by
Davis Taylor
“Soundings: Selected Poems,” gathers together my best poems from fifty years of writing and publishing. The poems are printed in chronological order.
The first section, from “River Crossing,” includes poems originally published in that volume as well as unpublished poems from 1980 to 1995. The following sections include poems from subsequent volumes. At the end of the book, you will find a biographical note on Meher Baba.
Paul’s Poem to Save the Whales
April up North
My hands are
cold, delicate, dry as silver.
On the trunks of black trees, you can find
burls of twisted branches, my knuckles and veins.
In air they are stiff,
in hot water nimble as seaweed.
I run my hands along piano strings and make music.
I suck on them, such kisses.
I am not vain. My hands are hairy
and wander like worn slippers,
at night, fat cabbages
pressed to my thighs.
I keep my hands in my pockets, for they are old
and I, awkward, young.
I dream of a lace dress
kicked to the bottom of the bed
leaving dimpled arms, a body
twig-like, smooth and firm.
I wake finding you
complete and unexpected.
We push through yellow broom.
The salt marsh seethes.
Thousands of horseshoe crabs copulate in the ditches.
I touch one, feel threads of intimacy.
You seize my hand.
Forward and back, the shiny carapaces move
in dulled, or not so dulled, ecstasy.
I shiver from cold.
I go out to see what’s banging.
I check the water pump, the door of the barn.
Mist everywhere, the hay crib,
like a dinghy, floating.
Back in bed I know your breathing,
the fridge’s chug, the pine’s scraping the window,
but what comes between us puzzles me
like something I must remember.
My wife asks,
“why don’t you sing or
whistle around
the house?”
Our neighbor, the minister
whistles
beautifully the B flat
Partita perched on his gliding
Schwinn.
Big chunks of stone,
grass and beetles,
I like their edges
but am puzzled by
all these
passing fluctuations
made of air.
Uncertain
I listen to my breathing.
(for Jon Moscartolo)
He posed me like Donatello’s David,
hips curved, eyes down,
naked. How could I know he’d like
my lanky bod or I his heavy face?
I would be perfect, young and motionless.
Wind shook the framed house,
his brush rasped at the canvas,
I felt no need.
It was enough, I told myself,
to be there,
seen. Watching his hands,
I wondered if he’d touch me.
“It’s you?” he asks.
“No, it’s not me,” I laugh
collecting my body
as I step down once more from his painting.
who beat and raped you
in the alley by the small town’s shoe store
and classy dress shop, how you got back,
were found curled on the floor,
you did not remember
and would startle us, my wife and me in bed
an hour, knocking at the door, and weeks after
I’d lie awake waiting. You would not trouble me,
you’d say, and ate dry cereal, drank coffee.
I asked if you were still dizzy when you walked,
or couldn’t you eat more.
Apple, lilac, lily of the valley
and the dark bruises beneath your eye
blossomed. He crushed your face
like a car whacking a bird.
If I had touched you, you wouldn’t have come back.
It’s five years, and you write to me
from a cabin in the mountains little of yourself—
how a friend has left to marry,
how it’s enough to wash one’s face in the snow,
to walk under the dark fir.
Your hens eat themselves
your wife paces an asylum
the top of your head a ruin
I’m sick of you,
your constant walking, stained gums.
Your eldest daughter sits outside your house,
taunts with chaste eyes,
until, as in the winter vines,
she’ll stoop and gather you.
Each plane tree a polished jar,
you and the swallows dart between.
Innocents over the hill
plant cabbages upside down.
You take my hand, smile their smile.
Your roots are in the air.
has a linebacker’s frame, a woman’s softness,
brown eyes, brown hair, white, fleshy hands.
At night, he surprises me
with the suddenness of his disappearing.
He’ll skirt the hotel, climb to the pilgrimage chapel,
vanish over the hill, return to his house
where a dime store clock sits on a wooden table
and twigs in boxes line three walls.
He says that he likes wood for its softness
and blames steel, being magnetized, for deranging nerves.
After learning that he did the wiring in my house,
I felt jumpy.
Occasionally, I’d knock at his door where he’d keep me standing,
talking for hours about Pico, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno
and about modern physics
and the magnet he’s making to heal the anxious.
His ideal is magic. As for physics, he rolls his eyes,
gives me a quick smile, and calls it “utile,” useful.
I got a letter this Christmas from a neighbor in Le Barroux
with news of Claude. Stopped one night by gendarmes,
he’d slugged an officer
and now he’s back in Belgium in an asylum made of steel.
