ALIGNED WITH MIND

     From what I read, there’s an eternity:
     Just as in space there’s an infinity,
     Likewise in time there is no far extreme
     Where warmly beckoning lights no longer gleam.

     Time marches on or flies apace always
     As counted out in eons or in days.
     “Time out of mind” means more than we suppose
     Explaining literally how it arose,

     For Mind is all there is, and out of thought
     The universe of space and time was wrought.
     This Mind is an astounding cosmic womb
     Or garden where the universe can bloom.

          The more, then, that we can align with Mind
          We’ll comprehend for what we are designed.

*

MUSE ABUSE

    It’s later than I usually sit to write,
    Which is before the vestiges of night
    Have scurried off just as the coming dawn
    Brings color back into the charcoal lawn.

    Now winds waft in the whistling of a train
    And then the roar of a descending plane,
    Which wakes the drowsing birds to chirp and peep
    And neighbor dogs to bark—the end of sleep.

    Soon, all the world will bustle once again
    While peaceful Contemplation says “Amen”;
    The Muse of verse will blithely bid adieu
    To inner sights when outer come to view.

         Reverie is the source of poetry,
         At odds with busy day’s activity.

*

YULE TIDINGS

          That Jesus is the Son of God is no
          Big deal: so are we all the progeny
          Of that Intelligence which here below,
          And everywhere, holds its supremacy;

          But it was He, of all who lowly plod,
          Who came to recognize in his design
          The supernatural handiwork of God
          And knew himself, as well as we, divine.

          So now it’s left for us to realize
          What Jesus knew: it is our mission to
          Discover how to flourish and grow wise,
          Doing to others as we’d have them do

               In turn to us, which is the Golden Rule
               Commemorated every year at Yule.

*

EXPOSITORY SONNET

         An “expository sonnet” sounds perverse:
         That poetry whose business is to sing
         Should have mere information to disburse
         Though duded out with garish vocal bling
         Is an affront to ancient sonneteers
         Revered for heartfelt yearnings, eloquent
         Expostulations filled with tears and fears
         Or celebrations of love’s merriment;
         And yet to use this lyric mode provokes
         New notions through a serendipity
         That strangely and amazingly uncloaks
         What otherwise I’d have no way to see:
              So please excuse, for revelation’s sake,
              These liberties with lyric’s norms I take.

*

THE WOUNDED

  The way we are essentially designed
  Is to regard all others as one kind,
  The same as you and I, all equally
  Deserving of concern and amity,
  And yet to recognize how damaged are
  So many bearing tribulation’s scar
  And hence defensive, hasty to protect
  Themselves from those who show them no respect.
  Because they’re filled with misery, fear and doubt,
  It’s understandable if they lash out,
  Even mistaking what we mean as kind
  For something else, maliciously inclined.
       To treat them gently, wearing a kid glove
       Is what they need, a show of kindly love.

*

METAPHYSICS

      There are some things that science cannot see
      Consigned within the realm of mystery:
      They are more truly matters of the mind
      For which no instruments have been designed
      That can illuminate that hidden crypt
      Where all things metaphysical, tight-lipped,
      Conceal their secrets from intruding thieves
      That only an initiate retrieves.
      Such mysteries include that entity called soul,
      That source of energy that keeps us whole
      And gives each one of us identity,
      A template of what we are meant to be:
           One of a kind within the universe
           Who will awhile in consciousness immerse.

*

CHRISTMAS IS

      What Christmas celebrates is simply Love,
      Provided by God’s blessings from above,
      Configured as His soul-engendered Son
      Made manifest to rout the Evil One.

     The Devil is all hate personified
     In whom ill-will and recklessness abide,
     The natural way for any uninspired
     By whispers of what’s eminently desired.

      To hear those whispers, listen with your heart
      Instructing you the practice of love’s art,
      Which starts by knowing that we’re all one kind,
      All equally and eagerly inclined

           To flourish in the warmth and radiant light
           Of Love—preserved from enmity and blight.

*

MAKING SENSE

        What is it underlies, or lies behind,
        This universe of hard phenomena
        By which this cosmic vastness is designed—
        The Mother of it all, or its Papa?

        For sure, no mere stochastic toss
        Of dice gave rise to such complexity;
        There must be some almighty mind to boss
        This enterprise, if we could only see.

        Just as this poem has its source of being
        Within mysterious regions of my mind,
        Imagined first before it’s here for seeing,
        Likewise the universe must be designed

             By some incipient intelligence
             That manifests itself in worlds of sense.

