your light.
4.
Baba, the breezes on the lake
call me to paddle my canoe,
but in my heart, a gentle ache
bids me to stay and sit with You.
The world out there, so bright, so fair,
compared to You is second best,
so it’s no sacrifice, Meher,
to stay inside with You my guest,
but then Sir Thought drops in to visit:
“Davis, with poetry be done.
The weather on the lake’s exquisite.
Get out, enjoy. You need some fun.”
“Sir Thought,” I say, “Where you are not,
I am with God, myself forgot.”
5.
Baba, each morning, I dust Your portrait’s glass.
First the frame, then round the mat I pass.
Neck, shoulders, arms, so I descend.
Each day is different with You, my Friend.
I linger at Your toes, wipe each with care,
then rising up, I brush Your lustrous hair.
I save Your face for last, dust round Your ears,
and when I reach Your eyes, mine fill with tears.
Who’s been dusting whom? I might well ask,
for I feel changed doing this simple task.
A friend told me that after You passed on,
Mehera would dust Your photos every dawn,
and so I’ve taken up the discipline,
polishing the glass without, within,
in hopes someday to wipe away all view
of self and through the glass see only You.
6.
Herbster’s weekend’s coming soon:
fish fry, brat roast, 10 k run,
lakeside lazing, kayak fun,
and Sunday, pancakes served til noon.
The weather’s fair so let the moon
shine while you sleep, your driving done,
and if you’re up before the sun,
you may well hear a distant loon.
Baba, You’ll find me at the shore
serving brats and roasted corn,
attending breakfast Sunday morn,
then helping runners, tired, footsore.
I’m glad to have this work to do
in hopes, my Lord, that it please You.
7.
O Baba, look at the land,
drought since March.
The red earth cracks.
The corn rattles.
Dust has turned the farm
to pewter.
Send rain,
but why should I pray?
You are the Self
in every heart
Who know our wants
before we start.
8.
A sparrow crashed into the windowpane
and now is perched upon its dusty sill.
Dazedly, he pecks the glass in vain,
for crushing grains, not hammering, his bill.
He cocks his head as if to let him in,
but if I do, I’m sure he’ll make a mess,
and now he’s back to tapping. What a din!
Baba, what should I do? That bird’s possessed.
Before I get an answer, off he flies.
’Twas right, I think, to bar him from the hut,
and then the truth smacks me between the eyes:
God wanted in. I kept the window shut.
O Baba, when I hesitate with You,
just like that sparrow, You fly into the blue.
9.
Baba, I enter Your hut to sit with You,
and everything that comes I give to You.
You take it all, yet still I’m here with You,
made conscious by my pain that I’m not You.
10.
It rained buckets through the night,
hammered the roof.
The lightning slashed like jagged chisel.
I jumped with each clap of thunder,
and now the sun
sparkles on fields
where the corn has lept inches up,
the beans filled out,
and the squash, like daddy longlegs,
crept beyond the garden fence.
A miracle, an answered prayer?
Baba would say no,
but all the same it’s so.
11.
Baba, we had fresh apple sauce last night,
and morning finds me in the tree again
tossing apples down. That one makes ten,
and here’s another, blushing in the light,
a beauty yes. I hold the ladder tight
and reach but still come short. You know us men:
out on the branch I creep, wondering when
or if ’twill break, now past the ladder’s height.
With all my weight upon the branch, it sways
but holds, and now the apple’s in my hand.
Inching down, I swing my foot. It flails
back and forth, no rung on which to stand,
and I feel queasy sensing I shall fall,
like when You ask me, Lord, to give up all.
12.
O Baba, I feel at ease
this time of year,
the evenings cool and calm.
No tree or flower stirs,
no spruce’s crown.
We’ve passed the equinox.
The ferns have wilted, drooped,
while underneath the clouds
fly geese
like fingers of a hand.
13.
October, forty-two, I was born,
war-time, Baba, the cosmic fabric torn.
The nights were dark behind the blackout shades.
We lived in fear of coming bombing raids.
