placing a pineapple on the
altar of Shiva and lighting a candle
to burn in the darkness of the Moon.
So I may dwell with the Beloved
and, one day, dance, foot lifted,
pointed to the sky in the new cycle of becoming
realizing the Dream into being.
In that stillness, as the spring snow
drenched the Earth,
I remembered offering myself at the temple
as I lay under the pure Ganga stream,
in the distance, Shivaling,
where the yogi dreams
above the shrill clamor
of humanity in the valley below.
The cool crystal water washes
the ash on my forehead,
and the ashes of one dear
arise in my mind’s eye,
As I rise clear-eyed from the current
rushing with the force
of the river’s journey
homeward to the Sea.
And I bow to the deathless Lord
whose form I see, motionless
in the still, white glacier
beyond the swift, foam-capped waters,
moving surely, one day to merge in the Sea.
Halfway down the mountain, I paused at the bank
of the strong, surging waters, in a flower garden
smiling at two gracious monks robed in ocre.
(Written By Janna Lynn in commemoration of a trip to India in 1988 that included a pilgrimage to Gangotri, the glacial origin of the holy Ganges - the setting for the poem)