To you, my son, the pale blue stones, white veined, thumb long,
are whales swooping through the pebbles in front of our house.
Other stones can be helicopters, trucks,
elephants, giraffes as your story changes,
but the blue stones don’t change being whales.
At the Nantucket museum, you study the whale skeleton
but pass the paintings of slaughter.
Your world is rimmed by sea;
your sun, the red eye of a whale.
Before you go to sleep, you ask, “What does horses say?”
and when I whinny, you ask, “A man inside?”
Last week at the Minnesota zoo, you heard a beluga whale.
As you close your eyes, the whale inside you sings her song.
The yellow-stained curtains, looped with braided silk,
hang regularly in the windows, and the grass grows
with a weird evenness as if only the shadows of beech trees
shimmer across it and the shadows of birds
walking the wire to the house’s corner
where they’re stopped by clapboards dry as bone.
The roof is spring-willow-green.
You imagine a bowl of ripe pears in the window,
wash shivering on the line,
a boy at the pump, water splashing over his hands.
He looks up and asks,
“Are you family?”
The dust frosted window reflects nothing
and allows no looking in.
The half called I is not here.
Tossed in the corner, expert at getting up,
I don’t, not even to think of leaving.
Legs clenched, anus burning, I’m happy
to be alone, all trying to be good snapped,
but hearing a car crunch over gravel,
I get up before my mother finds me there.
I forgot such scenes for fifty years
until beneath a healer’s touch
sensations came of being raped, at first
as if to someone else and then to me as pain,
and so the child returned
that I might suffer being whole again.
(To Ursula Le Guin)
Raped, beaten, pulled from the fire—
half your face is charred.
You speak the Language of the Making.
You know who you are.
At the cliff’s edge you cry for help.
Kalessin, the dragon, comes.
You bear yourself
like silk, the pattern clean.
On the other wind,
you fly away.
I learned an anger when the old man
raped me, not hot, not cold.
The insides of my doll hurt. I did not
like there was no stuffing in me, or,
if there were, puffed plastic to keep
glass packed from breaking.
I can’t believe, God,
You sent Your Son to suffer death
upon the cross and still allow children
to be hit, burnt, tortured, jeered.
I can’t believe that of Love,
and yet I can’t love You or anyone
unless I feel again the rape, nor You
love me unless You hung upon the cross.
Closeness is hard. I prefer
biases and sad complaints
to being in the green of Your eye
unroofed to aching stillness
and floods that rush through
leaving me raped land of past winter.
Giving birth is hard for a man.
I have never known in my body
such letting go, and I can scarcely
believe grace bears on me.
You hurt like love hurts breath,
and let nothing between us,
no turning from terror
before Your obliterating light.
(To Jean, a Red Cross Volunteer)
The unspoken sucks us in.
So the blast sucked, then spat bodies,
twirling like seeds, into the sea
where darkness covered them like a flame
and fish nudged
in the most intimate places of ecstasy.
When God came to Mary, she took Him in
not knowing what child she’d bear.
A god, yes, but minotaur or goat with human hair?
Inside the body bags, the shock of life: crabs feeding.
You volunteers pulled the bodies out,
examined DNA, took dental records,
and to fingerprint jellied flesh,
peeled skin back, like turning a glove inside out,
then slipped your fingers in.
Christ, on entering us became what we might be.
On entering them, you were washed clean,
like a bottle bobbing away with the tide.
This morning, almost snow
gathers into syllables,
taps the rusted gutter.
Facing the year’s darkening,
I wonder, is it enough
to feel a sufficiency in pain?
When I listen,
neither word nor silence,
the uneven rain.
Springwater Retreat, February 2005, led by Toni Packer
Alert, silently
deer tiptoe through sparkling snow
into the garden.
A dog’s yapping snaps
the line of morning’s worry,
endless otherwise.
Right there, opposite,
with lowered eyes, a man smiles,
never seen before.
Chickadees at suet,
quick thoughts peck all afternoon.
Shoo away, sweet ones.
What’s that, a stomach
or a coyote’s howling
over the next hill?
The second morning,
deer appear in the garden,
there before they’re seen.
Coy silence, are you
being scared away again
by these loving words?
Struck once, the bell rings
and circling feet like rain stop.
Mind hurtles through space.
I sleep peacefully,
then wake with worry making
a big deal of me.
Grey snow and grey sky.
Oak branches form a ladder
for the sun to climb.
OK beings change
easily. Not OK, it’s hard.