I think that I remember some of this,
as though I’d picked up fear from Mother’s kiss.
The house was quiet, mother sick in bed.
The fact that she might die was never said.
I’d rake the leaves, my father at my side,
and still I’m raking now that he has died.
These scenes return and then they quickly fade
like music from a marching-off parade,
displaced, my Lord, by You within my mind,
more dear to me than all I’ve left behind.
14.
I’m chatting with a raven on a post.
He nods his head, then slowly turns away
to face the storm that’s roiling up the coast.
Five thrusts of wing send him upon his way.
The ground half-frozen squirms beneath my feet
as I continue down to Baba’s hut
into the rain that’s turning into sleet,
my head bent over and my eyes half-shut.
How different that raven seems from me,
to soar into the storm, each eye a pearl.
Before he left, I wonder, what did he see?
I saw a king round whom the clouds did whirl.
Much as I hold the raven in my mind,
in Baba’s gaze we’d all creation find.
15.
Baba, I’ve got a mess to clean,
apples scattered down the drive,
a lopped-off spruce, a punctured screen,
and the wind’s still howling at force five—
such was the storm You sent, dear Friend—
but as I gather apples in,
saying Your name each time I bend,
I’m overcome by peace within.
Describe it here? I’d make no sense,
but still, Meher, I hope and pray
when I’m reborn a century hence
that I’ll remember it that day
when I pick up and read this sonnet
although forgetting I’m the poet.
16.
I prop Your photo with a mug,
pull up an empty chair,
because I like Your company
when I’m alone, Meher.
Of course, when I do so, I err
to think there’s two of us
when there is only You, my Lord,
the One, the numinous.
Then tell me why I’m seeing double.
The photo is of You,
but on the glass is my reflection.
One plus one makes two.
You’d say I’m subject to illusion,
but still I set Your place.
I cook the eggs and then sit down
to share with You Your grace.
17.
Down a road of fire,
a pilgrim walks today,
appareled like a friar
in varied shades of gray.
The road he walks is dry;
the dust swirls up like smoke.
He nears, then hurries by
not heeding that I spoke.
To him, the way seems straight,
his thoughts, I’d guess, on God.
To idlers by the gate,
including me, he’s odd,
and yet we’ve met before
when morning dreams take flight.
I’ve seen him in the door
haloed by the light.
He’d pause and look beyond,
then fade as I would wake,
but now it seems he’s gone
and left me with heartache.
18.
Baba, here’s what I think—that You and I
are separate. You’re God, an infinite,
eternal Being, and I’m a man who’ll die.
Besides, while You know all, I’m ignorant,
and yet You say that we are one, my sense
of limitation self-imposed. You say
that I project the orchard with its fence,
the barn, the apple trees, the squawking jay.
You even say that I’m projecting me,
sanskaric bound to show this bodied form,
my narrow face, my right arthritic knee,
my fear since childhood of a thunderstorm,
and last, You say I’m blind to what is true
and shall be blind til lost in loving You.
19.
Baba, as Fantine loved her child Cosette
and yearned for her until her dying day,
I yearn, and without warning am beset
by sadness now that the pilgrim’s gone away,
but why such grieving for a phantom merely
who’s not a child out late past his curfew,
and why these restless nights? O Baba, really,
I ache as if I’d lost not him but You.
Of course, if he’s the subtle messenger
between my consciousness and You—in fact,
my spirit with whom You often would confer,
then I can understand why I’d react
with desperate grief as even now I do,
for losing him, I’ve lost my link to You.
20.
The snow has fallen overnight
upon the autumn fields.
It came down suddenly, descended
like an owl in flight,
and though it’s likely soon to melt,
the summer garden’s died.
O Baba, I feel abandoned here.
When the north wind blows,
it rushes through the garden now
that’s bare except for crows.
21.
I walk into a morning hung with frost
down Dingman Road between the woods and fields.
I walk into the cold like one who’s lost
as Phoebus down the ridgeline slowly wheels.
He keeps a low profile this time of year,
arcing south to leave the north alone,
that frost might stiffen on each grassy spear,
create a world of pewter and of bone.
