by
Davis Taylor
Baba, four months ago,
when You told me
to stop writing You poems,
I felt cast from the ocean of love,
left upon the sand to die.
Daily, I’d glance at Your picture
hoping for a smile, a wink,
a change of will.
I felt desolate,
abandoned, alone.
Forbidden to write, “I love You,”
that’s all I heard.
Forbidden to express Your love,
that’s all I felt.
The thirst of longing harrowed me,
and when You said that I could write again,
the words came like spring flowers
fragile with surprise,
garlands for You.
Once again, I knew that I am Yours.
Surrender is taking the stage
without a part.
My ticket?
Isn’t love enough?
O Baba,
Your eyes
are fathomless,
like night endless,
like dew breathless.
They’re caves
over which light cascades.
They dance like sunlight skipping on water.
They pause like moonlight settling on water.
They allure, and when we’re caught,
they strip from us all thought.
They shine with love and laughter.
We remember them long after.
Parading across my lawn,
grackles peck at birdseed,
and my heart flies out to them.
“What,” screeches my mind, “value grackles,
messy, vulgar birds?
Starlings at least can sing,”
but it screeches too late,
for my heart’s already blessing
Baba out there pecking seed.
You whom I love,
I thought at first that you were gone
since you’re no longer here in body,
but it’s more true that you have slipped
into a neighboring room of boundless silence
to which love has called me
and where I’ve paused
that we,
like overlapping waves,
might once again converse,
and you’ve surprised me,
when remembered always there
and closer with each passing year
because my heart has healed,
the pain with tears washed away,
and now, Jon, as I speak your name aloud
to float across the cloudy bay,
may I be carried to that silent room again
and find you there
more dear than ever before.
A leafless maple tree
stood lonely as a king
against a cobalt sky,
and then at dusk,
a purple glow wrapped our town
before the darkness came,
and now the stars
provide a cape
from hill to hill,
and everywhere, Baba,
shines Your glory
and Your light.
I’d race slalom as a child.
climb the hill,
memorize the gates,
and shake with fear before for the start,
but when the starter dropped his flag
and I pushed off,
my thoughts and worries left
and I was there,
this, this, this,
there at every gate,
no time for anger at mistakes
nor worry ’bout the gate to come,
just this, this, this,
and this was bliss.
In pubs, the server cries,
“Hurry up, it’s time.”
O Baba, take me to Your Tavern
where there’s no ending time.
O Baba, the rain is soft,
more sensed
than seen or heard,
just like Your voice in me
saying, “Davis, welcome.
Stay and be at ease.”
Airports are far away.
The coots bob and dive,
not bothering to fly.
The lake was silver as I crossed the bridge,
and now the gas fire flames.
Baba, have I come merely to catch my breath
and then to hurry home refreshed?
I’d like to think I’ve come
for self-effacement, something grand like that,
but then You say,
“Davis, let go of that.”
This afternoon, I feel
a shift in the air.
Outside, a laurel sways,
and suddenly You’re there,
Your face in the leaves
beaming, smiling.
Am I deceived?
No.
On entering, I want to kneel at Your chair
or stretch across the floor
as others do, but You stop me,
and so I sit at the door,
my back against the wall,
feeling like I don’t belong.
After only minutes,
I sense that I should go
without a bow or nod,
but at the door,
unthinking, I turn
and blow to You a kiss.
You must have caught it,
for at the bridge
I stumble as if in bliss.
Baba, love won’t end, but what of me?
Will I be conscious through eternity
or on awakening fall back to sleep,
mindless of You and me within the deep?
Before a ripple stirred the unmoved whole,
in latency lay every single soul,
so You’ve written, and since from timelessness
each soul exists to grow in consciousness,
it seems a sense of self might still go on
when oneness comes and duality is gone,
but I fear my ego’s driving all such thought,
reluctant to succumb to being naught.
“Don’t try to understand. Just love me,” You’ve said.
I do and can’t believe I’ll stop when dead.
I’m breathing the fragrant air
when the light dims
and I am everywhere,
expanding like a tree
through which the constellations fly,
loosed from space and time,
when the door
flashes open
and pulls me back
though still at peace, perhaps a sign
this vision came from You, is not just mine.
(at Baba’s compound)
Facing the water,
listening to the drone
of a passing plane,
I do not need to look around
to verify
Your house is there behind my back
nor listen hard
to grasp Your silence
from the passing sounds
because I know,
although I can’t say how,
that You are here
right now at home
and will befriend me
wherever I might go.
Baba, I dreamt last night
that I stabbed a man with a knife
while another man looked on.
If I met the Buddha on the road,
could I kill Him?
Could I kill You?
I couldn’t raise the knife,
and if I stabbed,
You’d still be looking on.
(for Daniel Lohr)
O Baba, how perfectly You’ve made us who we are,
the pattern formed from the beginningless beginning,
each sanskaric code inscribed in lasting letters
purified by grace and destined to evolve from gaseous state
to rock, metal, crystal, plant, worm, fish, bird, and on to animal,
charged, recharged by life’s cosmic flow in constant
coursing on to perfect consciousness achieved in man
where, after countless lives, the inner path begins
down through the rising planes
til God shall find God’s self through every person’s awakening,
and now this morning gazing at a handsome face,
chin raised, eyes closed, I see the glory that You are
of which I’d guess he’s unaware, and should he look at me,
he would perceive Your glory too of which, although I have the words,
I too am unaware, the union still to come,
but O, my Lord, how happy I am to gaze upon Your lover’s face
and feel through him Your presence as we linger side by side,
and not just happy, overwhelmed
that You have never left us and never can
since, from the beginningless beginning, You’ve made us Who You are.
Beloved Baba, teach me
to be tender with the other,
to give until my strength gives out,
to trust in weakness,
to love without an end in sight.
