6 Poems by Max Reif, Including in Memory of Marc Brutus

This Week

You know how things are:
They’re so strange!

I was under a cloud
for a few days early this week,
the kind that might be
more than a cloud,
a shadow that might actually be
a giant bird that will crush you
or just lie on you
so you can’t breathe
ever again.

And then the sun came out
and there was life, all of it
right where I’d left it,
and sweeter than usual
because I hadn’t been certain
I’d see it again.

Today I went to San Francisco,
it’s the weekend now,
I had coffee with a friend
at a lovely outdoor café
and we caught up
after several years during which
he’s been abroad.

I’m on the way back home now.
The sun’s come out, literally,
bringing amazing Spring weather.
I opened the windows of my car
and clicked Pandora on my phone
as I crossed the Bay Bridge.

Peter and Gordon, the British Invasion duo
are singing “I go to pieces and I almost die,
every time that my baby passes by.”
The lyrics are kind of a downer,
but the steady beat
has something invincible about it
and the song seems
to contain all of life.
The breeze is blowing
on my hair, face and body.

I look at the sky,
and I tell you, it’s 1967 again,
the gates of Life are opening.

The Step

A little while ago
I got up from a table
and strode out of a room

in a way that made me note
how my foot hit the ground
and pushed off:
my step that moment
completely authentic.

I love that step.
No questioning in it.
No obligation.

I knew where I was going,
but it was more than that.

The step itself was
a moment of existential
freedom,
not “I should”
but “I am,”

so, even while it was
a moment in time,
I felt free from time.
And that is
how I want to be.

Cherry Tree

I walk down the steps to find
the cherry tree in full bloom,
Its pink filigree blossoms
having suddenly appeared.

Did it happen in the night?
I hadn’t noticed
this display yesterday.

This is how
our Beloved works
in our lives.

So many things in our world.
Impossible to notice them all.

Our ever-roving glance
falls in a certain place,
and there, we see

something has flowered. 

Voice-memo collaboration with the Google Maps lady while driving, on a poem about self-renewal

Here’s the actual recording of the poem on my phone’s Voice-Memo app, as I was driving and being interrupted, to my absolute surprise, by the voice on Google Maps.

In this life,
how do you just
keep opening yourself?

At some point,
you get an experience
of Awakening, of Grace.

You go through a window
into another life
that you’ve never dreamed of,
with horizons far beyond
the ones you’ve known…

“IN HALF A MILE,
TAKE EXIT 7B,
TOWARD CASTRO STREET.”

with yourself now finally having
a role, a way to participate in all this,
the inspiration to make something:
poetry, music; call it Art.

“TAKE EXIT 7B.
THEN KEEP RIGHT.”

And what a thrill it is!
And you work in that vein,
in that gold mine that’s
been opened up.

You labour away.
Your nights and days are happy
because you’ve found your calling.

And then at a certain point,
without even noticing it,
you don’t know what
you’re doing anymore.

“KEEP RIGHT.
THEN TURN LEFT
ONTO CASTRO STREET.”

And you need another
window to go through,
just like the first time,
except that the first time
you didn’t know that there
was such a thing as that.

“TURN LEFT
ONTO CASTRO STREET.”

And now
you’re ravenous for it,
day and night,
but you can’t find it yet.

It will have to come
of its own accord.

In Memory of Marc Brutus

One of my friends
has left the Caravan
I can see
for the Caravan
I cannot see,
and I can’t help
feeling bereft.

Love is a Bridge
between the two realms
until we meet again,
but I can’t help feeling
somewhat bereft.

There are beings,
there are connections
that are truly made
of the most precious gold
that will never be severed—
and that should be enough.

And I need to remember
this Reminder that,
although we seem to be travelling
together in a group,
in the final analysis,
that is not entirely true.

Hill

On the winding
road
early this late
autumn morning,

appearing
like a vision
in the mist
through parted
golden boughs

the hill
came into view

almost mist itself
rising in the near
distance

a calming
symmetry

with its gentle
upward climb
from both sides
its soft rounded summit

a lovely version
of things

easy up
easy down

everything rounded,
pleasingly curved like

the village
a friend visited
in Guatemala,
where he said
there were no
right angles.

I drove on
towards the café
at peace.

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image 4 (Marc Brutus): © Avatar Meher Baba Center of Southern California Archives permission granted; all other images: Max Reif