Now, then, how are you?
In the unborn mind
everything’s taken care of
because nothing is.
Scenes made up of here
and not here. A barn-shaped cloud
rises on the hill.
Sparrows fly into
dark cedars, thoughts into air.
All that’s left is song.
Clouds rise into clouds.
Look, over the mud-filmed road
the light goes riding.
A man sobs in the
dark hall. Another leans in
leaving space between.
Ahead, two people
stand close on the moonlit path.
Turning, it’s a deer.
Third dawn, a half moon
veiled in fog. The woods are pale
like faded blossoms.
Waiting for the tree
to empty, now, now, of crows
and the mind of thoughts.
The man who smiles is
still here. Is he inside or
outside of knowing?
Again, dawn and sun.
From the mist-hidden garden,
crows, chickadees fly.
Snow so delicate
it’s felt, not seen til settling
on a coat’s dark sleeve.
Evening, a pale sky,
a quiet mind, both fading.
No words beyond these.
At low tide, off the forward deck
a sailor drops the weighted chain, cries out the depth.
The ship is steady, unfamiliar now,
the point rounded, the breakwater slipping back.
On the dock, people emerge as if sketched in charcoal.
Gulls squeal, officers talk in hushed voices, the engine thrums.
The cliff rises, looms over the white-washed town.
A customs shed blocks the pier’s end, windowless, rusted.
Passengers glance furtively, checking passports, suitcases.
The expanse of sea fades to quickening speech, dialects, languages.
Faces now recognizable. Coming home. Leaving.
(To Joe Winter)
Something I can’t name keeps me awake—
not fear, more like a stallion’s dank,
quivering muzzle thrust into my chest.
At dusk I watched raptors winging north
high over the pines at the hayfield’s edge,
as if on pilgrimage to slake their blood.
Is it love’s sting scatters them like stars
and keeps me up past hours shuddering against
a nameless passion, a wordless charge, till over
the thawing land once more appear pasque-
flower, moon, and tree? It’s lambing time,
but all is hushed outside, the crocuses huddled
like nuns awaiting the host, my heart alarmed
that tonight the unvoiced word will break its silence,
like a draft horse drag me back to the burning,
for God’s death, unbearable compassion,
now splinters through the woods, like a green fire
races over the fields, and into the far
north wings, high-up, fading from hearing.
(In Memory of Gene McDowell)
Remember, I married Becky, your second daughter.
You don’t?
I remember the first time we met.
It was five years ago.
You ushered me into your den.
I thought you were going to ask me how much I earned
or did I love your daughter,
but instead, for each deer head mounted on the wall,
you had a story–
a blizzard, hands numb, icicles dripping from your hat,
you slogged through a marsh, slippery underfoot, one shot
and that buck with seven-pointed antlers dropped.
As for the next, you spent all day in the blind hungry, bothered by flies.
You started down, paused, climbed back up.
Moments later, a stag strutted from the woods.
Aiming low from above, you pierced its heart.
Then the dark cold came.
Seven more heads, seven more stories.
I saw you about to explode with laughter.
You took my arm and whispered, “Never believe a hunter.”
Gene, we’ve come for the auction.
I can see from your face
you remember your children if not their names,
but with me your face is blank.
I’m not hurt.
Each time we meet I get to be new again.
You loved deals.
You’d drive from Pennsylvania to Ohio,
jump from the car, and before greeting your kids and grandkids,
pull from the trunk an auger, a hand thresher,
really, a steal, you’d claim.
You’d stay the weekend, then off down the road.
You stopped milking years ago, more room in the barn for things.
Although you’ve sold the best, some treasures remain:
a Cloud electric lawnmower, one of seven made in the U. S.A.,
a wooden hay cart from the 1700's,
eighteen hand plows,
three wooden seeders,
two hand-cranked, sheep-shearing gadgets that work.
As for the rest, it’s “Gene’s Junque”:
buckets of hammers, hatchets, nails,
fifty long-handled shovels,
eight grind stones,
lumber, harnesses, weights, rocks, and more, and more.
By Friday night, all’s sorted, cleaned, and stacked,
the plows and wheels arranged in a great circle,
the rest piled on wagons inside the paddock fence.
All week, a hurricane’s been creeping up the coast,
but Saturday dawns foggy and bright.
We’re up at five, out at six to park cars in the pasture.
At seven, no one but the auctioneers has come.
They say, “Maybe it’s the fog,”
but later we learn their signs sent folk half across Chester County.