O Baba, I’m not lonely
since You fill the room
but puzzled
to be alone with You
and held so close
I have no words
while a catbird
sings outside.
(in the Barn)
A storm’s coming.
Acorns batter the roof
and the windows rattle.
I should be hurrying back,
but I can’t
leave You.
O Baba, I am in love with You,
and thus with everyone and everything.
Now as I leave Your home,
help me remember You.
(in my Bayfield study)
I wake
from a deep sleep
thrilled by love for You
who’s blanketed the cedar tree
with pristine snow.
There is no wind.
Even You are still.
On silence the island ferry glides.
I watch death
speeding towards me
through the rear view mirror,
ice under my wheels,
semis in the ditch,
sludge glazing the windshield
while up ahead
in the swirling snow,
a white horse extends forever.
Crablike, the cold
crawls inside the window
drawing patterns of ice
intricate as lace
which are beautiful
out there but in me,
numbing my bones.
The cold keeps me in,
too biting for walks,
and leaves me self-absorbed
like a fisherman
in his shuttered shack
oblivious to the groaning ice
as he and shack drift off.
O Baba, I have the flu,
sniffles, coughs, the flu,
and You want me to write
of You?
I ache.
Even my knuckles ache,
and how can I obey
with nothing new to say?
It’s all been said
and stays unsaid.
Parvardigar,
my Beloved You are,
but however lovely the words,
they fail to express
the infinite
You Are.
Achoo.
Snot is dribbling
down my lips.
Achoo.
O Baba, I have the flu.
How can I write of You?
I know, I’m infinite.
I’m not this body, I’m You.
Ah, does that count—
in writing about me,
I’m writing about You?
Achoo.
You’ve had the flu?
Oh, being everything,
You are the flu.
See, my subject’s always You.
Achoo.
Achoo.
I’ve caught the flu
and thus caught You,
and so, my Lord,
I’ve written of You.
Achoo, achoo,
and now, adieu.
O Baba,
in the night’s
feathered web of light,
stars flash
and the spheres turn
like fireflies,
silently to me
but audibly
to those
with subtle ears
but what they hear
cannot surpass
Your voice’s singing in my heart.
O Baba, when I kneel before Your photo
and burst out crying, I don’t know if it’s
for mine or Yours or all creation’s pain
or for Your presence, a flame which draws me close,
moth wings banging the lantern’s glass,
an old conceit, I know, but true, uncanny
that You still burn for us after suffering
untold pain, and though You’re now in bliss,
still suffer for us immeasurably
and with such beauty, we fly in to share,
no, not ecstasy, but agony
until, smokeless, we shine, each moth-soul
an element of uncreated light
that pulls in clouds of other souls to burn
til they too flame in Love’s eternal glory.
O Baba, when I gave myself to You,
sweet were the early days.
I heard Your whispers in the barn,
felt special in Your eyes,
and all Your lovers’ talk of suffering
I labeled nonsense, but I was wrong,
for suffering has hit me
like a body check into the boards.
I’m nauseous without appetite.
My head aches,
my heart skips beats,
and my lungs labor.
My ego says, “Davis, see a doctor,”
but You say no.
O Baba, must I die
to rid myself of ego?
I’ve wanted its death
but not my own.
I see mercy in Your eyes.
Get me through this pain.
I have no strength to serve You now.
Ah, I understand.
When there is only You,
You will be serving You.
O Baba, You know the story.
Monday, due to nausea, I could barely eat.
You said at last, “Go see a doctor.”
He took blood tests and called on Thursday
that I should come in for a scan.
Friday, Becky and I were speeding to Duluth.
My ureters were blocked, my kidneys backing up.
At St. Luke’s, a urologist,
suspecting prostate cancer, ordered a PSA.
If positive, he’d recommend on Saturday
a nephrostomy where tubes
would be inserted through my back
to drain my kidneys.
Good Friday night, I slept but little.
I remembered family and friends,
reviewed their faces, sent them love,
and thought about my life.
A life of service?
Outwardly, I could say so,
but I’ve been ego-driven,
clawing up a mountain to impress the other.
I might have stopped to see the view.
“O Baba, have mercy on me,” I cried,
and then it came to me, there’s only You.
Each time I judge, I’m judging You,
but I won’t judge anyone tomorrow
who comes into my room,
and then, near dawn, I felt humbled,
no longer someone special sharing in Your pain,
but just an ordinary man with cancer.
I prayed that You would let me live.
At nine, Dr. Emme came with news.
My PSA was 1580,
a certain sign of prostate cancer,
and nearing noon, I was taken to
Intervention Radiology
where tubes were steered into my back
through which my kidneys quickly drained.
By Easter Sunday, feeling less nauseous,
I could eat again,
and since I’m staying vegan,
a peanut butter sandwich made my feast.
To take my vital signs, Erin, my nurse, came in.
She wore a pin that read, “My Redeemer liveth,”
and yes, I thought, He does.
On Monday, Becky, daily at my side,
drove me home,
and after losing eighteen pounds,
I’m gaining slightly,
and then on Wednesday night,
O Baba, what a dream You sent.
The scene was Hartford on a city street
with genteel houses needing paint.
Children were outside playing,
no bats, no balls, no gloves,
just scampering, while four of us,
all in our teens, scampered like them,
not even playing tag,
but as in dance, sometimes touching
and then apart, like water streaming down a falls,
and finally, at the end, we came together as if one,
and then, without a backward glance, we raced apart.
I woke up happy and then felt sad.
Up/down, in/out, first/last, these are our games,
and so we teach our children from their birth
and so I’ve lived for years.
O Baba, is everything Your gift?
Perhaps, for with this cancer,
You’re giving me the chance to learn and change.
O Baba, what an April morning.
I’m filled with joy
as sunlight floods my room.
Last week, I clutched
Your daaman’s truth
while death put on its measured show.