The sun’s retreat has left a solemn beauty
that strikes my eye but doesn’t reach my heart,
for Baba, since the pilgrim’s gone from me,
I can’t find You in nature or in art.
I’m desolate as Dingman’s empty shack,
all too familiar now with what I lack.
22.
O Baba, I do not truly know
where my spirit’s lately gone.
He’s left no tracks upon the snow,
no image in the clouds at dawn.
I used to pay to him no heed,
a shadow merely from my sleep
that as I woke would soon recede
before the day’s onrushing sweep,
but now that he returns no more,
I’m feeling stupidly in pain
as from a want I can’t ignore,
an impasse that I can’t explain,
unless my heart’s so full of me
You’ve both departed, You first, then he.
23.
Let me talk of cold. At thirty below,
the air takes on a different quality.
It shocks; small birds fall dead upon the snow
and humans start to lose their sanity.
I longed for winter, a break from summer’s toil,
thinking, Baba, that I would sit with You,
stoke up the fire and let the kettle boil,
Your Discourses to see the long nights through,
and here I am, Your book upon my lap,
but though I try, I cannot concentrate,
disturbed when like gunshots the roof beams snap,
too tired to rise although the hour grows late.
Outside it’s silent, no flutter of wind or wing.
I lack the subtle sense to hear stars sing.
24.
O Baba, You take whatever’s given You,
my envy, lust, frivolity, and pain,
and yet myself, how can I give that too?
Sun-struck, the ice evaporates like dew
until the walk is dry without a stain.
O Baba, You take whatever’s given You,
but could the ice resist? I know I do,
for though I mean to give You all, it’s plain,
not yet myself. How can I give that too?
I try, but all my trying can’t subdue
my will. Instead, it tightens up will’s chain.
O Baba, You take whatever’s given You.
I’ve given You my love, though it’s more true
that I have given back Your love again,
and yet myself, how can I give that too?
I’m desperate. I know surrender’s due,
but I am barred by thinking what I’ll gain.
O Baba, You take whatever’s given You,
and yet myself, how can I give that too?
25.
What can I write? My mind is gripped by cold.
My every anxious thought returns to cold.
Compared to yesterday, today’s more cold.
Tomorrow’s forecast calls for greater cold.
I trudge with walking stick into the cold.
It thumps, thumps, a heartbeat in the cold.
My breath’s a fog that drifts upon the cold.
My hand’s a claw that’s shrunken with the cold.
When I awaken in the morning cold,
the sunlight on the sheets, my God, is cold.
26.
When young, I chose the path of lonely hours
content to hide away in college towers.
A would-be scholar and a fugitive,
I thought through books that I might truly live.
Then came the years I wore the shawl of grief,
and then the years I dressed up in belief.
At last, Meher, I met Your servant Blake.
Through him, You showed me how I might awake.
The heart is vast, a tree of twisting limb,
a cavern too where passages grow dim.
Blake stood beside the door, then entered in,
a lantern in his hand, the self to win.
He lit the heart and showed that it is wild.
Out of experience emerged the child.
Battles raged. Upon a mountain shelf,
Blake watched til God approached as he Himself.
O Blake, how tiny was your lamp, how bright,
dispelling from the heart the mental night.
27.
I’m told to reach You, Baba,
I must let go of happiness,
of unexpected joy,
of lust,
of hatred, anger, greed,
of wanting power, prestige, acclaim.
I’m told I must let go of wanting,
let go of me.
Your hut is cold today.
The snowy field extends
rippling like a pigeon’s back
with glints of pearl and gray.
I close my eyes.
The field won’t go away.
I close my eyes.
I won’t go away.
28.
March is endless, or so it seems
from frequent days of snow and cold.
It’s hard to get up from my dreams
and stretch my body stiff and old.
Good news: I have enough to eat,
no pressing need to drive the car,
and wood enough to give me heat
stacked in the barn, which isn’t far,
but I’ve been out of touch with You,
beloved Baba, since the fall,
when first the pilgrim slipped from view
and snow began to cover all.