By eight, there’s seventy people, more streaming in,
neighbors, relatives, junk dealers, buyers of scrap,
and a few, Gene, with your passion for tools
and the history of farming before the advent of power machines.
Off to the side, I see Earl, your hired man, dressed in his Sunday best.
He watches, smiles all day.
I go up and chat.
Earl’s pleasant, but what he thinks, I couldn’t guess.
Except for Sundays, he’s been eating dinners
with your family for fifty years,
off by himself at a side table with his own dishes and silverware–
that’s how it was, Blacks and Whites–
until a child, back from college, set him a place at the big table.
Now he eats at your right.
I don’t dare ask Earl, “What’s it going to be like for Gene tomorrow?”
All day, with few breaks, I help the auctioneers.
I am holding five augers over my head.
“Do I hear a bid at six, do I hear six, do I hear four...”
So it goes, a song so hypnotic
I’d buy if my hands weren’t full.
No bid.
“Add more,” the auctioneer says,
and I raise ten augers over my head.
“Do I hear…. Sold.”
I hold up weights.
“Sold.”
All day I’m lifting shovels, presses, grinders–
it must be the seller’s chant, for I don’t tire.
At a break, Gene, I talk with you.
“Great day. Everyone seems to know me. What a party,” you say.
You seem happy, and it is a great day,
the pieces selling so cheap it’s less an auction than a celebration,
Gene’s day, they’ll say for generations, a potlatch to remember.
The next day, Sunday, you poke around the barn,
seem pleased so much is gone.
We picnic under the tent,
and when a child comes late, you don’t complain
though nodding off by birthday cake.
Monday, I find you back inside the barn,
now seeming lost and listless.
I wonder if you miss your things.
A truck drives up. You brighten for a chat.
“Dad, we’re leaving,” we call, and you come over.
“Can’t you stay. It’s nice here.”
“Wish we could,” we answer.
“Ah, brother Tom.”
“No Dad,” says Tom. “I’m your son.”
It’s been a month.
We hear you’re up most nights at two ready for breakfast.
Betty gets you back to bed,
but an hour later, you’re up again.
“Who are you?” you ask.
“I’m Betty, your wife.”
“Ah, best thing I ever did was marry you.”
Your mind is empty, childlike, fresh
but puzzled how to pull your trousers up.
You wander the house cheerfully,
then panic—is the barn door closed?—
insisting you’ve got to go out and check.
Gene, may you sleep all night
and find Betty tomorrow still your wife.
We’ll visit soon, we promise.
But cat, I’m no Christopher Smart.
Stop pestering me for a poem.
That you are fat and beautiful
is fact.
You’re a good mouser,
a snatcher, alas, of birds,
faithful in sharing your kills,
fastidious in your litter box,
mostly off by yourself
but when you’re hungry, yowling
as if there’s no tomorrow.
You’re right, there isn’t.
Your name Snookums
does not befit your dignity,
and when strangers coo,
“cute kitty, cute kitty,”
you arch your back
and strut away
unmindful of your belly’s
ponderous sway.
What more can I say?
You are my cat.
Listen, I’m reading you
this poem,
so don’t walk off
indifferent.
No one’s in no one’s hut.
The front door’s open.
Apple wood snaps in the stove.
A cock crows.
The cat purrs.
Come in.
Sit with no one,
the other side the fire.
The no one
you can name
is not no one.
The no one
you can fathom
is not no one.
Before the ten thousand things,
before words or names,
before the dream of absence,
what appears
is coming
to no one.
Seeking someone,
you miss
no one.
Missing someone,
you long
for no one.
By death’s mercy,
you will find
no one.
No one
can find
no one’s hut.
Oil lamp,
wood stove,
hand-pumped well—
all around
is forest
and dreams.
The way out is clear,
dirt to gravel
to macadam,
but the way back
is remembered
by no one.
No one’s tracking number:
none.
“What I
want
today...
What I
must do
today...”
people think
going downstairs
for their morning coffee.
No one wants nothing,
seeks nothing,
does nothing.
No wonder bliss comes to no one.
No one sees a daffodil.
No one is stopped by a daffodil.
No one is illumined by a daffodil,
a daffodil by no one,
both by the not-two of light
becoming daffodil and no one.
No one yells through the gate,
“Go away.
Get lost,”
while hoping
you’ll
come back
to find
no one
at home.
If you are on the way,
you will find
no one ahead of you
and no one behind.
Music is dear to no one,
but in her hut
there is no piano, flute, or oboe,
not even a recorder
but only silence
which no one plays.