*

THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTMAS

  The mystery of Christmas is how souls
  Once crushed and broken can again be wholes,
  Be salvaged from the wasteland of our world
  And from their cramped conditions be unfurled.
 
  A Savior came to show the loving Way
  And save us from our evil and dismay,
  To show us that all others are our kin,
  And know that harming them is heinous sin.
  
  Each year we learn again that to be kind
  Is clearly what our Maker had in mind
  And that symbolically our Savior’s birth
  Serves to remind us of our kind’s true worth,
  
     That kindness is our mission, too—to save
     The Earth through love, which all souls daily crave.

*

FICTION

        
         The fertile author’s playing God,
         Shaping his creatures from the sod
         Of his fecund imaginings
         That range from cabbages to kings.

         Like puppets that he animates,
         The ways of life he simulates
         Convince us that what he has dreamed
         Amazingly should be esteemed—

         That simulacra of this kind
         Should seem possessed of heart and mind,
         And though we know we’ve been beguiled,
         We still believe what he has styled.

*

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

          Neuroses and psychoses and the rest
          Of what assails the ailing human mind,
          Keeping it from functioning at its best,
          Erratically confused and misaligned,
          First needs attending to with therapy
          That sets it on a course of rectitude,
          Regaining what is known as normalcy,
          Yet further on there’s more to be pursued:
          A higher functioning beyond just “health,”
          A positive psychology that aims
          To mine a deeper vein of human wealth,
          That wisdom which antiquity proclaims
               Is Homo sapiens sapiens’ birthright,
               A way of thriving in a brighter light.

*

HOMO SAPIENCE

                  Our foremost human enterprise
                  And urgent now, is growing wise:
                  The very fate of Earth relies
                  On the percipient surmise
                  Our latent sapience will rise.

*

REMINDED

      It’s Mind by which the cosmos is designed,
      Which recently we’ve come to call the Source,
      Less personal than “God,” yet still aligned
      (Good Orderly Direction) on a course
      Encouraging all earthly life to flourish
      As well as life throughout the cosmic vasts
      That Universal Mind will kindly nourish,
      A cosmic family with no outcasts.

      How is it, though, that we have lost our Mind
      And wandered reckless through our history
      As if our eye of reason had gone blind
      So now we near earthly calamity?
          Reminded though of our noble estate,
           We may escape that catastrophic fate.

*

FLOURISHING II

  Is there life elsewhere in the universe?
  Of course there is.  The same mind that’s designed
  Life here has every reason to disburse
  Life elsewhere, although perhaps another kind.

  It’s simple inference from our being here,
  Possessed with our astute intelligence,
  That something of our kind made us appear,
  A power deserving of our reverence.

  Since we have mind, it’s mind that’s made us be,
  So, clearly, then, from this we should infer
  That how we exercise mentality
  Will dictate what sure outcomes we’ll incur.

       The onus and initiative are ours
       To guarantee our full potential flowers.

*

PENUMBRATIONS

        I rise from bed before dawn’s early light
        With vestiges of dreams still in my sight,
        And soon I’m downstairs sitting, set to write
        Before my night’s imaginings take flight.

*

BEYOND STOCHASM

   
Just as to make this poem it takes a mind,
   So everything called Being is designed
   By some intelligence that lies behind
   All entities the cosmos has defined,
   More than stochastic chance could have divined:
   But randomness with purpose well aligned.

*

THE MYSTERY II

    The Mystery, of course, is how all this,
    The Universe of which we’re cognizant,
    Has come to be, if it’s a blind abyss
    Of randomness or something elegant:

    An artifact exhibiting intent,
    The function of a universal mind
    Unknowable, perhaps, yet evident,
    By which the whole shebang has been designed.

    Though I can’t solve this ancient mystery,
    I’m still unwilling simply to concede
    To declarations of Authority
    And blandly iterate some ancient creed.

         Yet that I have a mind and clearly know it
         Must be the way the Cosmos has to show it.

*

GOOD ORDERLY DIRECTION

      The Holy Spirit makes and keeps us whole,
      A cosmic force of order and control,
      The Source from which the Universe arose,
      Directing how our Earthly garden grows.

      We readily personify this force
      That providentially aligns our course:
      Good Orderly Direction becomes GOD,
      Who first created Adam from the sod

      And ever after hearkens to our pleas
      To spare us from disaster and disease
      And yet remains mysterious in His ways
      And may sometimes appall, sometimes amaze.

           Denying this would be a fateful blunder,
           Since what we see inspires sacred wonder.

*

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

for Edmund J. Bourne

   Some say we humans are too far adrift
   And wayward in the setting of our course;
   They say it’s time now for a global shift
   That reconnects us to our cosmic Source.