I’d like a sign, however slight,
to reconnect with You tonight.
29.
Love’s in knitted socks,
in onions being chopped,
in applesauce,
in shoveled walks,
in wood that’s carefully split,
in lentil soup,
in dormant garden beds,
in nights of quiet sleep.
30.
Stacking wood,
I lift a log
and let it go.
It falls just right.
I lift another.
Its weight and shape
come to my hand.
It falls just right.
I pray that I
might be a log
in Baba’s hand
and fall just right.
31.
Robins are back and dandelions puff with seed.
Easter’s come and gone, though Meher Baba said
He didn’t die but merely slept and journeyed on
to India, a likely story that I’ve found harder
to believe than resurrection, though now I do
as I awake, my pillow warmed by morning light.
32.
I’ve read of dreams like mine: to wake
among the roses fair
just as the dawn begins to break
and find a gardener there.
As I sit up, he offers me
a sprig that smells of thyme.
He turns away, leaves silently
as if he were a mime.
How radiant, dear man, you are,
I am about to say,
but he is disappearing far
beyond the edge of day.
I sit upon the garden wall,
my heart now like a stone,
wondering how it’s possible
he’s left me here alone.
How precious is the sprig he gave.
Its fragrance lingers on.
I thought he’d turn, I thought he’d wave
but from my heart he’s gone.
A voice says, “Davis, don’t despair.
The pilgrim’s left, it’s true,
but he has reached his love, Meher,
from whence he’ll call to you.”
33.
Baba, I run to You
then beat a quick retreat.
One day I build a wall,
the next fall at Your feet.
I stand out in the storm,
defy the power of love.
You stretch to me Your hand;
I fly to You, a dove.
I’m like a peevish child
who’s riding in Your car
and cannot stop his nagging,
“Daddy, is it far?”
But Dear, don’t let me out
until the trip is done.
A lover mustn’t stop
the journey You’ve begun.
34.
Dear Baba, on a visit to Your Center,
sitting in the Barn,
listening to the waves,
I had an intimation
we were to move to Myrtle Beach,
and then I heard,
“Don’t tell your wife; I will,”
and so, two days later
while Becky and I were chatting,
she said, “Baba’s saying, ‘Move down here,’”
and then I told her what I’d heard,
and then together,
like noticing a sudden brightness
or hearing a distant hush, we knew
that right away we were to move
and everything would be all right.
35.
The Atlas moving man has made his pitch.
He’s hunch-backed as if he’s carried the earth,
not merely loads of things. All right, I’ll ditch
more books. They’ll have to earn their freight by worth.
It hurts, letting go, but I liked the man,
big heart, big gut, Old Spice deodorant.
O Baba, how beautiful’s this world, a van
speeding through space, a dot in the firmament.
You’re at the wheel. I feel Your steadiness
amidst my throwing out and hurrying.
You are the solid point of emptiness,
the rest that silences my worrying.
Ah, the Atlas man—he’s come and gone
while You, dear Baba, came and carry on.
36.
For years I came into Your hut and cried,
Meher, because my heart was softening,
and now I’m crying, despite my manly pride,
because I’m leaving at Your beckoning.
I struggle to compose myself but wince
when gazing at the apple trees in blossom
that I must leave here soon for You, my Prince,
forgoing walks through maples, birch, and balsam.
On sensing we must leave, I felt both glad
and sad but never thought I’d fight Your call
and cling to my old life. A Galahad?
Not me. I hesitate in giving all.
O Baba, be the Governor of my heart
and steady me as from this farm I part.
37.
I’m like a ghost attending to my chores,
an anxious dreamer caught in some elsewhere,
oblivious to slap of screen porch doors
or scent of lilac blossoms in the air.
I’m like an orphan left behind by time,
an imprint of a hand in plaster cast,
a child forgotten on an alpine climb,
an adult from a country with no past.
It seems the story of myself is lost,
the book ripped open, pages tossed away.
Like morning footprints outlined by the frost,
no trace of me remains at end of day.
Baba, the pilgrim left and went to You,
and I must follow since my old life’s through.
