Category: Original Poems

The Only Changeless

for Brother Ishtananda, who chanted:  “I am not this body, which changes and passes away.  I am not this mind, which knows nothing but change.  I am the immortal, blissful soul, ever one with Thee.”

The body changes day by day
From fresh youth to decaying age.
Loss of hair, weakened teeth thus dismay
As slower legs amble across the stage.
I am not that body.

The mind knows nothing but constant swirling
As with the body it forms—emerging from the womb 
And through many countless events twirling
To weaken, to sicken, to pass on to the tomb.
I am not that mind.

The soul remains ever one with Immortality—
Ever a new bubble of Bliss on the Sea of Infinity—
Never to be lost throughout all of Eternity—
The only Changeless, transcending finality.
I am that soul.

Sacred Vision

—inspired by  Emily Dickinson’s “Joy to have merited the Pain”

Earned pain fades into joy,
Gains a vivid, long liberation.
Each phase dissolving into pure joy — 
Then paradise on the horizon.

Absolved, my eyes grow strong,
Peering into the Ancient Eye,
Improved and brooking no wrong
Approaching paradise, I realize

That these eyes glimpse Thine Eye
And that Thou dost glimpse mine own
Atone and attest that my brown eyes
And Thy sacred sight are one.

Thou dost consume all time, remaining
Infinitely present, never astray — 
An eastern spirit explaining
Morning to the day.

Evoking Thine highest peak
And the valley far below,
My voice can speak
Inside the darkest shadow,

Spiritualizing all space and time
As years drop eternally
Ghost day by ghost night
Journeying through eternity,

Singing in soul silence
Harmonizing with Thy sacred voice.

A slightly different version of this poem appears in the “As Tulips Dance & Sway” section of my published collection Singing in Soul Silence: Voices of Faith.

As Tulips Dance & Sway

Spring nights and cool mornings
Draw back their curtains slowly
Letting in the moist day
Wherein they exude their blossoms.

Over the river of the moon, the bells
Have begun pealing to the noon cinders
And the clinging veils of gray mountains
Spindle and droop lumps of light into barrels.

Sand along the river bank warms slowly.

The clock confines the lilies while the hands 
Of monks lift baskets of apricots.
Long robes file into the galley; short knives
Bring each incision to fruition.

The cowboys are never blind to evening prayers, 
As dust settles in the afternoon rain; the priest
Will bless the bread and pass the plates 
To the younger ones first.  Not that they are 

More aggrieved or disheveled but that they
Need more time to collect their breath
In the exalted air of the monastery.  An old
Monk’s eyes light up at the thought of authentic work.

Sand along the river bank warms to the touch.

In the stillness of the meal, one young cowboy
Mentions the sight he saw just this morning:  the tulips
On the western slope in front of the sprawling ranch house
Were dancing and swaying as the morning prayers

Were beginning in the meditation halls.  He wonders
If they are praying along with the worshipers.  He wonders
If God put this thought in his head as an invitation
Never to leave.  His boots on the gravel-sand seem to fail

Him, and he turns back to ask the old monk how long
Before he could be as calm and assured as he wishes.
Sand along the river bank warms slowly.
Sand along the river bank warms to the touch.

Red Holiday

We worried the Martians
right up to the time we
couldn’t spend another day
hovering the red planet

and then the rocket rocked too much

I feared black weather was under
our seats and when the beers
arrived, I was ready for feathers—

but all afternoon we ate and watched
Earth from the hatch and planned
the red eye

rain again so much rain out of season

our side of the cosmos soggy with summer
almost gone and everyone had
a weather cliché, always do

what I dreamed in my red nap
was restful enough—

you drank your beer
and I drank mine,
and then wanted ice cream,

I was afraid my straps would pop
so I worried my cold feet
then we landed
and after we landed 
we knew where we had been 
and wanted to go there again.

for Ron at a computer training conference in Boulder CO   

A Love That Grows Far beneath the Skin

for Ron at a computer training conference in Boulder CO   

Cottonwood feathers swish around the hotel,
Sometimes in gale-force like a snowstorm.
After a few claps of thunder, the rain came

And then stopped after a few minutes.
I’ve spent five hours alone in this room
While you attend your training sessions.

