Poet’s Note on Reveille
A few years ago, I was asked to write a poem and present it at a forum for global healing and enlightenment at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts. Though I had always resisted the poem as polemic, I nevertheless went deep inside myself to try and get in touch with my own deepest convictions and frustrations and my personal vehicles on the arduous journey toward permanent peace and universal truth. The result was the prototype for Reveille.
I subsequently re-worked the original poem into a more personal statement with softer tones, but a polemic still, which I found irresistibly satisfying and strangely cathartic.
Reveille: I'd like to shout it from the rooftops of the world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reveille
(1)
If only chanted litanies
Could change the course of centuries,
Would be enough
Could be enough.
If only silent, sacred words
Could break the patterns, ancient pain
Could shake things up
Could wake us up
Could light a spark that sets a flame
In time for the spirit’s revolution
In time for the mind to assert its domain
In time for invisible wounds to heal
In time to re-identify –
One heart, one mind, one earth, one humankind
One voice, one song –
Wake up, wake up
It’s time.
The cosmos resonates with the call
As high vibrations pierce through
Senses, cells, brain, emotions, mind….
divinity….
in whispers….whispers
Resonating deep inside.
A sleeping soul reverberates….
divinity….divinity….
Promise in a vision shimmering
In a golden light.
(2)
How long will we remain content
To die as we were born?
We’ve sleep-walked long enough
Within our prison-house of finite senses,
Crying in midnight black-blind circles,
Frightened
And alone,
Though we always did as we were told.
How long?
How long?
We relinquish for profane our sacred choice
And blame external forces as we desecrate
The white wonder light —
Blocked — centuries untold,
Though all the while we’re in control.
We hold omnipotence, the Starlight Presence,
Chained and sleeping, deep inside —
Let's wake it now to
new structure,
new reality,
fluid as mind source,
freedom, our birthright, our power, our choice,
our present, our future, all in our control —
Wake up.
Wake up.
How long?
(3)
When will we start to wonder why
We have a brain so intricate
It could, if tapped, keep galaxies ablaze with light,
Yet we remain content to use it
Like a flickering candle,
Barely bright enough to move us
Through our days and nights?
How long?
How long will we accept the chains that hold us
Like we’re slaves without a fight?
How long?
How long?!
We yearn for fullness, search for joy,
Then look for happiness in toys —
More houses, cars, fancy clothes,
Gold and diamonds,
Cocaine, champagne,
Chardonnay and Beaujolais —
How long?
We pine for fame and self-esteem,
Yet barter souls for mediocrity;
We close our eyes to famine, torture, and disease,
Yet panic for security,
Assert ourselves for national autonomy-autocracy,
For armies, guns and ammunition, missiles, bombers,
Land mines, barbed wire —
Listen for the whisper….love….
Listen for divinity….
(4)
How long before our sacred Sun,
Our shining vital sentinel,
Becomes our bitter, burning foe
Because we feel content each day
To rape her darling jewel, her Earth,
with smoke stacks,
fossil fuels,
burning oil fields,
power tools,
toxic stockyards,
poisoned
farms,
atomic
bombs?
Such fools beyond contempt.
How long?
We think that we’re awake and that
We’ve reached the peak of civilization,
Perfect and complete,
While little girls and boys lie trembling
In their beds at night -----
Approaching monsters’ footsteps ----
Fathers, uncles, pastors, priests
And women run in fear from
Husbands, boyfriends, brothers,
Men who should protect, respect them.
Innocents are sold as slaves,
Imprisoned right before our eyes,
Too dull, too hypnotized, too blind to see.
Where hordes of homeless rave like
Jeremiah in the streets,
And others shrivel up from bitter loneliness
In sterile mansions, trimmed and neat.
How long will we ignore the signs and symbols,
Hollow echoes of defeat,
Body-surfing on the waves of change
Without the peace that lies beneath?
How long without that peace?