38.
Baba, I’d like to travel light,
so if You would, please take my fears,
my lust, my arrogance and spite,
my readiness to judge my peers,
my grief at leaving, worry, pride,
my eagerness to speak of self,
the other sins I’ve sought to hide,
but all the books upon my shelf,
please don’t take them. What shall I read?
All right, they’re Yours. You may determine,
Lord, not what I want but need.
Vitamin pills? Medicine?
You choose. Now take my farm and land,
and last my hope to understand.
39.
O Lord, take me, a worldly man,
and make me innocent, a child,
that I might join Your caravan
and travel safely through the wild.
Before the dawn may I arise
and find a quiet place inside
to kneel alone with lowered eyes
and all my cares to You confide.
I am a child and You are God.
I am a son. You are my Dad.
Through all my life, You’ve seen me plod
along the road, now gay, now sad.
O Baba, strip me now of all
that I may clearly hear Your call.
40.
I’m moving through the bustle of these days
without my moving, held like stars above.
I’m on the road approaching summer’s haze,
abandoning cool forests that I love.
Am I the same, for all seems different,
the speeding done for me, the stopping too?
My worries fall away like dollars spent
upon the highway driving south to You.
41.
Here I am, Baba,
kneeling at Your bed
while waves of emptiness
are pulsing through my head.
I hear the words, “I’m Yours,”
and then am left alone
within a consciousness
that’s vaster than I’ve known.
“So have I come for this?”
I ask and asking fall
from what had seemed like bliss
back to the self that’s small.
I leave Your house and walk
up to the parking lot,
dazed and dizzy too,
the air so close and hot,
but it isn’t just the weather
that makes me feel unsteady.
It is the vastness here
for which I am not ready.
42.
Jack, Robin, Leaf, Jamiah, Shawn,
Mike and Sara, Basil, Lydia, Brian
and Nyasha, I miss old friends, now gone
from my new life. O Baba, I’m not crying,
yet all is changed, around the corner no
familiar face and no expectancy
I’ll meet a wolf or bear, at best, a crow
while on my daily walk out to the sea,
but why should I lament? It’s clear, to enter
a new room you’ve got to leave the old,
so here I’ve come to Meher Spiritual Center
prepared to do each day as I am told
until I’m not the doer and You do all.
Then I shall know You’ve answered Your own call.
43.
My splitting maul sits in its box unpacked,
but Baba, You said to bring that tool along
though we’ve no Franklin stove or hardwood stacked
and here it’s hot as blazes summer long.
Give the maul away? I’d lift its heft
and pause, then let You bring it down. You did.
When I’d forget Your name, to right or left
I strayed. We worked together, Lord, like-minded.
I wonder, do You miss our splitting wood?
Am I the only one who grieves departing,
and have You brought me South, Meher, for good,
and is my pain—I fear to ask—just starting?
The garbage trucks are churning through the mall.
I miss the woods, the phoebe’s raspy call.
44.
Oh Baba, I’m tired and hot
with such a lot to do
that I’m forgetting You.
My inner life is shot.
I’m like a programmed robot
who outwardly gets through,
paying bills when due,
yet mindless of the plot
which is to grin, I guess,
and bear with daily things,
to think of You, not stress,
each time the cell phone rings.
I struggle living here
to keep reception clear.
45.
Baba, I like it when
I’m talking with someone
and suddenly there’s You.
Acquaintance, friend, or stranger,
it matters not at all
when suddenly there’s You.
It’s not a mere projection;
soul to soul’s the meeting
when suddenly there’s You.
It is, and then it’s over
that instant when I notice
that suddenly there’s You.
46.
It’s time for apple picking
but there is not a tree
in all our subdivision
with apples hanging free.
To peaches and persimmons,
You’ve brought us south, Meher,
but there’s no fruit late summer
with apples to compare.
I’m grumbling by the gate,
Your compound under lock,
when overcome by fragrance,
I feel my heart unblock,
and then I sense You’re here
beside the sorrow tree.
