Prayer Beads
These poems were written starting in the spring of
2011. They witness to insights growing
out of my initiations with the Sufis in
New Lebanon NY from 1980 to 2009. I also
joined a Christian church that spring. So I
consider the poems a testament to my own
spiritual evolution and potentially useful to
others on the path. Like prayer beads, they
are meant to turn our thoughts to our
common journey toward the One.
- Follow me. I am heading north
- A vision when the cardinal alights
- This is my Father's house, and I am home
- We come to this certainty by grace
- How can we not love our shepherdess
- In this old church how many have sat down
- Banish reward and the thought of heaven
- I finger my cycling days like prayer beads
- You can see I work inside the box
- There is a throne within that is never empty
- This house has become my monastery
- There is a god, and there is only one
- When the choir soars, I soar too
- We give the children what they cannot learn
- An act is like an iron gate that opens,
- A pesky sin that's most original
- Am I not God's darling, saved endlessly
- At night the train whistle moans along the river
- Come closer, God whispered to me.
- Deceased members of the class of 1950
- Find in pain another heaven
- For human folly, only a belly laugh!
- Free thinkers are free, but only thinkers.
- God is a wind that blows the leaves away
- I have not been generous with my words.
- If God is a peacock, a single eye, I am
- Imagination is the doorway to heaven,
- No sense chiding evil doers. They're deaf
- Olympics of the body fall away.
- On TV I saw a woman so beautiful I knew
- Poems are flowers. They are meant to wither
- Refuse to be a source of pain or death.
- That the rich may have their ornaments, a great beast dies
- The cheerleaders make their pyramid. They tremble
- The force be with you. But not only the force.
- The heart is a cathedral. Come join me there
- The honey bee of attention brought you here.
- The people in the commercials look too good
- The things that come to you are all you know.
- The uninvited things that come
- The world is full of talk. So many words!
- There is laughter at the heart of things
- These poems I lay at the Creator's feet
- This Bible that you read is reading you
- This love the singers sing of sweetens the heart
- To be a man of faith in a time of doubt
- Today I fall into my easy chair
- Too much palaver confounds the gospel.
- We are figments in God's imagination
- When Didi wags her tail, the world wags too
- When God thought me up, I couldn't say no
- Who will speak for God about predation?
- You will not find greatness here. No matter
- Do you ever remember how you made that promise
- Coming among us, make eternity your gift
- God gave us minds to construe the truth
- A silent church is like no other silence
- Close down the bar room you call history
- We are the music that God listens to
- Do not be hypnotized by pomp and fame
- Crowds of faces and faces in the crowds
- You cannot know what you will not know
- All that is is all that is the one.
- Earth shall have dominion over man
- Emptiness seems to be a half-way house
- Enjoy yourself, but be no slave to pleasure
- Always the buzzing saw-blade of politics
- A church too may die or become a remnant
- Beauty lives in the lineaments of woman
- Before long, I will disappear
- Children are the ransom that we pay to time
- Even the mind may dim and fade to dark
- Faith is gold panned by generations
- Farewell, my countrymen freedom was good
- Follow your calling wherever it may lead
- God exults in a great profusion
- God has in Him all that's thinkable
- God has stamped us with His intellect
- Have conscience, but don't condemn yourself.
- Have you noticed that you don't exist
- I am no longer the boy from under the trees
- I have nothing to say about the dark
- I hope you understand that thoughts are real
- I think of myself as a crumb from Rumi's table
- I've been kept alive to make these lines.
- If you would become a person, perfect yourself
- In my house a choir of lovebirds sings
- In the casino the slots are davening
- In the mirror of the soul there is a dance
- In the pouring rain join where the Sufis dance
- In the presence of majesty discretion is best
- In the sum of infinity, I am a single surd
- Is it my face I sometimes glimpse in the street
- It is not fashionable now to be a believer
- It is very little that you need to know.
- It's what you wish for that entails the sin
- Jesus turned a page in the immortal book
- Know the senses for what they really are:
- Let us not be bedeviled by circumstance
- Let your eyes climb the risen steeple
- Let's hope somehow to be together again
- Lifting my hands, I feel the currents rise
- Light takes on the color of the fog
- Meaning marries the lesser and the greater
- Mindless piety makes me slightly ill
- Music is the elixir of the heart
- My friend, death will be our referee
- My neighbor pours chemicals on his weeds
- My wagging Shelties show what devotion is
- No logic nets these fishes--God's decrees
- No one can come to the father save by me
- Not everybody can fill up with God.