(5)
It’s time to take a look at
What we want our lives to be,
Reverse direction of our sight,
Look deep inside with newborn eyes.
It’s time to find the only place
Where real change resides…
….divinity….divinity….
Look far beyond the dark of night,
Beyond illusion, earthbound sight….
In silence,
listen for the whisper.
In solitude,
seal the strong connection.
In stillness,
feel the warm vibrations.
In darkness,
bathe in a new light.
To mindbeam’s boundaries bend and
stretch….
rest….
in an ineffable embrace.
In timeless essence,
taken unaware
Let awe and wonder build, so filled that
tears fall
of their
own accord
in the unspeakable softness
unexpectedly blessed
And wake into a moment — new and fresh —
New space for Truth in a world of lies.
Let’s brush the sand and rub our eyes;
New sight can light the fuse.
Let’s ride a cosmic chain reaction toward the light!
Poet’s Note on Silence Be Still
I worked for a year at a meditation retreat center in the Catskill mountains near Lake Shandelee in Livingston Manor, New York. It was located on several acres of incredibly beautiful deep and pristine woods that were covered for most of the year in deep piles of clean white snow. I would walk in those woods often for the beauty, solitude and healing peace they afforded me. And I marveled at the silence, like a loving presence, that I could lose myself in so completely and so willingly.
When I left the center and came back in to the "real" world, I was soon hit with a serious and mysterious illness that sapped me of all my energy and strength and left me languishing in hopeless despair.
For what seemed like an eternity, I meditated and prayed to be healed. And then one evening, just when I thought I could go no further, the memories of my experiences in the wooded sanctuary of Livingston Manor started to glimmer inside of me and I grasped onto them like a lifeline in the darkness. When I woke up the next morning, I was healed.
Silence Be Still is a paean to that miracle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Silence Be Still
(1)
Silence,
be soothing,
my spirit’s weak now,
‘round again in whispers
for the burning hurt,
be still
Silence,
be still with me, soft
as I yearn,
and the memories of Eden, Sweet Balm
soothing, promise no scars through this justice
be soft
ever soft with me,
soft
in this vortex,
widening in ever-widening circles
revolving in circles
in sizes and colors and shapes
weaved in patterns,
in infinite patterns
of endless designs
which flow,
unremembered
and know,
unremembered,
The Clock’s Ticking,
Tyrant,
Through Time
Quietly….
(2)
Softly in silence snow sounds fall
flakes on limb and leaf,
footsteps’ powder’s dissonance
high-pitched
Through Pine and Oak and Maple
Sentries in the Sap
Surrounding
fragments and
fragmented notes
converging in a matrix,
the sounds and the silence
in Symphony.
And sympathy swells in me, so still as it flows,
Ever silently showing,
All ways
To go with you....
Icicle Fairyland Fairytale Colors
Dancing on Branches like
Christmas Tree Tinsel!
All Over!
All Over!
And Better
And Brighter!
Exquisitely
Mocking, But Gently,
In Gentle Magnificence
Teaching Me, Reaching Me
Reaching,
For the silent stillness
Silent Stillness.
(3)
Reaching me in silence, sunlight melts into snow and
footsteps
disappear,
floating like the snowflake,
melting in the
shadows,
like the shadows,
melting slowly,
going nowhere,
left behind.
And patterns in the path ahead,
Appearing once as circles,
now are spirals,
there in signs like
hieroglyphics,
special message in the sunlight
from the winds no longer stinging,
ever blowing,
ever blown,
ever knowing,
ever known,
ever silent,
ever soothing,
ever still with me,
Be still.
(4)
Ever soft with me the snowfall’s quiet music,
Sun-caressed in silence,
Growing still in me.
Painted pictures,
hiding gently,
More a pledge now
Than a promise,
Softly flowing with the words,
Showing silently,
Knowingly,
Knowingly in silence,
Knowingly in
Silence,
Ever
Still.