You pluck its fruit, “I Am,”
and offer it to me.
I bite into the flesh.
Its bitter turns to sweet,
a promise that someday
as soul to soul we’ll meet.
47.
This evening in the meeting hall,
a channel rose through me,
and I was lifted high above
the hall, the trees, the sea.
The moment passed, and I fell back
into my chair to view
dense whorls of light like puppet strings
arise from others too.
I could not see the Puppeteer
but felt a tug inside
reminding me how blind I’ve been
to judge whom Love does guide.
48.
I know You not at all.
I know You best of all.
You hide from me Your face.
You shower on me Your grace.
Although we never kiss,
it is Your lips I miss.
I have no sense of mine
when drunk upon Your wine.
The tighter You hold me,
the more that I feel free.
These words shall pass away,
Your Word forever stay.
49.
Each time I pray the Prayer of Repentance,
I’ve noticed, Baba, I understand right through
from “We repent” until the final sentence,
“our constant failures…to act according to
Your Will.” Put simply, I need no dictionary
for “false,” “unjust”, “unclean,” or “selfishness.”
I merely need to look inside of me
to know their meaning from my own distress,
but when I pray the “O Parvardigar,”
I do not understand what most words mean,
including common ones like “always are,”
or “love,” or “bliss.” I’m veiled by Maya’s screen,
and yet each time I stand and say that prayer,
I feel You right beside me, Lord Meher.
50.
Baba, my weaknesses and faults
have left me full of shame.
I am a foreigner to love,
a bungler at Your game,
and yet You’ve called me to Your room
and set for me a chair,
and now the tears run down my cheeks.
They are my only prayer.
Each time I start to rise and leave,
I feel You say, “Sit still,
and bear the pain of loving me
as I remove your will.”
Becky and I came South for good, Baba,
and so are shocked on hearing, “Go back North.”
Our words or Yours? Ours, we hope, prompted
by the sweltering heat and cloudless days,
but if they’re Yours? O Baba, it’s just a year
since we’ve arrived, and if we tell our friends,
they’ll say that we are addled or even pretentious
for thinking once again we hear Your voice.
Besides, we’re tired of moves, replacing doors
and windows, planting gardens, painting walls.
Last time we thrilled to think that You so loved us
that You would call us to Your favorite home,
but sending us away, what sense in that?
Have we offended? O Baba, give us a reason.
It’s much, much harder what You’re asking now,
obedience without our slightest knowing.
*********
The geese were winging south as we drove north.
Seasons and journeys? They are no longer ours.
We’re in Your hands, have answered best we could,
and know but this: we once again feel blessed.
Bayfield, WI, July 24, 2013.
I’d written all day and gotten little done
when seeing on my desk, “The One Hundred One
Names of God as given by Meher Baba”—
“Yazad, Harvesp-tawan, Harvesp-Agah”—
I started reading and continued on:
“Jam’ga,…Tum-afik, Abaravand,…
Abaraja,… Ahuramazd,… Ahu.”
The names arrived and like the wind moved through.
As I advanced, I skipped the English gloss.
The infinite when sounded came across,
but Baba, where’s Your name? I’ve reached the end.
I remember Hafiz called You Saki, Friend,
and that You called Yourself Parvardigar,
the Ancient One, the Highest, the Avatar,
but these and Meher Baba aren’t on the list,
an absence that puzzles me, for I insist
to say Your name in silent inwardness
drowns the lover in Your consciousness,
so now with “Avatar Meher Baba, Ki Jai!”
I greet all fellow travelers on the way.*
* Yazad: Worthy of Worship; Harvesp-tawan: All Powerful; Harvesp-Agah:
All-Knowing; Jamaga: Primal Cause; Tum-afik: Purest of the Pure;
Abaravand: Detached from All; Abaraja: Bountiful Giver; Ahuramazd:
Lord of the Universe; Ahu: Lord of Existence; Saki: Tavern Keeper;
Parvardigar: Preserver and Protector of All; Ki Jai: Hail, Victory to Baba.
above the crowded beach,
in the pattern of a vee,
not a wing moving,
pelicans
race upwind.
