Where the Deer & the Antelope Play

It Stops Working

Look
what happens to the scale
when love
holds
it.

It
stops
working.


~ Kabir

(Love Poems From God translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

God’s Lips Upon the Veil

God has never left you.

It is just
that your soul is so vast
that just like

the earth in its innocence,
it may think,

“I do not feel my lover’s warmth
against my face right
now.”

But look, dear,
is not the sun reaching down its arms
and always holding a continent
in its light?

God cannot leave us.
It is just that our soul is so vast,

we do not always feel God’s lips
upon the
veil.



~St. Catherine of Siena

God Asked for Charity

God came to my house and asked for charity.
And I fell on my knees and
cried, “Beloved,

what may I
give?”

“Just love,” God said.
“Just love.”


~ St. Francis of Assisi

The Beauty of You

by Rainer Maria Rilke In deep nights I dig for you like treasure. For all I have seen that flutters the surface of my world is poor and paltry substitute for the beauty of you that has not happened yet… ~ from The Book of Hours II, 34

Grief

by Matthew Dickman

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what’s left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside,
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she’s coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known,
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don’t ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,
crying in the checkout line,
refusing to eat, refusing to shower,
all the smoking and all the drinking.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead,
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic? she says,
reading the name out loud, slowly,
so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person’s body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

New Year’s Eve Prayer

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

~ Thomas Merton

You Don’t Have to Act Crazy Anymore

You don’t have to act crazy anymore -
We all know you were good at that.

Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do

Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.

Look in a clear mountain mirror -
See the Beautiful Ancient Warrior
And the Divine elements
You always carry inside

That infused this Universe with sacred Life
So long ago

And join you Eternally
With all Existence - with God!

~ Hafiz