   The Global Mind must now be realigned
   To sow a viable ecology
   And human sensibilities refined
   To reap a crop without apology.

   No longer heedless of the needs of life,
   As if enamored with the deeds of death,
   We’ll mend contention and we’ll settle strife,
   Insanity no more our shibboleth.

        The global mind change that’s long overdue
        Will come once we’ve attained the cosmic view.

*

MIND MATTERS IV

for Edgar Mitchell

  It seems the universe is one great thought
  And not what Western scientists have taught
  Proposing that it’s all material,
  Just mass and energy where no minds dwell.

  The epiphenomenon that some call “mind,”
  Supposing it a force that lies behind
  All manifest materiality
  Is but a dream with no reality.

  So say the scientists—except a few
  Whose minds are altered by a different view,
  Who’ve seen the Earth while standing on the Moon
  Or in a capsule gazing in a swoon,

       Experiencing the “overview effect’:
       The samadhi of the spiritual elect.

*

AKASHA

    Somewhere in the vast Akashic stash
    Lies everything that ever was or might
    Become: the grandest treasures or mere trash,
    An ethereal source of misery or delight.
    
         The rule is: as you sow, so shall your reap;
         The more you give, the more you get to keep.

*

ABERRATION

  Throughout the universe, or multiverse,
  Mind manifests itself materially,
  A copious, magnanimous purse
  Disbursing what we call “reality,”

  Including, of course, us, who can perceive
  This marvelous process with our consciousness,
  Hypothesizing what we should believe
  About this cosmic enterprise’ success.

  For if we human beings are the best
  Of what the Cosmic Mind has ever made,
  Then we must find the process deeply flawed
  Since our endeavors seem more curst than blessed,
  And all wise counsels we have disobeyed
  Being aberrations of the Mind of God.

*

BACK OFF!

        I’m knackered, with my knickers in a twist,
        So I’m tellin’ you right now: cease and desist
        Or you’ll be seein’ this up close: my fist!

*

SAGACITY

      What trait is most appropriate for age
      If not to gain the insight of a sage
      And in all deeds at last to realize
      The ways and means and ends of being wise?

      Sophistication is but sophistry,
      The shadow side of apt integrity
      And not the essence of what’s truly holy,
      Which is not high and mighty—simply lowly.

      With modest insight into what is good
      And the means to do so rightly understood,
      One who is wise will take the prudent course
      Foreseeing best how to avoid remorse
      And to accomplish what is good for all
      And thus, in humble lowliness, stand tall.

*

NEW DEPTHS

for Edgar Mitchell

With one giant leap, we landed on the Moon
Breaking forth from our Earthbound cocoon,
Escaping from its motherly embrace
To risk adventures in the depths of space.

Astronauts and cosmonauts embarked
In capsules where they floated free and larked
About in the absence of all gravity,
The sweetest way of making history.

A few of them, so far away from ground
And gravity, gained something more profound,
A visionary cosmic consciousness
That typically just saints and sages bless—

     Which gives new meaning to “the Depths of Space,”
     Implying there’s a universal Grace.

*

THE LIVING UNIVERSE, II

    In all the universe—or if there’s more,
    Throughout the multiverse—there must be life,
    Which is our strongest reason to explore
    The depths of space: the hope that minds are rife.

    It surely cannot be that only we
    On this one world have managed to emerge,
    Given the vastness of our galaxy,
    Could we traverse it to the farthest verge.

    In fact there’s credent reason to suppose
    That creatures from out there have traveled here,
    Perhaps the source from which our race arose,
    Or merely visitors loath to appear.

          What’s popular in science fiction now
          May prove sometime what science will avow.

*

THE NOETIC ERA

for Edgar Mitchell

        Considering the wonder of it All,
        An astronaut returning from the Moon
        Broke through the barrier of a mental wall
        To an epiphany, a holy boon.

        A flash of Cosmic Consciousness illumed
        His normally left-brained mentality
        Altering all he’d previously assumed
        About the nature of reality.

        The kind of science taught to engineers
        Can send a blazing rocket into space,
        But there’s another knowing that endears
        One to the cosmos with its special grace.

             Noetic science was in that moment born,
             A kind to make our species less forlorn.

*

MONOTONE

     There’s light, but there’s no color in the dawn:
     The trees are shades of grey, so is the lawn,
     As if the scene with charcoal had been drawn—
     A sickly sort of day, so pale and wan,
     A monotone inducing one to yawn,
     A transient state that shortly will be gone,
     As melancholy as a dying swan.

