I Cannot Breathe Until I Make Offerings

I read this poem at an art auction and satsang to raise money for Covid relief in India, May 14, 2021, sponsored by the Art of Living Foundation.

She meant to drop this mirror,
shattering into countless images
her perfect gaze.
This is why we meet in brokenness,
fitting our pieces together again
through each others’ eyes,
until we recognize one face
with eight billion reasons for astonishment.

Even our jagged edges are made

from infinitesimal love-sparks.

Let our meditation be the cry

of a wound that is healed by staying open.

Let our eyes tell beads of gratitude,

pearled on threads of silence.

Why does your Maker break your wings?
To teach these feet to walk on earth.
You can't thank Her enough, can you?

Why have we become such dusty

shards of looking glass?
To polish one another with forgiveness.

Keep it soft, friend, like the mystery

of bones in a baby’s crown.

That is the door we leave by,

made whole by lost drops.

After seven hundred lifetimes,

you’ll understand what the robin knows

at sunrise: how to sing without trying.

Ask a thistle seed,

“What is your plan for the wind?”

Love is not a method or a path.

We just keep whispering, "Grace, grace.”

Throw away the measuring cup,
this world is a sea of thanksgiving.
You dive in with your whole body,
then come up gasping with a soul;

thousands of reasons to doubt,

but only one breath;

many hungers, but a single wanting.
As for me, I cannot breathe

until I make offerings to the Mother

who turned my chest into a temple,
who danced on my heart like a serpent of fire,
a thunderbolt of silence swirling up my spine,
threading each nerve to its native star.
Kali fangs flashed like midnight flowers
by the streams of Chandra Nadi.
And her fierce Name protected me
from shadows of false light…

But She is more than Goddess: She is loam,

wrinkled umber, withered lungs.

And we are more than God: we are marrow

that seeps from her smoldering ashes.

No need to be a pilgrim, no need to ascend.

Just be a touch of fallen sunset on the face

of the blind Bengali widow selling Kumkum

at the trolly stop beneath the Durga statue.

This is the hour to comfort her who suckled us all.

Now let the myriad ruby tears of the children

anoint the wounded brow of Mother India, Mother India.

Throw away the measuring cup.

This world is a sea of thanksgiving.