How do they do
that—
fly upwind
without a wing moving,
and toward what?
I do not know
but feel
inside
the same pull
upwind,
not a thought moving,
alone
on a crowded beach
walking
toward God.
Baba, You told me
those on the path will find
no one ahead
and no one behind,
and then You added,
whoever thinks
he’s on the path
isn’t,
and then,
it’s as hard to walk
the path
as a razor’s edge,
and then You gave me
sandals of love
to wear
upon my feet.
are awash
with light.
I’ve seen
a few.
They are, and yet
not quite,
there.
Love
has taken their place.
Baba, I never met You
firsthand
when You were in Your body,
but I have felt power in Your words
and seen light in the faces
You have touched
and now I cannot stop
speaking of You,
thinking of You,
waking and sleeping,
being stirred
by You.
To those who say
I know You only secondhand,
I answer, No,
it’s not secondhand,
this whirling
in the wave of Your love
like sand
like stars
in the wave of Your love.
When all alone with God,
I feel a stirring in my heart,
a rhythm that is odd.
It rises like a wave.
It shocks me to the core.
Sometimes, it seems to stop,
but then it starts again,
the engine of my longing
to meet
my dearest friend.
O what a night we had,
and still the music lingers
into the early dawn.
The room was hushed. A tune
began. You took my hand.
Across the floor we whirled,
like planets twirled. I knew
the steps from memory
as if we’d danced before
the partnering of time
when I was merged with You
and all with Om did rhyme.
It
stirred,
surfaced,
nosed into the rushes,
ascended from the leaf mold,
fluttered up through the live oaks,
spread its arms and looked out over the still waters,
and then it turned inward and vacant as a leaf,
lowered arms, retracted wings,
and fell through the live oaks
into the rushes,
infinite,
itself.
Tagore, poet of inner and outer storms,
knew the spirit’s longing for the One
who steals into the heart in godlike forms
of beauty, and steals away when day is done
to leave the lover by the river’s side
listening to the darkness as it flows,
dreaming of the girl who’ll be his bride
someday, the one now budding like a rose.
There was no greater beauty to Tagore
than night, river, the yearning in the heart,
no separation, no clamoring for more
beyond what is in nature and in art.
He named no God to sit above the rest
since he found God within the lover’s breast.
Beloved Baba,
let my body be
less attached to me,
a bowl of earthenware
without desire or care,
vacant of all thought,
of anger, lust, the lot,
by suffering made true
to be of use to You.
Dear Lord, You know of every sparrow’s fall
and every human’s passing on. The wise
and foolish, young and old, You greet them all.
Dear Lord, You know of every sparrow’s fall.
The child who killed himself, so full of play,
along the path that through illusion flies
wore out from helping others find their way,
the child who killed himself, so full of play.
No soul can die until as God it wakes,
but sudden exits take us by surprise.
O comfort the heart that for this child now breaks.
No soul can die until as God it wakes.
We cannot understand until we’re You
this carpet woven from sanskaric ties
that to our touch may seem but isn’t true.
We cannot understand until we’re You.
Who weaves, or does the carpet weave itself?
Tell me, for I’ve grown dizzy mapping skies,
my charts of heaven wrinkled on my shelf.
Who weaves, or does the carpet weave itself?
Take from us grief. Steady our belief
when hurt appalls, when son or daughter dies.
Upon Your tree, we shake, each separate leaf.
Take from us grief. Steady our belief.
See without seeing,
hear without hearing,
smell without smelling,
unbind the moon in flight.
In the vee of a live oak,
a squirrel sat
poised,
unmoving,
not a single hair moving.
He sat for some time,
two minutes or more,
without a quiver or a twitch.
I had never seen a squirrel
sit like that,
as if in a trance,
and I came close to trance myself
watching him.
Then in two jerks,
he was scrambling down the tree headfirst,
shooting towards the ground where, about to hit,
he spun around
and scrambled back to the same vee,
this time facing the water.
