Kundalini Splendor

In Tribute to Hafiz and Kabir

For so many days,
you were silent.

Now you are using words
to break my heart open.

Each one a tear in this
fabric I call my body.

Soon it will be shattered utterly
and I alone with my nothingness,
waiting, afraid.

copyright, Dorothy Walters

The Final Temptation

(after viewing “Portrait of the Suffering Christ”
from the collection of St.Francis of Assisi)

Why am I so defenseless
against this face?
What is this stirring like love
within,
reluctant recognition,
hidden centers opening?

Isn't this the visage of someone
I once knew
and still see occasionally
in the city,
riding the municipal bus
or at the market
checking vegetables?
Isn't this a person I
have spoken to now and again,
heard the story of his vanished wife,
his daughter away at college
who never writes?

This is a moment
I am not prepared for.
How often I have skirted
that great basin of sorrow
at the center of each day,
walked around it,
averting my eyes.
How many times I have looked away
not wanting to acknowledge,
see that face in full relief.

Now I have secret knowledge.

I am his blood flowing,
his weighted eyes looking out.

Who will protect me now?

copyright, Dorothy Walters

To my mind, Elizabeth Reninger is one of our best contemporary poets, especially of verse dealing with nature. She understands fully the connection between nature and spirit, external beauty and inner transcendence. Here she offers the "rough radiant edges" of the "song" of geese in flight. Thank you, Elizabeth.


Follow

somewhere
through the scent
of cedar
juniper
berries taut
as midnight's blue
stars

the slow coarse cry
of a flock
of geese -
a song with no
reason lifts its rough

radiant edges - a winged
migration through
dawn of echoes growing

smaller and smaller ...

copyright, Elizabeth Reninger

Here is another poem from Ivan Granger, whose work has appeared here before:

Holy Ground

Let the vision
of the vastness
you are
leave you
in glorious
ruins.

Pilgrims will come
to imagine
the grand temple
that once stood,
not realizing

the wreck
made this empty plain
holy ground.


For more sacred poetry by Ivan and others, see his website:

www.poetry-chaikhana.com

Something has reached out and taken in the beams
of my eyes.

There is a longing, it is for his body, for every hair of
that dark body.

All I was doing was being, and the Dancing Energy
came by my house.

His face looks curiously like the moon, I saw it from
the side, smiling.

My family says:"Don't ever see him again!" and they
imply things in a low voice.

But my eyes have their own life, they laugh at rules,
and know whose they are.

I believe I can bear on my shoulders whatever you
want to say of me.

Mira says: Without the energy that lifts mountains,
how am I to live?

(version by Robert Bly and Jane Hirshfield)

When Mirabai speaks of the "dancing energy," she is clearly referring to kundalini. For her, the energies arrived primarily through her long term inner love relationship with Krishna, who was said to have moved mnontains through his strength.

Her royal family was appalled when she refused to conform to the norms of bride and mother. But the people of India loved her as a saint. After her death in 1550, they continued to recite and dance to her poems, and some still do so to this day.

The Panther in the Soul

Aloof as a planet, pelted in iridescent orange,
you strode across my dream
in brilliant unconcern--
that radiant hue
against its field of gray
told me you were not of this world,
that you had somehow strayed into ours,
that I was lucky to get this furtive glimpse
of the profoundly Other.

Were you indeed my spirit guide,
gleaming totem beast finally come round
to let me see your ancient face,
lead me onward
after all these years?

Or were you merely out
on an astral stroll
from your mythic lair
and happened by chance
to pass my way?

I must practice walking
with greater intent,
move with more supple majesty,
summon a stronger sense of who I am.


Dorothy Walters, March 1, 2005

I have frequently referred to Jeannine Keenan, my "Texas spiritual buddy," who is a gifted artist and poet, as well as someone who is undergoing profound spiritual transformation. Here is one of her poems which I have long loved:

You were the Wind that found me

Now in the stillness that is left

when even the longing is gone,

I search in the soft dry ground

for some fragment, even the stripped

shaft of a white feather will do.

copyright, Jeannine Keena