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Guru Nanak into the Light
The river cutting through fogcalls him and he must go.
On the way, the trees with fronds for hearts,
the flowers with balmy handsof petal and pollen,
the honeybees spun on wings and nectar,
and the lone grasshopper
landing on the mind's jasmine hand,
are us too.
Their lives happen
also in the body's brief spark, and
the head's deep halo of nectar.
The breathing brittle light spewing
from dawn's splintering clouds
violet from the bruise of mornings,
are us too.
From the moment Nanak entered
into the river until three days later
when he emerged out of it
is a void in the stretch of the universe,
a soundless unstirring place
Did Nanak feel the
crunch of grass underfoot
or the drowsy sandy bank
that squished like marigolds in the syrup of his tread?Before the night poured
him through its ancient eye
could he hear the universe's
virile growl of "Om"?
When he walked into the water's plush bed,was he welcomed with
the oceanic smell of life?
The villagers onlysaw him come outand when he emerged,
he said, "There is only one God.
Truth is His name." Every day, as morning prayer fills the room,
I imagine God, a universal musician
scattering and gathering us,and we are all tunes
wandering and wanting to
unite our fragmented notes with the universe's "Om."
Each of us is a light
rising up the morning sky
looking and listening for
what is already buried
at the horizons of the mind, that
calls from night's eyeless seed.
And we must go.
Memory
Is memory a great epic, told in a darkening evening,
an event that inhales the last breath many times,
an edifice, or moving pictures in the mind?
Sometimes, it feels like a coral reef
growing forever with life,
a skeleton mound, a dump of skulls
by the lake of life, that collects before
it gives up everything like a woman shedding
the starry cloak of night from her body, that is a river.
Maybe it is a ball of yarn you can
knit into quilts, crocheted and
donning holes for the passage
of voice, and image
through it.
Or is it like a vacant field,
the size of the cosmos, where the body meets
the last cry of life in a star or a stone,
a depositor of dreams—gay,
an annexe of desires—rotten,
and the old storyteller
wearing a coat for days when the rain never stops?
It is as old as life itself,
it leans on you, the dog, and the grasshopper,
it came before you were born,
and before the grasshopper landed on your ear,
and the dog in your heart.
Maybe, the memory of fire and mountains,
was there before the universe
started winding its ancient clock
You Do Not Walk Alone
You do not walk alone,
even though a sigh is trapped,
beating against the warm leaf of your heart;
even as the sauntered lake falls into a deserted hollow,
and its sandy bank is barren;
even as the prairies sway without form or friend
and the old barns are sated with memories;
even as the wilted flowers
seem to droop towards eternity’s cold gate,
know that you are not alone.
The moving sun across
snowy hills, and the twisted promises of dry trees,
the paw prints walking still, in windswept acres of your heart
and the arms of the wind caressing the clear blue lake
the flowering ripples welcoming a tremor,
and from the moving dawn skies
the birds calling to you,
are home.
Blindness
(originally published in the Lindenwood Review and nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
​
Tonight, you open the soles of my feet
and rise in the capillary tubes of my bones,
the grains of years drawn on them.
Every circle is an avowal of your heart.
You keep rising to the desert of the soul
Blind and silken, the winds
filter past the windows of the irises.
Slow stones turn on their backs
at the tremors of your arrival.
Memory flows, thirsty for whiffs of your starry night.
The heart’s four chambers are dry
until you drizzle your fire in a slow rain of sparks..
Then, as you lock your eyes into mine,
thunder flies the birds of love
to their nest is in my soul
and we go blind in the never-ending rain of love.
Poems: Quote
Love Resides in These Too
Gossamer- the finest thread, sometimes
The first discovery of the day;
Perception starts from it and spreads.
The holder of water and life
The spider’s gift to the garden
The summer’s thin belief, floating
Freely between the silent love
Of the morning and things.
You will breathe it in, odorless
And it will stick to your form, invisible
It will be there every morning waiting for you
Inglenook- the earth’s place in the Solar System
The perfect distance between things that sense
And things that incite
An old man’s comfort, a fire man’s despair
A circle in a campfire, a straight line in a fireplace
But solace nevertheless. We live because we
Know it will sometime be our place before
We leave the inglenook and enter the fire
Penumbra- the cast-off lightness of things
The body splitting in a joyous dance into
The many arms and hands of a goddess
The hidden meanings of life trying to take shape
Falsities along with the opaque truth
It is always there waiting at the margins
To engulf the whole shadow in its luminous halo
Petrichor- the smell of earth after rain
A taker to the unremembered and hidden.
It is minuteness hovering like a bee
Heralding the love that imbues the
Water with the soil. Energy flows
Out of the elements, enters us.
The smell changes into colour.
We see we are green, slowly ripening
Lagoon- a rare island of water
You can imagine it even if you’ve never seen it
It reflects like all water, it wears robes of ripples,
Hides its hazards, spreads out life like its own form,
Cajoles us into living, then makes
Us fall, only to find that it is not alone,
That we are not alone
Poems: Welcome
Unearthing: A Poem
Published in Kitaab
​
For Fateh
That wind was butter
on a stony sky.
Frisky fingers unpack a gift
of dry leaves, red at the margins.
Where they fumble is a secret
wrapped in the velvet of weeds.
I look again to where a mound
is cracking its once soapy skin
(clay become a crumble).
And now spring roots pucker at its powder.
Underneath is a cave,
(not an archeologist’s discovery
but the mint sap and cane juice
of my childhood).
It is baked and orange now
like a vase of disheveled
rusty sunflowers.
This secret that has stayed
but stopped singing in a chorus in the head,
that no longer arranges its body
like a wasp alighting on a flower
but fades and famishes
and gives you this cave from my hands
I built it with you,
the summer sun baked it,
and time covered it with soil.
Now the garden gives it back,
our cave growling no more,
quietly, the garden growing shoots into its stone,
our cave, famished and lonely
Poems: Latest Book
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