Again he sat,
poised,
unmoving,
not a single hair moving,
for two minutes or more,
and then he hopped in place,
spun,
and scrambled farther up the tree,
and by the time I’d gotten up to look for him,
he was gone.
the flame
of your
destruction
pure
thoughtless
annihilating
be the wine
of your
drunkenness
unmoved
dancing
ecstatic
be the nails
of your
crucifixion
piercing
loosening
ascending
be the emptiness
of your
being
going
going
going
be the fullness
of
being
Baba
Baba
Baba
Meher Baba is the Avatar, God in human form.
He is substance and beyond substance,
light and beyond light,
darkness and beyond darkness.
He is Truth and Love
in which there’s no beyond.
Creation is His shadow.
It is formed in several planes.
The gross plane is insubstantial,
an illusion where the fox,
passing my window,
shadows forth the beauty and intelligence of the real.
The subtle planes are also insubstantial,
but to those with subtle eyes,
they culminate in a fiery furnace
where smiths, at their peril, hammer brave new worlds.
The mental planes, insubstantial too,
reveal the lover on the river’s bank
dazed by beauty, face to face with God
but separate, unable to swim across.
There is no substance to these created worlds.
They are only shadows of the real,
ever more alluring
reflections on the pond’s waters.
Baba says to those upon the path,
see shadows as shadows
and let them go
to enter into Consciousness Itself
which is void, luminous, and Real.
Names can point to the Real, Baba says,
but love and longing lead to It,
for dying to self,
one is reborn as Self,
Infinite Knowledge, Power, and Bliss.
Baba says so.
Kabir says so.
Hafiz says so,
and all upon the path will experience,
this is so.
I call to Meher Baba
Silence
I call to Meher Baba
Silence
I call to Meher Baba
Silence
I call to silence
Silence
I call to silence
Silence
I call to silence
Silence
Meher Baba
Silence
Meher Baba
Silence
Meher Baba
Silence
Silence
Silent
Silence
Silent
Silence
Silent
Is
I am satisfied with all that is,
with rocks,
trees, mountains, and caves,
with lepers,
with saints and so-called sinners.
I am pleased with drifters
who lose their way searching for mine
and with the steadfast ones
who every day obey.
I glory in the masts
gone mad for God,
in hermits and mystics,
in householders doing their duty in,
not of, this world.
I stand with those who praise
and kneel with those who wait.
I am in love
with the lovers of God.
I am in love with myself.
I am most satisfied with the real.
I alone am real.
To the Perfect Ones,
the Avatars,
the Sadgurus,
and those beyond
seeking,
longing,
imagining,
it is all love,
and Becky,
my wife,
awakening
beside me in bed,
I can see
by the light in your eyes
that to you also
it is all love.
The tree of life roots me to all.
Its trunk gives me support.
Its fruit reveals what’s in my heart.
Its green makes up my thought.
When I’m asleep, it breathes for me,
awake, it keeps me true.
It is the One I truly am,
the same who is in you.
It lets me climb beyond my mind
into the empty void,
and there its branches cradle me
when thinking’s unemployed,
and last it is a quiet friend
and like all trees is known
most fully when I’m very still
and birds of prey have flown.
“Things which are real are given and received
in silence,” You said, and so I have believed,
but Baba, what does that mean for poetry,
that it’s unreal? Instead, it seems to me
that in the sought for, rising, chosen word
the deeper tones of silence can be heard.
Word and silence, Baba, You combined
as everything and nothing in Your mind,
a mystery that flowered first in om
when out of nothing came the earth, our home.
O Lover and Beloved, You give us song.
By poetry, You carry us along.
A garland is a circle without end.
The flowers are Yours which I return, dear Friend.
To Monica Ochtrup, for finding in “Five Seasons” the book Meher Baba gave to me,
To Debjani Ray, for encouraging me while offering suggestions for revision,
To Becky McDowell, for understanding my need to disappear while writing,
To Michael Coughlin, for keeping alive the art of book-making and for giving these poems a beautiful home,
To family and friends, for liking these poems,
And to Meher Baba, the Creator and Sustainer of us all,
My thanks.