A Poem in Two Parts
I.
Listen
to yourself
say words!
Girl—
flowing stream,
unknown land,
new world.
Boy—
something
behind a wall.
Mother—
where?
Mommy—
holding me
when I cry.
Daddy—
sun-
smile.
Father—
a man who used
to be
in the army.
II.
What
in us
is quiet enough
to hear?
Who in us
is not busy
fighting his way
out of a box?
A jumble of words
is in me like cuneiform
scrawled on an ancient wall;
a cloud of words
surrounds me
nearly all the time
like a swarm of mosquitoes.
Moments of grace
free me from
the cloud.
And I am in awe,
stunned by the beauty.
Date Palms Along Oakland Avenue in Walnut Creek
I almost drove past,
as I often do
on my route home
from the dentist or downtown,
but today I thought,
“How can I not stop
and share this magnificence?”
I, who came from
the cold-winter Midwest,
and get to view these lush green fountains
whenever I want.
So now I’m showing you
the everyday glory
of my world.
Look around you
and remember your own.
Sometimes that devil, habit,
makes it hard to see
one’s own heaven.
Play of Opposites
“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” – Shakespeare’s Hamlet
The dreams I’ve been having
are the waking dreams
I call my life.
They’ve been exalting me to the heights,
not materially but emotionally,
then dragging me down to the depths.
It’s as preposterous
as Alice in Wonderland.
Saturday morning I rose before dawn,
worked on creative projects a while,
then set out
on my weekly shopping expedition.
The new morning and the creative inspiration
brought a sense of boundless confidence,
of joyfully surfing the waves of Existence.
Was I finally finding the key
to keeping my balance,
to continuing in this fecund joy
and falling no more?
The way forward—on and on—
seemed clear.
Later in the day,
not one but two things happened
to throw me down
and lay me as low
as I’ve ever been.
My heaven turned into its opposite.
By 10 p.m. I had thrown myself
literally on the floor,
and begged God to Help me.
I’d been in proximity
to someone who was having his own
great good fortune, and articulating it
in a very powerful way.
Under the spell of his voice,
I felt myself getting smaller and smaller,
until all I am and have done
on myself seemed trivial—
and I felt like a desperate,
spiritually-bankrupt pauper!
Two days have passed.
I’ve begun to find
equilibrium again.
What can I do but try
to repair myself,
get back in the game,
and resume the work?
Someday the opposites
will all be merged in Your Love.
Poet’s note: There’s actually a word for “the tendency of something to turn into its opposite: enantiodromia. Carl Jung often used the term. The skillful balancing of opposites, and the “transcendent function” provided by the Self (“the God within”), was one of his major themes.
I Have a Little Ball
I have a little ball
and take it out to play
every single morning
of every single day.
And then, when nighttime comes
I put my ball away.
It disappears inside me,
till morning, the next day.
The ball is so enchanting,
and playing’s so much fun!
Yet it creates such problems,
I want my playing done.
(Well, really I do not.
I only think I should.
The rules make it so hard to play,
that I’m not very good.)
I finally met the Master
who made ball, game and rules.
He told me there’s a purpose:
Such games are really schools.
My ball’s a thing of beauty,
a work of art bar none,
and as for the great Master,
it turns out I’m His son!
So Master—Lord! Please help me!
I practice every day,
but there’s so much to playing
that I still lose my way.
We are not we but One.
Oh, when shall I know this,
and enter my Inheritance,
awakened by Your Kiss?
Where We Have Come
“We are the sons of the Father; the Sun. We must help him daily to rise over the horizon.” – words spoken by a Pueblo Native American chief to Dr. Carl Jung
I.
Beloved MEHER*,
to clarify, I asked myself today,
“How does Your coming affect my life?”
and felt the simple
answer right away.
Because You came,
I’m here, instead of in
an astral world
or a psych ward!
You came to redeem my world
before I even knew
it was fallen.
II.
Oh, FATHER,
how You clean
the slate of memory
when we’re born!
We came, my generation,
onto the scene
of moving-to-the-suburbs,
TV, appliances, cars getting ready
to sprout rocket-fins,
as the world around us
tumbled in deep clouds
of ambiguity about
our very survival.
And we watched
Ozzie and Harriet
to distract ourselves.
III.
And did not each private sphere—
while not broadcast as headlines—
also recapitulate
the fall of Man?
We did not know
how much we knew,
but could feel the haze
of anxiety blanketing
the world like a sandstorm.
IV.
My friends’ fathers,
who coached our Little League team,
had fought on Pacific islands,
seen their comrades fall,
been interred in Japanese prison camps.
They never spoke a word, except, well,
Once in a while, a code word—“Guadacanal.”
But something inside them
told us everything.
Grandpa and Grandma, Bawby and Zeda,
beamed when we came to visit on Sundays,
all the while picturing
second cousins just our age
who had perished at Auschwitz.
It was all so close,
even as we stumbled
through department stores
and dreamed at night
of playgrounds in auto graveyards.
V.
No one was exempt.
Each paid a price
known only to that one,
and often not until much later.
Few knew the Redeemer
was already here,
silent among us,
speaking His Word
into souls’ ears
one by one,
in the midst of the nightmare.
A passer-by might then see
someone dancing in the street,
and think vaguely, “another madman.”
VI.
Yet, soul by soul,
the stream becomes less muddy,
the air less burdened,
and our own actions,
done in Remembrance,
build the momentum
even as we continue to wait
for what has already happened.
A candle came into
the darkness, and now
millions of candles are burning
in thought-word-deed, helping
to bring up
the Sun.
_____
*This poem is spoken/written to Meher Baba, the author’s longtime spiritual Guide.
To read a TMW article by the author about how he became a devotee of Meher Baba,
go here: COMING TO BABA: My 43-year Romance with Meher Baba
Mother
A grey sea on a grey day.
Cloud cover, no individual clouds.
A gull standing on a piling. No flight.
No wind. And I find no way,
even now, to penetrate
your enigma.
Did you want me?
Did you really want me?
I remember Dad beaming
when he saw me, but not you.
I have a memory of a day we enjoyed together.
You walked me to a school where you said
you might enroll me for kindergarten.
They had a summer program going on.
I made a potholder, and we walked home.
I felt your aura of love all day.
Another time, the day after our train trip
to Pennsylvania for Michael’s bar mitzvah,
I kept telling you, “I can still feel
the bouncing of the train!”
You understood, and were so kind.
But where are the other memories?
Of being close, being held? Of looking up,
seeing Mother’s face smiling down?
It’s true, when you aged, you matured.
I was given a dream
near the end of your life:
I drive up a winding road to visit you in
your spacious villa atop a hill above
the city. The view is panoramic.
You are the lady of the manor.
On the first floor, you also run
a small boutique.
Perhaps that dream tells me
all I need to know—that as
you lived, you changed.
And perhaps the early years
I wonder about do not matter anymore,
now that I, too, have emerged
from under the blankets of my past.
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image 1: Max Reif; image 2: Wikimedia Commons (background added); image 2: Wikimedia Commons; image 3: Max Reif; image 4: Wikimedia Commons; image 5: Clipart Library; image 6: Max Reif; image 7: Max Reif
