FRAGMENTS

          I

Stances toward life
Become bunkered positions
From which we send forth
Soldiers of intellect
To argue our case.

If only we could see
That YOU are here
Behind the bunkers,
beckoning to us all 
With open arms.

But we can't:
The relativity
Of my own position
Is hidden well from me.

"God made sense to look out."
 I haven't yet sighted 
Myself in the scope
Of my own vision.

How does one do that?
When I look inside
It's all black fog
With unclear
Thoughts that 
Come and go.

I've never truly gotten
Beneath that fog
But for a few
Moments of pure Grace.

              
              II

This morning I've come
For a walk upon the upper
Slopes, among the terraced
Gardens of  iron-gated
Villas with red roofs..

In the distance there are
Still more lovely hills.
It looks like Paradise.
I want to escape to Paradise.
I imagine living up here,

But do you think
For a moment
The people who do
Live here see Paradise?
Only in the rare
Spaces between their own 
Thoughts. I see it here
Because for now I've left 
That baggage that I call
Myself far down the hill.

But even now, up here,
I think, "It must be beautiful
In the Fall"--another flight
From the present moment.

                
               III.

Years ago I lived, for a time,
In a room on a great hill
With a picture window 
Overlooking San Francisco Bay.
The whole city lay 
Spread out before me.
In a way, I felt like God:
I spent hours conducting the boats,
Daydreaming,  feeling  I'd "arrived".

Unbelievably, after several months
I grew bored with the view
And scarcely even looked out
While getting dressed, or when
Arriving home from work.

                 
                IV

What was it like
Before I came to YOU,
MEHER? I scarcely recall,
So many years now 
YOUR NAME has been
Revolving in my mind.
I remember songs and jingles
That ran through my head,
And how I couldn't get them out.
I remember too a secret I carried 
All through high school--
At least I thought it was a secret:
That the people who saw me in the halls
Were seeing, when they passed me, 
"The greatest person who'd ever
Been a student at our school."
But of course they knew my secret,
For my self-obsessive madness 
Surely showed upon my face.

Oh, before I knew YOU, BABA--
I can scarcely make real 
Any longer the weight of all the secret
Burdens that I carried. My  thoughts
Stampeded  like terrified gazelles.

Thirty-three years now
The wheel of YOUR NAME
Has been revolving in my mind.

It has absorbed, for certain,
Many scattered and fragmented
Selves. And if the burden
Still feels hard, MEHER,

Oh, Help me be aware
Sometimes, just how much 
Lighter it's become.


4/30/04