I gained an insight then,
that while life changes,
Your presence stays,
so help me see
behind this morning’s light,
Your eternal Light.
My daily showers are over,
neph tubes in my back,
and I’ve no need to shave;
Lupron’s fixing that.
Of course I am upset
because I am embodied,
but I am happy too,
dispersed through all I see.
I’m daffodils in bloom,
the thrush’s piercing song,
the bench on which I sit.
I am the sun and moon,
and Baba, You are too,
but every time I bend,
a neph tube yanks my skin
and ouch, my daydreams end.
O Baba, today I had two dreams,
one while I was sleeping
and one while wide awake.
At night, a woman caught
my eye with subtle glances
and offered me her hand
only to slip away
and flirt with socialites.
She left me lorn and lonely
til back she threw a smile
to say that I was hers
and she was truly mine,
and so I met my spirit,
loving, teasing, coy,
and sprang from bed with joy,
but the rhythm changed when I got up
and Becky drove me to Duluth
to meet my bright oncologist.
His screening room was bare,
two metal chairs, one stool,
a white board opposite,
not a picture on the wall,
not a comfy chair,
not what I’d expected.
We sat a while. At last he bustled in.
Doctor Good, he called himself,
and greeted us by our first names,
then asked to hear the story of my cancer,
and when I spoke of growing aches and pains,
and of my kidneys shutting down,
he seemed to listen
but never asked me what I did
or wanted from a treatment.
My cancer story done,
he flashed my bone scan on a screen
and pointed out my cancer’s spread,
devastating, it seemed to me,
from prostate into bones and spine
and possibly to organs.
He didn’t notice how I’d blanched,
for he had turned around
to sketch upon a board
how cancer cells replicate themselves
without the power to stop
and how his interventions shut them down,
and then most caringly he said,
were I his father,
forgetting that I’m not,
he would suggest the following,
then scribbled down some names illegibly,
and then, quite lost in thought,
he rubbed them out, revised,
not noticing that I, quite paralyzed,
was taking nothing in.
Finally he stopped, smiled,
and gave to us his plan,
then caught himself and said,
“But you’re the captain of the ship, not I.
I’m but the navigator if you will hire me on,”
an analogy which seemed reasonable
until I thought,
captains who fire their navigators
end with ships upon the rocks.
If I’d had courage, I would have said,
“Thanks for offering,
but Baba’s my captain and my navigator.”
Instead, like a bug ensnared
and sucked on by a spider,
innards and money oozing out,
I sat and made no sound,
no more than just another meal
to feed a hungry system.
At last, he opened up the door,
and with a hearty handshake,
showed us out.
Becky and I
staggered down the stairs,
my spirit far from me,
the morning’s dream quite lost
until right now
when writing all this down.
O Baba, touched by Your love,
lying here in bed,
I give You all
my sickness
and my health,
my will to live,
my prideful thoughts
of suffering like Christ
on cancer’s cross,
my fear and grit,
my closed and openhandedness,
my kindness and my selfishness,
my will to serve,
my heart,
my longing for a longer life,
and after giving all,
emptiness, like a butterfly,
flutters inside.
Three days ago, one of Your lovers wrote,
“What do you want, Davis?
Ask Baba for what you want,”
and it hit me how hesitant I am
to do just that, excusing myself
by what You’ve said, namely
that we should want Your wants, not ours,
and pray for others, not ourselves,
and since as God You know our thoughts,
we shouldn’t need to pray,
but still my friend had written,
“Ask Baba for what you want,”
which made me puzzle why I didn’t dare.
Yesterday, out on a walk, I remembered
asking my parents for a new bike
and being told that my brother’s cast-off Schwinn,
though lacking gears, was good enough,
and when I wanted a new sweater,
they said the hand-me-down was fine,
and as for shoes, again I was denied,
for they didn’t notice that my little toes were raw.
It hurts to be rejected, and so I kept my wants inside.
Baba, I saw that I was treating You like them,
afraid to ask and be denied,
and then this morning as I lay in bed,
I felt a deeper doubt. Yes, You love me,
but can I trust Your wanting me to live,
and I remembered looking out the window
when I was four and thinking,
I’ll never live to five.
I was plagued with nightmares for forty years,
repeatedly in them was tortured, shot, and killed,
and during all those years, I feared vacations,
expecting, once I stopped serving others,
I’d have no right to live.
The nightmares ended twenty years ago
when, in a body-centered healing session,
I remembered being raped before the age of six,
but my underlying fear
that I will die before this year is out goes on.
Lying in bed, struggling with these thoughts,
I saw in a cloud Your face
distorted by my fear, and I knew
that I must comb the darkness from the cloud,
and as I combed, I heard Your words,
“Davis, I’ll cure you of cancer,”
and I wanted to believe,
but wondered if these words are mine,
and getting up and dressing,
I felt another pang of doubt,
for what will doctors, friends, and family say
when I refuse the routine drugs,
the chemo and the scans,
and choose instead a regime that’s natural,
the Budwig blend of flaxseed oil and cottage cheese,
a fresh organic diet,
morning prayers to kill the cancer cells,
thus trusting You, at least my sense of You,
while throwing out what experts say.
At breakfast, still another doubt struck me,
the inner skeptic piping up,
“But Davis, how can you know what Baba wants?
By intuition? By feelings? Come on.
Why resist your death? And haven’t You heard,
God takes the ones He loves,”
to which I dared reply,
“O skeptic, don’t mock me.
For all your thoughtfulness,
I sense your fear.
I’ve heard the inner voice of love,
no mocking there, just faith.
Love heals, fear sickens.
Enough.”
And so, Baba, I’ve struggled
with trusting You and praying for what I want,
but through my introspection,
I’ve gotten clear just why I hesitate
and why I fear, a step,
I’m pretty sure, toward healing
and thus a step toward You, my love.