- Nothing can be accomplished without order
- Nothing serves in the end except the truth
- On their beds the lovers lie naked. Do not look!
- On this worldly stage there are no secrets
- Once I felt the scald of Sirius
- Only in a living thing can doctrine thrive
- Our communion rebukes the antichrist
- Outside my kitchen window the squirrels play
- Pardon me if I dodge your compliments
- Passing the mirror I glimpse my balding head
- Prayer admits us to the world to come
- Religions are like those upside-down trees
- Revelation gives you what you need to know
- School your will to be mortality's friend
- Since love cannot be forced, we are free
- Smack in your Big Mac sits a slaughter house
- So what if I ramble, or I seem to preach
- Some call for salvation. Some for union
- Some embrace mastery, some charity
- Sometimes, John Donne, you come to mind
- Stop and applaud the ones with special gifts
- Thank you, Lord, for the gift of breath
- That peace be with you, I offer my hand
- The Creator needs only say, "Be!"
- The Pir has traced a winged-heart on my brow
- The TV people hang from invisible strings
- The eye of the heart makes known the paraclete
- The magnolia tree is blooming. And it is spring
- The news says the world is a disaster
- The poets just keep coming; you have their word
- The preacher is the potter. We, the clay.
- The rose window ignites our metaphors
- The service begins when the candles are lit
- The waters of baptism splash us all
- The world I see has nothing that I want
- There are two churches: one outside, one within
- There can be no faith without its shadow, doubt
- There can be no such thing as pure chance
- There is a light I bring to the world of things
- There is an invisible harvest we are reaping
- There's a mountain of blueberries ready for picking
- These twelve windows let in a single light
- Think of faith as the science of the heart
- This giving that I give you is not mine
- Though in the end our bodies betray us all
- We make our way only by degrees
- We take our turns and leap into the dark
- What is it that this neighborhood cat knows
- What is there left to do but kneel and pray?
- When the angel of death came for my brother
- White as snowflakes, heads bow in pews
- You think you have a bone to pick with God
- You will remain whatever you've become
- Your wars exercise the warrior classes
Poems
- Prayer Beads
- Follow me. I am heading north
- A vision when the cardinal alights
- This is my Father's house, and I am home
- We come to this certainty by grace
- How can we not love our shepherdess
- In this old church how many have sat down
- Banish reward and the thought of heaven
- I finger my cycling days like prayer beads
- You can see I work inside the box
- There is a throne within that is never empty
- This house has become my monastery
- There is a god, and there is only one
- When the choir soars, I soar too
- We give the children what they cannot learn
- An act is like an iron gate that opens,
- A pesky sin that's most original
- Am I not God's darling, saved endlessly
- At night the train whistle moans along the river
- Come closer, God whispered to me.
- Deceased members of the class of 1950
- Find in pain another heaven
- For human folly, only a belly laugh!
- Free thinkers are free, but only thinkers.
- God is a wind that blows the leaves away
- I have not been generous with my words.
- If God is a peacock, a single eye, I am
- Imagination is the doorway to heaven,
- No sense chiding evil doers. They're deaf
- Olympics of the body fall away.
- On TV I saw a woman so beautiful I knew
- Poems are flowers. They are meant to wither
- Refuse to be a source of pain or death.
- That the rich may have their ornaments, a great beast dies
- The cheerleaders make their pyramid. They tremble
- The force be with you. But not only the force.
- The heart is a cathedral. Come join me there
- The honey bee of attention brought you here.
- The people in the commercials look too good
- The things that come to you are all you know.
- The uninvited things that come
- The world is full of talk. So many words!
- There is laughter at the heart of things
- These poems I lay at the Creator's feet
- This Bible that you read is reading you
- This love the singers sing of sweetens the heart
- To be a man of faith in a time of doubt
- Today I fall into my easy chair
- Too much palaver confounds the gospel.
- We are figments in God's imagination
- When Didi wags her tail, the world wags too
- When God thought me up, I couldn't say no
- Who will speak for God about predation?