No one is leaving the zendo now.
The chunk, chunk of his walking stick
follows the rhythm of his feet.
A monarch flutters in front of him,
the two of them going on forever.
No one is
lonely
for loneliness.
No one longs
for a stop
of being
a drop
in the fall
of fallingness,
to be
for an instant
separate and still,
and then
remembers
the pain of being someone
and is happy
once more
being no one.
No one, you are generous to me.
When I lose my way,
you whisper, “forget it.”
When I worry that you are gone,
you say, “of course.”
When I fear that I am just who I was,
you answer, “Who else?”
When I swell with something to say,
you prod, “Go ahead.”
When I burst out crying that I’m not you,
you’re back with, “How could you be?”
When I’m disconsolate,
“Not two,” you say, and so take me away.
I am no one.
“Who, who, who?”
the owl cries.
I am no one.
“Who, who, who?”
Owl, I am learning
the answer to
who times who.
“Who, who?”
I am chain saw
and silence,
tree upright
and tree upturned,
meteor flaring,
deer eye staring,
moon,
raccoon.
“Who, who, who?”
Owl,
I am you.
No one cleans out his desk, sweeps erasers,
packing tape, and paper clips into
the Goodwill box, crumples up old letters,
birthday cards, a tribute from a student,
tosses them into the trash, bubble-wraps
his mother’s porcelain mouse, his father’s silver
watch, drops them into the Goodwill box,
but when he comes across a fountain pen
from the fifth grade and a bottle of Quink Ink,
he pauses, fills the fountain pen, and writes.
His hand remembers the right pressure, the slight
irritating scratch of nib on paper,
then twists the pen ever so slightly until
the ink flows smoothly but not too fast,
the how-to stuck to his hand like pitch
from the pine that shadowed his childhood home.
No one throws away the ink and pen,
then gazes at his hand. Cut it off,
throw it out? The mind remains. Who
can jump over his mind? No one, of course.
Baba, when thought awakened You from sleep
and imagination sparked the starry night,
when Maya stirred and You began Your leap
to consciousness evolving toward the light,
just then, or any moment since, for all
is now to You, You could have seen me up
writing, all hours laboring to haul
words from the deep, like stars from Jamshid’s cup,
but failing, worn out by trying. No Tagore
or Whitman, I’d quit except that something’s worrying
me like a bird trapped behind the door
of a wood stove scratching, scurrying.
Oh Baba, You’re driving me nuts. Break my heart,
let out Your blessed Word. I’ll write. You start.
It came to me on waking,
there is no You I love,
no You for Whom I’m aching,
no You below, above.
It came to me as well,
there is no apple tree,
no harbor’s chiming bell,
no rocks, no sand, no sea.
It came–I had no warning–
there is no I, no I
who waits for You this morning,
no I who fears to die,
but all’s illusion only,
and then You came to me.
Few know about these poems.
To shout our love from rooftops?
Baba, a shyness trims
my heart. Consider the snowdrops
by the walk, each one
a tri-part bell of white,
an utterance of sun,
a gathering of light.
Wordless, they astonish,
yet people hurry by,
as if from cold they’ll perish,
steaming lattés to buy.
If they won’t stop for snowdrops,
You think they’ll stop for sonnets?
For weeks I’d felt You near, and then today
for just a second You disappeared. My heart
seized, as if the floor had dropped away,
then eased, for You were back, but what a start
I’d had–to stumble through a gap, a tear
in the cosmic fabric, and know right off that if
You’d left, the pain was more than I could bear.
As after a major quake, there hung a whiff
of dust in the air, but I managed on til night
pretending all was just the same. It was
apparently. I’d merely had a fright,
but once in bed, I lay awake because
I couldn’t feel You there. At last came dawn,
sunrise and light, but You from me were gone.
I will not dream You up or conjure You
from the depths of longing. Better that You are gone,
better this bitter pain that says I knew
Your presence once, better that I go on
alone than in pretended company,
for there’s a truth in absence, a certitude
in the bleak hollowness of my days that we
were once in love. You gave me then the food
of life, and now my hunger points the way
of faithfulness. Not an instant, Baba,
can I leave You. Though You are gone, I stay
beside my gate and childlike count each car
pass down the road to home, and when I hear
the silence through the trees, I think You’re near.