Out of the mist a sloop appears—
I’m watching from my room—
to sail before the ferry’s prow,
so close to sudden doom.
O Baba, I felt a magic there,
a moment of surprise,
a calling from the infinite,
a whim that struck my eyes.
The sloop’s foresail was bluest blue,
its hull the whitest white
which like a floating petal went
til hidden from my sight.
O Dearest, is it possible,
by writing this in rhyme,
I’ve saved the silent infinite
from passing into time?
O Baba, help me heal
from cancer and from sin,
to give up petulance
and take up listening.
Help me to trust the truth,
not dress it up with lies,
to speak assertively,
not timidly with sighs.
Humility is bold,
the opposite of shame.
Help me to find it, Lord,
by losing at Your game.
Help me dismantle greed,
my strong self-centeredness,
by caring for Your world
with poised attentiveness.
O Baba, take my pride
and grind it into dust,
and free me from the cage
of wanting which is lust.
I pray for cancer’s cure
but yearn for healing more,
and so I beg forgiveness
from You Whom I adore.
I’d take on waves as a child,
duck, dive, kick, and thrash,
and down the lips of waves I’d surf,
and when misjudging, I’d be smashed,
and I am smashed again, this time
by my urologist who, when told
I wanted my neph tubes taken out,
replied I’d die of renal failure with them gone,
and then with irony he asked
if I’d forgotten I had prostate cancer,
stage four, aggressive and metastasized,
and I shook as I listened, Baba,
and never even thought of You,
but when he stopped, I blurted,
“I want the neph tubes out.”
Was that the kid in me,
spitting sand and getting up,
or You, from deep inside, standing up for me?
When a child, I didn’t question why to live.
I remember being five,
tobogganing on crusty snow,
swooping down the apple hill
as time around me slowed,
but in my teenage years,
time speeded up again.
Why live?
To be a doctor, teacher, healer,
give back what I’d received,
and so I did for fifty years,
a worried man
working in fear of failure
until I weakened,
and nearly died in Holy Week.
Home from St. Luke’s and feeling better,
I crossed the iron bridge with Becky.
The trees were just in bud, the tulips out.
I didn’t ask, “why live,”
so happy to be alive,
but later, “why live” came back to me
with all the customary answers—
for family and friends,
for clients, for writing poems,
for letting go of past sanskaras
until there bubbled up again
that I should live to live,
to eat and sleep and walk,
for life itself,
or was illusion fooling me?
I thought of the pine
that towers above the bridge,
heavy with cones,
vibrant with You, Baba,
headed toward eternity,
and so is every soul, I thought,
the lady bug, the garter snake,
the wolf and whale.
In all of them
You’ve made Your home,
and last in human beings
in whom You shall awake
and every time with great surprise
to realize
that You are God,
and then I understood what I’ve been doing
by digging up my fear and anger.
Why, Baba, I’ve been cleaning house
to make a happy home for You,
and that’s my reason to stay alive.
A Dalit couple stayed at home
afraid to venture out,
but still they cleaned their hut, lit a candle,
and waited, Baba, certain that You would come,
and after darshan at the public square,
You zigzagged through back streets
and found them waiting,
drawn to them by love.
O Baba, “Shall I die of cancer?”
Maybe yes and maybe no,
and maybe neither matters
but only letting go
of what my ego wants
til empty as a photon,
equivalent to zero,
into Your everything
I unburdened flow.
O Baba, it’s Sunday,
no church for me,
but I see You everywhere,
right now in the maple tree,
a giant, hungry, bright affair,
an atom bomb that greens the air
and tosses swallows carelessly
while I sit tight,
almost exploding with delight.
O Baba, I am in love with You,
and being in love,
being in You,
I am detached
from life and death,
detached from my body,
from cancer,
from sickness and health,
detached because I am in love,
in love with You, the real.
Some say the body is illusory,
but since I am in love and thus in You,
my body, being part of me,
partakes of You, the real,
and so I now delight in it.
*******************
Yesterday, a doctor snipped four stitches
and pulled my neph tubes out,
as easy and painless
as pulling off a band aid,
but first he scolded me,
repeating that my cancer is pervasive,
that tumors will grow back
and that in months, with no neph tubes,
I’ll die of renal failure,
the same old tale of my impending death.
He scolded me for thirty minutes,
and as he rumbled on,
my hands began to shake.
I put them in my lap
and stared above his eyes.
*****************
O Baba, You’re walking me
through the shadow of death,
this sad and greedy world
where not just doctors
and not just peddlers of medicines
but all who promise happiness
through property, possessions, law, and power,
all such cry out,
give your lives to us
and we shall keep you safe.
In order to do so,
the doctors wheel their patients,
safely strapped,
down barren corridors
to be exposed to radiant eyes.
O Baba,
I trust Your loving eyes
and give my life to You
Who’ll carry me through suffering
to walk in Paradise.
********************
As for the physical,
with the neph tubes out,
for the first time in three months,
I can bend, twist, move,
touch my toes, tie my shoes,
and feel no pain,
no foreign objects poking
through my back.
The neph tubes saved my life,
but I am thrilled to have them out.
*********************
O Baba, what shall happen next?
And as I ask,
another voice in me cries out,
“O Davis, what have you done?
In Paradise there is no coming next.”
I feel my heart constrict
and know at once
that I am out of Eden,
in love no longer
since now attached to living longer.
“O Baba, forgive me,” I cry,
and falling on my knees,
once again I smell the rain
and hear the robins sing
our Redeemer’s praise.
O Baba, with Your help,
I kept silent all Silence Day
and today, I feel a subtle chance
as though keeping silence
has emptied me somewhat of me
and made more space for You.