- You will not find greatness here. No matter
- Do you ever remember how you made that promise
- Coming among us, make eternity your gift
- God gave us minds to construe the truth
- A silent church is like no other silence
- Close down the bar room you call history
- We are the music that God listens to
- Do not be hypnotized by pomp and fame
- Crowds of faces and faces in the crowds
- You cannot know what you will not know
- All that is is all that is the one.
- Earth shall have dominion over man
- Emptiness seems to be a half-way house
- Enjoy yourself, but be no slave to pleasure
- Always the buzzing saw-blade of politics
- A church too may die or become a remnant
- Beauty lives in the lineaments of woman
- Before long, I will disappear
- Children are the ransom that we pay to time
- Even the mind may dim and fade to dark
- Faith is gold panned by generations
- Farewell, my countrymen freedom was good
- Follow your calling wherever it may lead
- God exults in a great profusion
- God has in Him all that's thinkable
- God has stamped us with His intellect
- Have conscience, but don't condemn yourself.
- Have you noticed that you don't exist
- I am no longer the boy from under the trees
- I have nothing to say about the dark
- I hope you understand that thoughts are real
- I think of myself as a crumb from Rumi's table
- I've been kept alive to make these lines.
- If you would become a person, perfect yourself
- In my house a choir of lovebirds sings
- In the casino the slots are davening
- In the mirror of the soul there is a dance
- In the pouring rain join where the Sufis dance
- In the presence of majesty discretion is best
- In the sum of infinity, I am a single surd
- Is it my face I sometimes glimpse in the street
- It is not fashionable now to be a believer
- It is very little that you need to know.
- It's what you wish for that entails the sin
- Jesus turned a page in the immortal book
- Know the senses for what they really are:
- Let us not be bedeviled by circumstance
- Let your eyes climb the risen steeple
- Let's hope somehow to be together again
- Lifting my hands, I feel the currents rise
- Light takes on the color of the fog
- Meaning marries the lesser and the greater
- Mindless piety makes me slightly ill
- Music is the elixir of the heart
- My friend, death will be our referee
- My neighbor pours chemicals on his weeds
- My wagging Shelties show what devotion is
- No logic nets these fishes--God's decrees
- No one can come to the father save by me
- Not everybody can fill up with God.
- Nothing can be accomplished without order
- Nothing serves in the end except the truth
- On their beds the lovers lie naked. Do not look!
- On this worldly stage there are no secrets
- Once I felt the scald of Sirius
- Only in a living thing can doctrine thrive
- Our communion rebukes the antichrist
- Outside my kitchen window the squirrels play
- Pardon me if I dodge your compliments
- Passing the mirror I glimpse my balding head
- Prayer admits us to the world to come
- Religions are like those upside-down trees
- Revelation gives you what you need to know
- School your will to be mortality's friend
- Since love cannot be forced, we are free
- Smack in your Big Mac sits a slaughter house
- So what if I ramble, or I seem to preach
- Some call for salvation. Some for union
- Some embrace mastery, some charity
- Sometimes, John Donne, you come to mind
- Stop and applaud the ones with special gifts
- Thank you, Lord, for the gift of breath
- That peace be with you, I offer my hand
- The Creator needs only say, "Be!"
- The Pir has traced a winged-heart on my brow
- The TV people hang from invisible strings
- The eye of the heart makes known the paraclete
- The magnolia tree is blooming. And it is spring
- The news says the world is a disaster
- The poets just keep coming; you have their word
- The preacher is the potter. We, the clay.
- The rose window ignites our metaphors
- The service begins when the candles are lit
- The waters of baptism splash us all
- The world I see has nothing that I want
- There are two churches: one outside, one within
- There can be no faith without its shadow, doubt
- There can be no such thing as pure chance
- There is a light I bring to the world of things
- There is an invisible harvest we are reaping
- There's a mountain of blueberries ready for picking
- These twelve windows let in a single light
- Think of faith as the science of the heart
- This giving that I give you is not mine
- Though in the end our bodies betray us all
- We make our way only by degrees
- We take our turns and leap into the dark
- What is it that this neighborhood cat knows
- What is there left to do but kneel and pray?
- When the angel of death came for my brother
- White as snowflakes, heads bow in pews
- You think you have a bone to pick with God
- You will remain whatever you've become
- Your wars exercise the warrior classes