The luxury of five uninterrupted hours—
Minus roughly a half-hour of housekeeping—
Shine like diamonds on a freckled neck.

And I have about three more hours left
Until your sessions end and you return.
We will go eat and shop and explore Boulder.

I will look for things to put in poems, things
Like mountains or cowboys or the laid-back
Style of the Colorado college students.

You’ll look for trinkets to take back to the kids
And encourage me to buy a dress or another turtle pin.
Maybe we’ll splurge on rich dessert and coffee.

Back at the hotel, we’ll maybe take a dip in the pool, 
Or just relax and converse in the quiet love we cultivate 
For each other—a love that grows far beneath the skin.

Image:  Created by Grok and ChatGPT inspired by “Funky Notions”

Funky Notions

Nothing needs to come out of this blistered brain
At least as far as the eye can see—
Where is the ditch into which the wheel has dug?

Do I want three lines, or four, or more
Is all the problem I can muster—Oh, how I must be
Blessed to have such trivial incongruities?
Where are the windmills when you need them?

No, I will not castigate this heart for this—
It existed way before the lava in my mind began
To gurgle on the rim of possibilities.

Hey, granny-woman—you could frimbulage your daughter
Who has an eye for things you spew forth—
No matter your heart be sanctuary for the downtrodden

The unmixed, the ultimately blessed—and wait!
Where did you just go?  No, I didn’t go there . . .
Of course, you did, you (stops for a swig of lightning) . . . 

Anyway, Love is such an all inclusive word . . .
But then she confessed she did not know what Love is
And you have always felt that Love is all you know
Even if you fail along the trail that Love to show!

Little wonder she doesn’t get you or her own children
Who must languish because you are afraid
To offend with your funky . . . notions . . . 

Image:  Created by ChatGPT inspired by “After the Affection of a Late Autumn”

After the Affection of a Late Autumn

They wore winter
Like a blazer keeps
Shoulders square
Almost military design.

In the pockets of poems
They slipped dry ice
& hung frigid at the end
Of each line.

Where they crashed
Icicles hung naked reminders
In the window
Where thawing is dripping to death.

In the thick of it
The fabric
Of a patchwork affair
Quilted them from each other.

Yet the dreams that seemed
To lodge them between sheets of ice
Caught spring spilling down a mountain
Glancing off her shoulder

The glacial waters that fed her amazement
That anything so cold can move.
Now that summer runs at the mouth
Slow as sorghum on the lip of a jar

She hitches her poems
To farmers on tractors
& plows the itch for his love
Which has scratched her into dirt that burns.

Summer Arrives 

Rain has brought green to blades of grass
As spring fades and hides again.

The moss rose peeps out with promises 
She will keep in deep pinks and bright yellows.

Hosts of many colors dazzle the heart
Reminding the soul of harvest.

Short nights allow dark thoughts to transform
Into bouquets where birds gather and twitter.

Life becomes a slow, soft, sweet song
Flowing from and back again into the Divine Belovèd.

Time—Being Precious

“As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –  
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go”                         
—Emily Dickinson, “After great pain”

likely Narcissus breathes 
on her mirror of self esteem 
prompting her to glean 
your pen across myth 
peers down nose at her—
she spits you adulation 
(more than anything even!)
but itches you not be you—
Narcissus’ brain gorges 
on its own mind and heart—

you pray she move in joy and love— 
as she goes on angling your lake of words
imagining schools of stinking thoughts 
spawning to spurn her, to scorn her, 
to snub her, to slight her!—
freezing persons must let go the freeze—
let her hooking your thoughts 
to spit at her stay mysterious—
no more bootless musing—
your time—being precious

Image: Created by Grok & ChatGPT Inspired by “In the Shelter of Thy Glory”

In the Shelter of Thy Glory

I am here
At Thy call.
I do not see
Nor hear Thee,
Lest Thou dost flee,
Yet Thou dost flee,
And I glide 
With illusion.
But disillusion
Will return me
When at last
I know I need rest.

I am feeble
But Thou art stable.
I am now humming
Near Thy name.
Touching the hymn
Of Thy word,
I will sing Thee into being,
Calling Thee Father, Mother, 
Divine Friend.
Resting in Thy love,
My soul’s light grows
In the shelter of Thy glory.