Some say that You are found in emptiness
and fathomed by yogic discipline, by years
given to watching yearnings, thoughts, and fears,
to patient seeking not for more but less,
to letting go and coming to address
what’s been most painful, to accepting bitter tears,
to finding peace in whatever now appears,
and yes, I’ve found relief in emptiness,
but You are more than that: You are the face
where I’ve met God, the musical that won’t
stop playing in my mind, the rush of grace
allaying failure’s pain, the father’s “don’t,”
the mother’s “yes,” the best of friends now gone
who’s left me drained, no eagerness for dawn.
Most people haven’t heard of You, Baba,
or if so vaguely as another guru,
Maharaj, or Ji, though not as Allah,
Yahweh, Vishnu, Ezad, God, but You
are God, not a small tributary
to the ocean but beyond the ocean,
the very source from Whom the Cosmic Sea
of stars and planets flows in constant motion.
Formless, hidden in Illusion’s train,
You are unknown. Not even paradox
can light the darkness that You are, restrain
the silence of Your voice. You’re Buddha’s ox
and boy. You’re Christ and Peter, Indra’s net,
the Love in whom our need to love is met.
Baba, I’m building You a hut,
fifteen feet square with cherry floor,
Jøtul stove, and Wisconsin cut
cedar for ceiling. Above the door
I’ll paint, “Baba’s hut,” an excuse
to speak of You and say this place
is sacred, made for silent use
and opening to inward space.
Upon a wall I’ll hang Your portrait.
When someone comes, we’ll sit and wait
for You, dispel the known to let
the unknown enter, while on the grate
the kindling crackles, to ash burning,
ourselves to You, our Self, returning.
I trudge to meet You in the night.
Dark clouds are packed across the sky,
and in Your hut there is no light,
no sound until I start to cry.
It is Your love that humbles me
and not like any love I’ve known,
more like the battering of the sea,
a power greater than my own.
“You must be happy in my love.”
I am, but why I do not know,
and “happy” misses feelings of
drowning in Your undertow.
The hut is cold, yet here I stay.
I’m powerless to go away.
Entering the Tavern, I cross the ground with longing.
At Baba’s chair, I kneel spellbound with longing.
I am alone. Silence takes my hand,
and now I’m sailing outward bound with longing.
I glimpse my image at the Pilot’s door
and see through it to Baba crowned with longing.
We’ve left astern the harbor of memory,
are ripped by tides into the sound of longing.
The islands slip behind. There’s open sea,
or fantasy, my mind unbound by longing.
Oh Captain, steer my ship, for I am lost.
“Davis, he who’s lost is found through longing.”
Out in Your hut, Meher, with none but moonlight,
I’m in no hurry to be done with moonlight.
The frost, like pewter, lies upon the field.
A spider web expands, fine-spun in moonlight.
Without the ticking clock, how quiet’s time.
The western stars grow dim, o’errun with moonlight,
while to the east, clouds hang before the dawn,
as if to veil a bashful nun in moonlight.
Fox or coyote peers from wooded cover.
Blankly it stares into the gun of moonlight.
Then out it flashes, red its tail. Like that,
the color of the day’s begun in moonlight.
Approaching dawn is blushing through her veil.
Phoebus-smitten, she’s quick to shun the moonlight.
Oh Baba, I meant to be remembering You,
but You have slipped my mind, undone by moonlight.
Davis, you’ve been with Baba all this time.
He’s mirrored everywhere as sun in moonlight.
Baba, I bring to You my sin,
and then You say not to begin.
I thought by sharing pain I’d span
the gap between us.—There’s none, dear man.
And yet, Meher, I feel apart.
If not through pain, how shall I start?
I never learned to listen well,
too quick to please, too much to tell.
I sense in You that empty mind
in which the universe I’d find.
I know the weight of sin because
I know the weight of loneliness.
Baba, give me penance please.
—Davis, get up off your knees.
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.
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 strays
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.
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.
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 the fire and let the kettle boil,
Your Discourses to see the long nights through,
so here I am, your book upon my lap
unread, for though I try to read, I can’t,
almost asleep then waking with a snap.
I’m bundled in hat and scarf like old Rembrandt.
Outside it’s silent, no flutter of wind or wing.
I lack the subtle sense to hear stars sing.
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.
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.
When I awaken in the morning cold,
the sunlight on the sheets, my God, is cold.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
alone
on a crowded beach
upwind
headed toward God.
are awash
with light.
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 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,
then starts again,
the engine of my longing
to be
where there’s no end.
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.
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.
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.
(Meher Spiritual Center,
Myrtle Beach, S. C., December, 2014)
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, 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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, 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!
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, 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, 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, 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.
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.