Poetry
Dust Motes
For we were first upon the dust,
a thought, a vision within a star.
To move the worlds our mind contains
takes patient love and godly pain.
For He knows best our thought and heart
better than all the stars could tell.
For in the voice we today employ
the whispered truth of love doth hide.
A love to speak, to sing, to cry,
a song to cause the dust to fly,
for dust and star they speak as one,
of heroes, martyrs and poets' sun.
His voice we speak as dust to ray,
in glorious reflection upon the day.
Borne of a gathering heaven
A new moment seized
drums upon the greeting
a recognition each uncommon
a human and welcome meeting.
To pray as if the honeyed nectar
collected among the showers
needed now be offered
upon a stage of flowers.
Not prayers of syllables, sound
but groans of the broken and winged,
cries of the traveler who has lost his way,
the wanderer upon seeing the beloved.
A stage of prayer draws now to invoke
the names of those now borne
whose lives we stand to recall
whose memory is ours unshorned
A certain line now forms
a statement upon those we call
a singular procession of wooded hue
to the point of he who lived for all.
Now gather round that marbled point in instrumental voice
to voice our longing, to sing the journey's lines
our lives as yet expressed
our journey yet defined.
Deep ebony wooded path,
white birch upon the trail,
the wooded way we move
gathers heaven upon our way.
We now progress along the path
more certain of our place,
walking toward our Best Beloved
now genes upon the race.
···
(written upon the Saturday procession to the grave of Hand of the Cause Louis
Gregory, 2001)
The Children of the Martyrs
To open the doors to certain fate,
we must arrive beside the gate,
of love and trust and joy and faith,
to walk the path of service great.
To walk the path, as Martyrs did,
we must live each day, and die a bit,
to die from habits old and true,
to leave the thoughts we know as glue,
that bind us to this earthly dust.
For we must rise against the gusts
of worldly winds that beat us down
and bend the road upon the dawn.
Remember this, beside the gate, that
those who enter upon the road,
and through the gate, upon the dawn,
need love and trust and joy and faith.
···
(Composed upon the first meeting of facilitators, Boston, July 27, 2002)
Heathrow (16 April, 2002)
For us to walk the journey
is then to stake a claim.
A claim to meet the wayside stand,
as one would hearth and chain.
For all are on the journey,
all creatures known to habit.
All circle round the pivot point
of earth we all inhabit.
The journey's marked with fare and fete
with struggle over soil.
But one who knows the cost of faith,
knows spirit that will not spoil.
For all are creatures small and great,
all soldiers on this path.
A lonely planet do we share,
all see the smoking wrath.
For fire's web and spiders heat,
do they conspire jointly.
to weave the web of sudden light
that human hearts desire.
For such sorrow elevates our hearts,
when sight of loss and grief.
For human is the tragedy
and human, gift to speak.
For we do speak, in all our tongues,
a voiceless cry or smile.
For those who weep and those who toil
are found throughout the miles.
This lonely planet it now throbs,
with pregnant spasm cries.
For yet is born the race of men,
to see its hearts desire.
Nine Eleven
Go back, go back, go back, go back!
This cry that saved so many.
But many others walked the flights,
and there were heroes plenty.
So human was the shock and grief,
so human was the jolt.
For brave were those who kept to stairs,
so others could see the 'morrow.
Oh, I did weep to see that sight,
and see the stories fall.
But weep as well did my heart song
for other horrors known.
For heroes few and hatred sharp,
that is the world we see.
But in that moment all could see
the onward brutal battle.
Lord Buddha long ago did warn,
"Mind's territory alone.."
Can man claim boundary and title,
not dust and hill and stone.
For battles long ahead do face us,
long battles for the mind,
the mind of children, not yet borne,
the minds that won't be silent.
For they will see the Buddha's verse,
"From mind the world is ruled"
And just as well they know the terse
"and mind the world is shaped."
For in the mind of child grows,
the seed of love or hate,
the seed of hope or of despair,
the seed to make, the seed to break.
So careful is it ours to build,
the world for them to know.
To know that they can rule the world,
a world of mind and soil.
···
Heathrow, Terminal Three
April, 2002
Sara Jane Harrington
"and when she prayed... she seemed
really, to touch the divine..."
To touch the shoreless ocean
as souls are wont to do
requires we walk the fractured shore
the bouldered road of pain.
We meet the prayerful moment
in unexpected ways
in railing 'gainst the blinded act
as one might battle rain.
The rain that shows us how to live
in pouring forth its all
to reach the shoreless ocean
by bursting through the walls.
The walls of self and isolate
the walls of mine and yours
the patient rain seeks deep and long
for chinks and cracks and pores.
The voice that rain employs
the sound of note and scales
is meant to wash the flimsy veil
which human walls retail.
The passing of a shower
a rain in early spring
is greeted, loved by all and one
as sun flows o'er the wing.
For Sara passes winged and blue
above the tree-lined shore
so we might know that in her life
she touched the hem adored.
···
Read about this poem
The Meeting Place
We meet in places large and small,
we meet to find the fragrant hall.
For us to find the searching few,
is blessing, beauty and bounty true.
He give us chance to view the crowd,
to seek the quiet within the loud.
And when they view our perfumed love,
they swoon, they smile, they glance above.
For ours is duty by the gate,
to stand, attending, as hope's elate.
For life is full, and short and sweet,
when Love, He calls us out to meet.
The Pilgrims
And the pilgrims,
We have seen them,
with tears barely visible
as they recount an anecdote,
a passing moment
in your Life,
Your Word.
The smooth sea stones
along the pathways
to the hallowed Tomb,
visible portents of lives
thrown up from the sea...
Footpaths to serve
a pilgrim humanity.