O Baba, I’m happy, for tests show
my cancer’s almost gone,
my PSA dropping to 4.6
from 1580 three months ago,
but when I woke this morning
I wondered if maybe the medicine
were curing me and not You,
and I felt appalled for doubting
until it came to me,
because I cannot prove it’s You,
I get to love You not for miracles
but just because I do.
O Baba, I’m tired of discipline.
No sweets, no meats,
You know my prohibitions,
but still You let a neighbor bring
a strawberry rhubarb pie, and why?
To tempt me?
and then this morning,
when I’m exhausted,
I hear, “Write a poem.”
No, Baba, I say,
but then I pick up pen,
and as the words begin to flow
I feel a surge of love inside
and learn obedience
is sweeter than pie.
Baba, a trio played
Philippe Gaubert’s
Soir d’automne yesterday
and for a moment
no one was playing.
There was just the music.
Is surrenderance like that,
the music
playing its Self?
O Baba, on waking,
I remembered a dream
where I was king of coffee,
self-crowned, self-proclaimed,
king of coffee at the office.
I doubled over laughing
as coffee bubbled over
and sizzled on the coils.
I laughed and laughed,
for I was king of coffee,
the Donald Trump of coffee,
my ego freed at last.
Afterwards, while still in bed
and still exulting,
I reviewed the triumphs of my life,
and when I reached the present,
I had to laugh again, for who was I
but just the king of coffee?
I tried to settle down
and, Baba, see Your face
when Ted, a friend, came into view,
then disappeared into a pebbly dark,
the pebbles much like pixels
floating on an endless screen
where I could see no face.
Pulses of light began to move the mass
in slowly undulating waves
as if a primal consciousness
were there inside of me
seeking for itself.
This is the Whim, I thought,
pulsing through the dark.
I stopped to ask again,
and who am I
and Baba, who are You?
Are we the same,
this pebbled, surging dark?
I tried to see the maple tree.
More pixels on a screen.
Is nothing real?
And then there came the thought
that on the pitch of nothingness,
no centuries are made,
no champions are crowned,
and nothing ever happens
except to wake
and know that we’re divine.
O Baba, when I dress my soul with You,
I am the night attired in black,
the dawn with cape of reddish hues,
the noon in gossamer of green.
I am the sergeant steeled for war,
the novice cowled with poverty,
the child who’s clothed with hope.
O when I dress my soul with You,
I put the whole creation on
and everyone and everything
becomes as dear to me as You.
O Baba, once You called Your mandali
nothing but broken down furniture,
and what am I
but a wobbly stool,
a weakened chest,
a badly drawing stove,
but I don’t care,
for Baba, I am Yours!
Baba, as I prayed for Eddie Luck this morning,
I felt uplifted by how much You loved him
and how special he was to You,
for in his twenties, he and his brother Irwin
had dropped everything to come to You,
but then on thinking that maybe You love him
more than me, I felt my heart harden.
By grace, later in the day, I read in Lord Meher
that like the rain, Your love falls equally
on rocks and earth but slips from the rocks
and gathers in low places where slowly it’s absorbed,
and so tonight, I sit quietly, letting Your love soak in,
until, with open heart, I pray again for Eddie
who’s crossing now to You.
As You know, Baba, I’ve been taking
Dr. Budwig’s blend of flaxseed oil
and cottage cheese twice a day
with confidence that it can cure me,
and now Becky claims
to have heard from You this morning,
“Tell Davis, his cancer’s in my hands.
He doesn’t need that mixture.”
“O Baba,” I cry,
“must You speak to me through Becky?”
And then it hits me, yes, because I’m scared.
“But Baba, I want to trust You,” I say,
“and now You’ve raised the bar.
I cannot jump that high,”
“But Davis, in your poems, you fly.”
“Baba, that’s different.
How about a compromise?
I’ll take the Budwig mixture once a day.”
On hearing no reply,
I’m sad because I’ve doubted You
but also glad because, despite my doubts,
I feel Your love inside.
Krishna says to Arjuna,
“The arrow in flight
has left Your hands.
It’s destination lies in mine.”
O Baba, I am the arrow
You’ve set in flight,
and I shall land
exactly where You’ve aimed.
O Baba, even as every soul
is a bubble on the ocean of love,
so every word must be a phoneme
of Your all-creating Word.
It’s no wonder then
that while I work with words
they shape me
as much as I shape them
and You, Baba, create me
even as I create You
through these poems that spring
out of Your silent Word.
My hips ache. A head cold lingers.
I’m worried
and want to know if I am healing
but even more, Baba,
if I am talking with You,
really hearing You.
It’s lonely on life’s stage
wanting to hear Your voice
and not the church bells up the hill,
wanting answers to questions,
but maybe I’ll have to
settle for nothing in reply.
“Yes, that’s it.” I hear a voice,
but it doesn’t sound like You,
and then it continues,
“Settle for nothing, and don’t play games.
Don’t make of nothing everything,
and don’t worry if you are hearing Baba
or just your inner self,
or if that self is you or him.
Be happy over nothing.
Don’t ask for more than this.”
But Baba, I don’t even know what nothing is,
and whatever it is,
it doesn’t seem enough.
I want to throw myself upon the floor
and kiss Your feet, and if not that,
I want to feel You stirring in my heart.
Maybe You gave me
a ripe banana for darshan
in a former life,
and so I long for You now.
I do not long for nothing.
I long for You.
“Davis, accept nothing.
The via negativa?
You must have heard of that.
Yes, you have?
Forget that too.
There is no way.
There is no you.
There is no Baba,
not as you can understand.
Wipe away all
aversions, attractions,
your past, your future,
you and Baba.
Just be here now.
Efface that too.
What’s left?
Strange, isn’t it.
This voice.
This voice is left.
This caring for you.
This infinite caring.
This love.
Baba’s love.
“O Davis, I am that.
I am love.
I love you
and through my love,
you love me.
