Palm Sunday in the Time of Covid-19

“I tell you, if these hold their peace,
the very stones would immediately cry out.”
—Luke 19:40

Which Pharisees have rebuked us,
and whether we deserved it,
we may never know,
but we are holding our peace.
Some hold it gingerly, some lovingly,
as though we have never held it before,
or as though we always have.
Our peace teaches us how
it wants to be held.
And in that peace we find
the world whispering to us,
sweet seismological nothings
from the very bones of our planet,
no longer drowned out
by droning self-importance.
The birds rejoice in the spotlight
of our shared sun,
sea turtles bless the beaches
with their eggs and their trust,
and our Mother Earth,
as we don our masks,
slowly pulls her own aside,
beaming through the clearing air.
The song continues
though the singers change,
as together we await a savior,
await the day that our voices
will reunite in the new harmony
that our peace taught us
when we stopped to listen.

The Work-from-Home Triolet

I live my life on Zoom now—
forgive my little rants.
I ought to clean my room now,
since I live on Zoom now,
and you should just assume now
I’m not wearing any pants.
I live my life on Zoom now—
so forgive these little rants.

The Midnight Yoga Alarm

From the depths of slumber,
as I ascend, bypassing entirely
the spiral stairway of wakefulness,
I rocket instantly to high alert
with the midnight screaming
of the smoke alarm. Three blasts,
lights on, standing on a chair,
poised to disable, and it stops,
of its own accord,
mission apparently accomplished.

What doesn’t stop is my mind,
poking and prodding every time
my body tries to sleep again,
until at last they drag each other
out of bed, to iron out
their differences on the yoga mat,
on the meditation cushion,
in the poetry notebook,
and back to bed, three hours later,
nearly in time
to get up again.

Upon These Rocks

A stone holds what it knows,
and only Truth Itself outlasts it.
And though the centuries crawl by,
yet still it whispers if you ask it,
and tells of One it knew whose foot
did tread, or skip, or slip along it,
and shares with you that Presence still,
if you but lay your heart upon it.

Upon these rocks now will I build
my church with bones of sacred stone,
anchored in depths of earth and soul,
and there, unshakably, a throne
is raised to hold the lasting praise
my heart learned from the rocks of old,
and locked within this simple clay,
experience of inner gold.

April Spills

March was parched, but April spills,
and floods its banks until it fills
up poetry’s valley to the hills.

And may you, out of winter’s chills,
be spun in circles and quadrilles.

The poem leads us where it wills.

Ghazal: In Solitude

What do you think you will find in solitude?
We are never so close as we are in solitude.

10:30, the hordes descend upon recess,
And I bid farewell to what could have been solitude.

Lost in the rustling hustle of a crowd,
Bustling anonymity meets its twin: solitude.

Semi-quarantine keeps the virus at bay.
This is what it takes for us to begin solitude.

The blessing of human contact shoved aside
To buy the toilet paper we’ll hoard in solitude.

Guru teaches us the price of our greatness:
To reach our potential, first we must win solitude.

The breath of inspiration flows from silence.
Creation springs up primordially in solitude.

In deepest stillness, find the universe’s
Constant companionship that underpins solitude.

Expanding, multitudinous Unity,
And at last I meet Tandava, here in solitude.

Arati

softly
manifesting
she glows into the world
and the light within each of us
dances