*

THANK GOODNESS

   “Thank God” we say when we intend to praise
   The essence of all good personified
   As someone with the mercy to amaze
   And save us through his power to provide.

   In doing so, we merely elevate
   The memory of our parents’ providence
   Toward us, when we were young, to the estate
   Of godhead, their love and caring made immense.

   “Thank goodness,” then, is more appropriate,
   A quality we all should emulate,
   For goods and services that benefit
   The world are what make human beings great.

        The godliness of goodness becomes real
        When any hungry soul is fed a meal.

*

EPIPHANY

     Since my one blush of cosmic consciousness
     When I was just eighteen, spontaneous
     And unprovoked, an ethereal caress
     That made the Universe seem like an Us,
     I’ve not felt such communion so intense,
     But only warm reminders of that trance,
     Just faded echoes in my lonesome soul,
     Not visionary sight, merely a glance.
     Yet even that serene epiphany
     Sufficed to alter something in my brain,
     One blissful opening to ecstasy
     Of which but these faint vestiges remain.
          Still, such a glimpse of what may lie beyond
          Suggests my soul is a reflecting pond.

*

ECSTASY

  I am, I guess, a transcendentalist
  And may have been since reading Emerson
  And in my freshman year at Yale being blissed
  By something mystical not yet undone.

  Though long since faded in intensity,
  That ecstasy still echoes in my mind,
  Enthusing me with a propensity
  To seek the source by which we are designed.

  “One Mind” some name it now, as well as “Source,”
  Depersonalizing our traditional “God,”
  Which nonetheless designs the cosmic course,
  If not exactly ruling with a rod.

       These days I feel it most when writing verse,
       Inspired by a medium that’s terse.

*

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

 Beyond what any other creature knows,
 We human beings imagine and suppose,
 For we can wonder, ponder and surmise,
 And, in rare instances, we might grow wise.

 Such sapience is promised in our name
 Though all too few arrive at such acclaim—
 Yet anyone may set it as a goal,
 Achieving which amounts to growing whole.

 Perhaps, though, such an end should not be sought,
 For even if such wisdom could be taught,
 Would not that mean the human journey’s done
 With our achieving lasting benison?

      No, it’s drama that we thrive on in this life:
      Conflict and competition, stress and strife.

*

THANKSGIVING

    Give thanks for living in this universe
    And thanks for knowing what a miracle
    Life is on Earth, a planet that can nurse
    And nurture life, both plant and animal.

    But whom are we to thank for all of this
    Good orderly direction cosmically,
    That everything’s not merely hit-or-miss
    But manifests a purpose we can see?

    Good Orderly Direction’s acronym
    Is GOD, which we personify to name
    Someone to praise, giving all thanks to Him—
    That Source from which the universe once came.

         The force that through the green fuse flows
         Is that from which our Universe arose.

*

A PAPAL MANDATE

 “Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d;
 The glory, jest and riddle of the world”:
 So Alexander Pope once summed us up,
 And any thinking person would say, “Yup,
 He’s nailed us there, nor have we learned since then
 To act more sanely and behave like men
 Not children with no sense of consequence:
 Bone headed, narrow minded, dumb and dense.
 But now, so much more powerful, we must
 At last outgrow our envy, pride and lust,
 And all the rest of our inherent errors
 Endangering confused, wayward wayfarers.
 Perhaps with this analysis by Pope
 We’ll rectify our ways—our only hope.

*

THE MAKER

     Eyes closed, the poet stares into the void,
     The unformed sea of roiling consciousness
     Where everything potential is deployed,
     While seeking some coherence in this mess,
     For something out of nothing may appear
     Amazingly, which he, alert, might see,
     The notion or the image growing clear
     As words give birth to its reality.
     Just as, somehow, mentality arose
     From energy and matter still inchoate,
     Likewise an unshaped composition grows
     Within the consciousness of a blessed poet.
          Therefore he roams and ranges in his mind,
          Uncertain but still sure of what he’ll find.

*

CRAFT WORK

A young boy from the neighborhood came by
To sell hand-crafted baubles that he’d made,
Woven from plastic threads—a kid not shy
To tout the traits of what he had in trade:

How this one would hold keys, that be a ring,
Another might a nifty bracelet make—
“See how it stretches on elastic string!
It’s guaranteed to widen but won’t break.”

I bought a couple do-dads for a buck,
Not yet remembering when I’d done the same
Thing as a boy, going door to door with pluck:
Touting hand-woven pot-holders was my game.

     These days it’s verse I weave from sundry sounds.
     Careful to keep my meters within bounds.

