The Heart of the Matter
March 31, 2019
Poetry Unread in 39 Years

Home in Breath2.jpg

Last night, while cleaning out my home office in preparation for selling my house, I found an old notebook filled with bits of poetry -- words I had written 39 years ago during the time I lived in one of Prem Rawat's ashrams -- a time in my life where I had majorly unplugged from the world to "go within." Each verse of what follows stands alone. There is no particular order to them. It is not a single, coherent poem, but rather bits and pieces of a moon-howling jigsaw puzzle that was my life when I was 33. Please don't try to make sense of this stuff. Just feel it. Just let these blasts from the past wash over you. Maybe a single phrase or line will speak to you -- or even sing. In the end, methinks each and every one of us, no matter what form our life takes, is on a quest to find what's real. Part of that process, it seems, has something to do with getting in touch with our thirst for the divine -- that deep, inner, ancient longing for love that truly moves us.

I sit in the cave of myself,
alone with my breath.
There is no one else here
in this cool, dark hollow of my soul.

I sing your praises.
I hang the seeds of treeless forests
in the heaven of your Name.

Night falls around me
like the arms of a lover
widowed by daylight
and seeking the warmth of another.

The one who yearns for God must die
like flowers to the fruit,
must fall to the root
around the tree of life that gives me shade.

He walks on water,
I walk on ice,
and when I lay my head at his feet
I remember there is no place left in the world to go.
Here. Only here.

How deep can I look into
anyone else's eyes?
Only to the place where they are looking for you,
unafraid of what they'll find.

Words are only burrs on the path
through the high country brush with God.

Homeless,
with only a few stars to guide me,
I am a bum in a roadside temple,
cheater, whose deck of cards
has long since been stolen.

There are angels buried in my flesh.

I must be in love
or is it insane?

Who can receive me?
Who is deep enough
for me to disappear into?

He joins heaven and hell
with a wave of his hand,
his breath, the wand,
his smile the ground I walk upon.

Void of all tears,
sworn to silence,
I lose everything, once again, but myself.

Oh song-studded boy of bothersome beauty,
fall to the feet of the only one here,
bring what you've stolen,
peel your skin like grapes
and offer it as cloth
so he might wear what once was you
for a twilight ride through the country.

Suture the ragged wound closed,
let all your scars be roads to follow home.

Like a breeze through lace curtains,
enter softly
and stay with me a while.

I bend because
he has removed the weight.

I am melting,
I am burning at both ends,
and what I see by this flickering light,
is enough.

How can the desert flower thank the sun?
It cannot speak, only bend in the breeze of his passing.

Oh Master of my soul,
you have ignited the brittle tinder of my heart.

The closer I get to you,
the more I see how far away I am.

Who else listens to me when, speechless,
my heart begins to sing? Who?

I have gone to meet you in your secret place,
but when I arrived, neither of us were there.

Forget about ashes on your forehead,
let your whole body be consumed in flames.

Who can this Master be,
the one whose path is strewn with rose petals?

PremRawat.com
TimelessToday
MitchDitkoff.com

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at March 31, 2019 08:37 AM

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