There’s nothing else.
And so, my dear,
let go of everything
but hold to this,
this voice you’re hearing now,
this voice of love.”
And after the voice stopped
and all my questions stopped.
this answer was enough.
O Baba, You are most blessed of all creation,
the Avatar of chimps and snails,
of tortoises and palm trees,
the Soul of souls,
the Word of words,
the Light of lights,
the Being of all beings,
the Trinity of knowledge, power, and bliss,
the man crucified for our salvation.
Most loving Father,
may Your name be praised
in hymns and songs,
in artis and bhajans,
til everyone is thrilled
with consciousness of You.
My dearest friend,
my Baba, my Beloved Meher Baba,
I call to You, “Good morning.”
********************
O Baba, I didn’t plan this hymn of praise,
but as I looked into Your eyes
in the photo named “Perfect Happiness,”
I got so full of love
I had to praise, and so I have.
Well, I meant to start by writing
that I woke up feeling excited to be alive,
just like I did on leaving the hospital
and not the grumpy self that I’ve been recently
with my arthritis acting up.
So, I got up with a spring in my step
and entered the bathroom chuckling quietly,
got on the scale which read 134.5,
and I thought, “God, that’s way off,”
and two more times I got on the scale
and it kept on reading 134.5,
and as I headed back to bed
for our morning healing session
I was convinced the scale was broken,
at least fifteen pounds off,
and then I had to burst out laughing on remembering
that I’m fifteen pounds lighter than before cancer.
As I stretched out on my back with my legs straight out,
I felt pain racing up my left leg.
Damn, I thought, here I am,
excited to be alive and still in pain.
For some reason, perhaps from the discipline
of a once-upon-a-time English professor,
I stopped and parsed what I’d just said,
and I noticed in the sentence two voices,
the “damn, I’m still in pain,” and the “excited to be alive.”
They seemed to come from two sources,
the pain from fear, the excitement from love,
and I realized, that’s what I’ve been doing,
expressing fear and love in the same breath.
No wonder, Baba, I keep getting confused,
the voice of love getting drowned out by that of fear,
and not just of fear but dissatisfaction and anger too.
Still lying on my back and thinking these thoughts,
I opened my imagination to the sea of love
and waded into it, right to the top of my hips,
and for a while, I was in so much pain,
I could scarcely lie still. I massaged my leg to no avail.
Okay, I thought, so much for wading into love
while expecting some miracle. It’s all baloney,
and then I stopped and looked again at what I’d thought
and I heard the voice of fear now mixed with anger,
disappointment, even hatred toward You, Baba.
I cried in pain, “Forgive me, Baba, forgive me.”
Lying as still as I could with aching legs,
I finally remembered to release the pain
into the sea of love, that is, to give it to You, Baba,
and as I did so, the pain slowly dissolved.
I massaged my leg again and felt no pain at all.
I said my prayers, added one of thankfulness, and got up.
The rest of the morning I’ve continued to delight
in being alive and in watching my thoughts,
discriminating between the two voices,
letting the fear go, clinging to the love,
and Baba, I can’t take any credit for my heightened awareness.
You’ve given it to me, for You woke me this morning
filled to the brim with Your love and excited with life.
There’s been no worthiness on my part,
only Your wondrous love.
O Baba, I read in the obits this morning
of a mortician who was the president
of the Sunrise Optimist Club
and a clown at a Shriner’s hospital,
and I started to laugh because it hit my funny bone
that a mortician should belong to an optimist club
and perform as a clown, unless, poor sap,
he need cheering up, but then I thought,
isn’t it just as likely that, more than most of us,
he knew that we are spirit and soul, not mortal bodies,
and so quite naturally he’d be an optimist and holy clown?
O Baba, bless him on his journey.
Later in the morning as I said Your prayers,
I found myself repeating the words accurately
without understanding a single one
as though I were riding a river rushing to the sea,
buoyed by neither grief nor happiness
despite my flood of tears.
Strangely, my lack of comprehension
didn’t alarm me but seemed fitting,
as though my coming to You might be like this,
an emptied awareness rushing into Your arms.
Well, Baba, these observations are scarcely poems,
but they are all I have for You this morning,
an awkward returning of Your love and grace
which I receive with ever flowing thanks.
O Baba, eight days ago,
while walking up the hill,
still wearing shorts and trying to stay warm,
I tweaked most of the muscles
connecting my left femur to my hip.
No big deal, I thought,
but that evening, as I pulled myself
up from my recliner, those muscles seized
in spasms of excruciating pain.
I couldn’t move my leg, couldn’t straighten up
or sit down, was left
like some bronze statue exhibiting agony.
Becky came, and with her help,
while screaming and cursing,
after ten minutes, I made it to bed.
Ibuprofen helped, but I slept little that night.
Next day, I could walk and move.
I split and carried wood.
I seemed all right,
but over the next eight days,
the underlying pain persisted
and the muscles seized up three more times.
I saw Becky Sue, my body-worker,
for an emergency session on Wednesday morning.
She helped my leg relax,
but then at lunch on Thursday,
I had another spasm
and Becky hauled me off to bed.
Friday morning, I was back with Becky Sue.
She had me lie on my back
and slowly worked the muscles from my ribs
down to my leg, and as she worked,
the pain hovered at a seven, spiking to eight,
on my scale of one to ten,
far more than I could stand
without her hands supporting me.
I wanted to think that the pain had nothing to do
with my past, for I’d spent fifteen years
with another body-worker releasing pain
that went back to my being raped
by my grandfather between the ages of two and six,
but as Becky Sue continued
and the pain persisted and got worse,
I felt myself getting more and more angry,
and I had to accept
that once again I was facing my past.
Pretty soon, I was growling, then screaming
with pure anger, not directed at anyone,
just releasing the rage wrapped around my bones.