*

HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS

     When we grow wise, then we shall realize
     That double sapience in our own name
     By following what reasoning best applies
     To justify the merits of our claim,

     And more than simply knowing that we know,
     We’ll do those deeds that circumspection leads
     Us to perform that set all hearts aglow
     Because they satisfy our truest needs.

     Thus wisdom’s that potentiality
     Inherent in the nature of our kind
     Which manifests its full reality
     When wit and will and heart are well aligned.

          Before too late, I trust we’ll recognize
          That our true destiny is growing wise.

*

DOC MARTIN: ACCEPTANCE

     Doc Martin now seems resolute to leave
     Portwenn, shut down his practice and begin
     A surgical career and never grieve,
     Exchanging rural peace for London’s din.

     That his Louisa soon will birth their child
     Does not deter him from this enterprise,
     Since his ambition can’t be reconciled
     With motives he has yet to recognize.

     The truth is that he loves her and Portwenn
     And that he’s needed more in this small town
     Than any other place he’s ever been—
     Despite his curtness and perpetual frown.

          It’s time the Doc is finally reconciled
          And settles down with his new wife and child.

*

THE VIRTUES OF THE WISE

for Copthorne Macdonald’s
wisdompage.com

   If you’d be wise, then you would realize
   Those virtues that a prudent person owns:
   Compassion that secures our human ties,
   Humility that modulates our tones,

   The peacefulness of equanimity,
   Wonder, joy, humility, insight,
   Sound judgment, vision, self-sufficiency,
   That generosity which breeds delight,

   A positive and up-beat attitude,
   Discernment to distinguish what is sound,
   A disposition to show gratitude,
   An oriented sense of where you’re bound.

        There are yet further virtues to attain,
        But these should do to keep you safe and sane.

*

TOWARD WISDOM IV

   Smart we are, and clever to extremes,
   Capable of hatching many schemes
  That benefit our ill-considered aims—
  Until our machinations end in flames.

  There’s something we have yet to cultivate
  To lead our species to a happier fate
  Than that catastrophe we now foresee:
  The wisdom to ensure our liberty.

  For all our science is not sapience:
  Mere know-how should not dictate our intents,
  But well-considered values set a course
  That leads to happiness and not remorse.

       We’ll know at last that end for which we’re meant
       When Homo sapiens grows sapient.

*

BUFFALO, 19 NOVEMBER 2014

      Nineteen degrees it is in Buffalo,
      A city that’s notorious for snow,
      But yesterday’s was such a super-doosie
      It made a roof-top shoveller feel woosie—
      Imagining a place like Florida
      Or somewhere South that’s even torrider,
      Resolving that if he had a vacation,
      He’d join the other Northerners’ invasion
      Of the ever-beckoning Sunshine State,
      Imagining a rowboat, line and bait,
      And basking in the lazy afternoon
      While whistling a happy little tune,
          “You are my sunshine,” and feeling grand—
          So glad to trade in snow for palms and sand.

*

MOTHERS’ DAY

    What was it many years ago I said
    By way of sorrow, love and gratitude
    To my mother who lay dying in her bed
    To thank her for the life she had pursued?

    Whatever words they were, I know she knew
    That we, her children, loved her for her care
    And kindliness and dedication to
    Our thriving, generous in equal share.

    Too soon our father died, some years before,
    Leaving her with two children still in school,
    A doleful situation to deplore,
    And yet solicitude was her first rule.

         If there’s a heaven where loved ones re-meet,
         She’ll be the first we children mean to greet.

*

MIND REFINED

  The greatest mystery of all is mind,
  By which, some say, reality’s designed,
  As great philosophers have long opined,
  And holy souls ecstatically divined.

  How might we surely know if we’re aligned
  With that by which our essence is defined,
  Or gone the way of much of humankind
  Who have our sacred purposes maligned?

  When from all waywardness we have resigned
  Leaving our wicked tendencies behind,
  Having our souls absolved and minds refined,
  We shall to righteousness no more be blind.

       Once faithfulness and love are intertwined,
       We know our hearts and souls will be enshrined.

*

ENTHUSIASM

       What is it constitutes a miracle?
       Well, first of all, it isn’t dull
       But rather, something extraordinary
       And therefore likely to be very scary,
       As when something appears out of the blue,
       Materializing right in front of you,
       And even more if it’s just what you need,
       And maybe prayed for, helping you succeed
       In some important venture you’ve begun,
       Which without aid like this could not be done.
       In such a way a poem like this arrives,
       Nor is it ever finished otherwise:
            There needs a special spirit to enthuse
            Such verse: which is the office of the Muse.

*