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Some poems...

In April 2004 Sri Chinmoy celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his arrival in the West. For his students, it presented the perfect opportunity to take up a personal challenge and complete it by April - anything from learning forty songs on a new instrument to doing forty long-distance runs to repeating a mantra forty thousand times over three months.

Around January 2004, I was working for a month with other students of Sri Chinmoy in a shop in Graz, Austria when I instinctively putting a few things to paper, and before I knew it I had three poems written. Then the idea came to turn it to forty by April.

I was doing pretty well and on target with a month to go but then I took my eye off the ball and ended up having to write ten poems in the last week! Sri Chinmoy had said of his poetry that he just concentrates on the quantity and lets God take care of the quality - this was certainly true of me that last week. But it was all completed and sent off - strange thing is, I haven't written another poem since.

These three I wrote in Graz - I kind of like them because they remind me of a time when spiritually I was doing quite nicely.

Also, here's a link to some poems I like by other poets...

Richard, a student of Sri Chinmoy from the Oxford centre, runs a great site called poetseers.org where one can find spiritual poetry from all around the world...

Not to mention Sri Chinmoy's own poems...

First Steps

walking home it had rained the streetlights were dancing in the puddles dancing all the way home All I could think about was the memory of my youngest brother about to take his first steps all set up for the cameras Dad holding him upright and Mam waiting with arms outstretched. I only really remember the look on his face, those eager moons of eyes that have never known suspicion, and that smile; ........to think that a smile could break loose from the shackles of his face and resurface inside my heart now all of fifteen years later........ That smile, it filled him up so completely, and he probably wasnt even aware of the task ahead of him, oblivious to everything except his love for his mother, and his absolute trust that she would never let anything happen to him Dad let him go

and he ran

Running up hills

My body hates hills. My mind hates hills. My vital boasts its enthusiasm for the first hundred metres or so. okay, my vital hates hills too. But only my heart matters my heart bounding forward like a puppy dragging its supposed owner by the leash