My right arm pulled back and slammed the table.
I flung the f-word into the room,
clawed the sheet with my fingernails.
Pain and anger, snot and tears, kept pouring out of me
until, after forty minutes,
with Becky Sue’s hands on my hamstrings,
the pain lessened, and she had me turn over,
and for the first time in eight days,
I could straighten my left leg without pain,
and I felt that this time,
I’d gotten to and released the last of my hurt.
I got up slowly, weakly, thanked Becky Sue,
paid, and left.
Baba, in our morning talk, You insisted
that I tell this story, and so I have
without knowing why
unless it has to do with selfless service,
for as I look back over the session,
I can see that Becky Sue worked selflessly,
just following the pain, not pushing for results.
She didn’t hurry or worry or try to stop my pain,
and she didn’t try to increase it either.
She initiated no conversations.
She didn’t talk of God.
She didn’t rationalize about the raping of a child.
She did nothing but open herself to the work
by being present with silent compassion.
O Baba, thank You for Becky Sue
and for Your presence as I screamed and cursed.
Like Becky Sue, You didn’t move away
or try to rescue me with some miracle.
You trusted in nature and the inner laws of healing.
You say to accept everything as a gift from You.
I now accept the rape.
It hurt me and held me back,
terrified me with nightmares,
distorted my posture,
and led to my being teased,
but it also gave me compassion for others,
insight into the dark,
a healing gift,
and many poems,
for I would write of others who’d been hurt
while unaware that I was writing of myself.
O Baba, You’re leading me deep into myself,
right into my bones
both through cancer and these recent spasms,
and through this journey,
You’re giving me the courage
to come closer to You,
to look You in the eye,
and to surrender before Your lotus feet.
You are my Baba, my Beloved,
the Soul of my soul.
Thank You for listening to my screams
and to these words.
I and they are Yours.
O Baba, every time I say, “Thank You,”
I feel as though I haven’t said enough
since “Thank You” is a common phrase
and tossed out thoughtlessly as in,
“thank you for opening the door,”
or, “thanks for bringing me a glass of water,”
when what I want to say is so much more,
to express all the thanks
that’s bursting from my heart,
and yet, perhaps I’m wrong,
for such a simple phrase means much as in,
“Thank You for opening the door
of the prison where I’d locked myself,”
and, “Thank You for bringing me a glass of water
out of the well of Life
that I might never thirst again.”
O yes, for all of the above,
thank You, my Beloved Baba.
Baba, here’s what I dreamt:
I’m rather tired from hiking in high, arid country.
I come to a perched, medieval village like in Provence.
I walk its cobbled streets
and come to a three story, stone farmhouse.
I walk through the door, climb the stairs.
A woman calls up and asks if I am looking for the museum.
She tells me it’s next door.
I go next door, climb the stairs,
and enter a bedroom with rumpled blankets on the bed.
What a strange museum, I’m thinking,
as I pull back the blankets to find a cache of books,
all translations of Hafiz, many unfamiliar to me,
and I’m disappointed
since I’ve nothing but pennies in my pockets,
not enough to buy a book. I go downstairs,
too embarrassed to put pennies in the offering box,
and leave by the front door.
At that moment, I wake up,
go to the bathroom, and return to bed.
I fall back to sleep and the dream resumes.
I’m standing there, looking bedraggled,
when a man drives up in a snazzy car.
He opens the window, puts out his hand,
and calls me by name.
I recognize him as Pops, the landowner in these parts,
well-liked, someone I’d love to have as a friend,
but I’ve always felt just on the edge of his circle of acquaintances.
He says, “Hop in.”
I do, and then, with amazing quickness,
he’s out of the car calling over his shoulder that he’ll be right back.
Sure enough, in a minute, he’s back, opens the door,
sticks his head in, and says he has another errand,
but I should wait for him. He’d like to know me better,
at which he chuckles, I’m not sure why,
and just as he turns to go, he says,
“Look, it might get hot in here before I’m back,
so push that button and it will start the car and the air conditioning.”
He darts off. I sit for a while. It gets hot.
I push the button.
The engine roars, and the air conditioning starts,
but so does the car, first slowly
and then with frightening speed as it navigates the narrow streets,
swinging me from side to side.
I can’t reach the safety brake.
It’s way over on the other side of the car.
I push the button again, and the car just goes faster.
Almost immediately, we’re out of town and flashing
through high country, arid mountains on all sides,
and I suddenly remember that Pops
is known for his practical jokes,
and I assume that he’s planned all this
and I should just sit back and relax
with the certainty that the car’s been programmed
to take me to his home, and then I think,
I’ll bet he’s going to whiz by in some speedier vehicle,
and sure enough, I look out the window
as a rocket car comes up, pauses,
and Pops raises both hands, flashes me a smile,
and rockets ahead probably to get home first
so that he can greet me when I arrive.
In the distance up on a hill, I see
a bulky building with a flag flying
and a tomb-like affair off to its left.
By now, I’m happy, taking in the scenery,
and excited to see what’s coming next,
at which moment I awake.
As I lay in bed, I laughed.
So that’s how it’s going to be
when I abandon my old self and let Baba take over,
terrifying at first and home at last.
O Baba,
every morning I’ve been praying:
“Baba, help me to love You more and more,
to hold fast to Your daaman,
to remember You,
to say Your name,
to give You all,
to listen, hear, obey.
Amen.”
But now that I’m identifying
more as You
and less as my old self,
I’ve a problem with the prayer
because it places You
outside of me.
Of course, You are outside,
but being my true Self,
You’re also here in me.
Here’s a draft of what
might be a morning prayer:
“Beloved Self, the One I Am,
help me to listen deeply,
to stop when I am pressing
and then with love go on.
Dear Baba Soul, the Love I Am,
help me to hear Your voice,
to die when gripped by wanting
and then as You go on.”
I’ll try this prayer tomorrow.
Baba, when I was suffering at the beginning of this year,
I was much more ready to drop my body than I am now,
but I’m not sure that dropping a body
has all that much to do with merging with You.
Recently, in my happiness,
I haven’t had the slightest desire to die,
but at the same time, I’ve never yearned for You
as much as now
maybe because You’ve entered me
and brought with You
Your infinite love and longing for me,
which I’m now feeling as my longing for You.
I think I must be experiencing
the start of the “thrilling divine romance”
which You’ve promised in Your Discourses
where Lover and Beloved merge til One,
an experience which is proving,
even at its start,
far more intimate and happy
than anything I could have imagined last January.
O Baba, I’ve just received my test results.
My PSA has dropped from 4.6 to 1.8.
My kidneys are working perfectly,
and my red blood count is up.
Thank You, Dearest.
I’ll do my best
to keep on living healthily
to provide a happy home for You.
Baba, as I struggle with my morning prayer,
I’m finding that I have to pray to You
as You, not me, for though You are my Self,
I love You more as You than me.
So here’s my revision
based on Your prayer, “Beloved God,”
and Your instructions that we remember You:
“Beloved Baba, help us all
to love You more and more,
to hold fast to Your daaman,
to remember You,
to say Your name,
to give You all,
to listen, hear, obey,
when worried,
to practice trusting You;
when frightened,
to travel on with You;
when wanting,
to open more to You.
All glory be to You, Amen.”
Baba, I was furious before meeting
a new urologist yesterday
because I’d been told to arrive with a full bladder
and thus assumed he was planning
an ultrasound or other tests
without consulting me.
Well, the man was likable, considerate,
and knowledgeable, and finally I asked,
“Why the full bladder?” and he apologized
by telling me that every patient for urology
is told to come with a full bladder,
a silly protocol he’s tried to change.
Baba, how You play with me.
A full bladder?
What a laugh!
And how kind You are,
giving me chance after chance
to stop worrying and be happy.
O Baba, in my morning meditations
while rocking in my rocking chair,
I’ve been meditating on Your face,
holding it inside,
and today, on opening my eyes
I saw the ranch houses across the street
differently, no longer as plain or ugly
but as beautiful because they shelter You.
Sitting and rocking some more,
I started to think about cancer,
and yes, I worry still
because my body wants to live,
but as I closed my eyes
and looked at You again inside,
I breathed more easily, remembering
You are the truth in Whom I cannot die.
O Baba, at the feeder,
chickadees sing, dee, dee, dee,
before they fly with a seed
to the cedar tree to eat.
Fear wanders the earth this winter,
but Baba, You’re still here,
Your seed within our hearts.
I sing before I eat.
Baba, eight years ago at the farmer’s market
Axel, August, Cecil and Freya,
kids with such old fashioned names,
raced past tables laden with neighbors’ plenty
while I sat on a bench outside the bakery
and chatted with passing friends,
and then, last week, I walked into the clinic,
gave my birth date, license, and insurance card,
and there was processed
while across the waiting room I saw a neighbor,
so gray and distant,
I barely dared to say hello,
and then was ushered to a cell,
no pictures on the wall,
and the nurse was nice
although she had to hurry away,
and the doctor was nice
while assuring me of coming death,
while down the hall I knew I’d find an Octopus,
a robot bought for surgery,
two million dollars spent
and used two times in sixty days,
and farther down the hall the ICU
with patients gasping for oxygen,
and now all morning I sit numbly
staring at the glassy bay,
no pictures in the clouds
when suddenly I gasp as if for life itself
and feel You, Baba, grieving in my heart,
and as I dare to grieve,
I find myself within Your arms.
When young,
I climbed Pine Cobble and the Dome
while singing Dylan’s songs,
while now, far off,
the mountains hang in mist
and I sing just Your name.
Gone, gone, Baba,
all of me is nearly gone
except for consciousness
that shall remain
within these words,
fragments of Your living Word.
If it’s Your will,
when I’ve passed on,
these poems shall stay
if only in Your mind,
where nothing’s lost
and all of us are someday found.
Baba, I dreamt last night
that I had parked my car
and walked into a dusty land,
and climbing up a hill I came
upon a looming castle made from granite blocks.
I went inside and walked around seeking for its chapel.
The castle had no plan, no chapel either,
but in the hall, people ate at polished tables,
and no one there seemed human.
Waves were beating gainst the castle walls,
growing ever higher,
and no one noticed, too busy at their feed.
I felt afraid and fled up stairs,
aware that I had lost my car, my briefcase, and myself,
and I was sore afraid til I awaked.
It’s a dark, dark starless morning
with heavy banks of cloud,
but I am happy,
this morning after sun’s return.
O Baba, bring Sam with his new friend,
Alicia, safely to our home,
and every child out in the world,
bring them home to You.
Today is Mehera’s birthday.
No wonder I’m so happy, Lord.
You caught my eye through Mehera’s beauty
and pulled me close to You.
O Baba, illusion’s nothing.
Only You exist,
and so it follows,
everything I see is You
and everything is holy.
Nothing’s what it seems.
Everything is You.
Cancer’s eating away my body
and opening up my inner sight.
O Baba, what a gift from You.
I kneel with the shepherds
at Your cradle, beloved Child,
Son of man and Son of God
Who’s come to be with us,
and twelve days hence,
when the wise men come
and enter Your cave with gifts,
I’ll stand with the shepherds again
because some hundred years away
You will have come again
not as a wise man teaching
but as a shepherd serving,
leading Your flock
to the greenest grass
and purest water
and I’ll be there with You.
O Baba, is this the last poem of the year,
the last that You’ll be giving me?
I do not know.
I thank You.
I love You,
and even though this book will end,
there is no end,
for when our words are gone,
Your Word goes on.