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POETRY

Dear Jesus,

“Dear Jesus,” read by John Whitney Steele.

— the year of our Lord, circa 1960

I don’t know when you came into my life.
It seems like you were here right from the start.
I think you must have blessed me in Mum’s tummy.
She said I didn’t seem to want to leave.
It’s Christmas-time, I lay you in a manger
with a golden halo on your head,
Mary and Joseph sitting by your side,
and three wise men approaching bearing gifts.
At Sunday school your picture’s on the wall,
a long-haired, bearded hippie, all blissed out.
We sing out: Jesus loves me, this I know.
Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.
Like Santa, taking children on your knee,
you sing with us: let them come to me.

— 1969

When Ram Dass returned from India, long-haired,
white-robed, and bearded, he looked a lot like you.
By then, I’d finished Sunday school, and given
up on church. I never saw you sitting
in a pew. And so I turned to smoking
marijuana and dropping LSD,
doing yoga, trying to meditate,
but unlike you, I can’t calm the sea.
You were the kind of man I want to be.
You spoke with such conviction, contagious faith,
convinced dead men and cripples to rise and walk.
I’m sixteen now, your ally on the cross,
bemoaning a world hellbent on self-destruction,
asking why hast Thou abandoned us?

— 1970

Ram Dass’ Be Here Now arrived today.
I can taste the salty-tongued excitement
of cutting the strings, of opening the box,
of breathing in the scent of home-made paper
loosely bound with jute, of leafing through
hand-written pages, the blend of Hindu, Buddhist,
Sufi, Christian quotes, and mandalas,
of dropping the needle on the vinyl record,
of singing along: Sita Ram, Sita
Ram, Hanuman, Hanuman ...
— imagining myself sitting right there
in the circle with Ram Dass and his friends,
high in the mountains of New Mexico —
and weeping tears of gratitude and joy.

— 1971-72

My first semester of college — I can’t stand
the drunken, dorm-room parties blaring music
across the quad. If only you were here
with me you’d flip the goddamn turntables.
I can’t concentrate. I’m not excited
by any of my courses. To the chagrin
of Mum and Dad, I decide to quit,
spend the winter working in a warehouse,
reading Yogananda’s autobiography,
giving my all to his meditation course,
intent on tuning in to what he calls
Christ consciousness — direct experience of God.
I need to find a spiritual community.
And so I buy a van, and plot my course.

— 1972

I drive to Colorado for the Rainbow
Festival. I’m camping out with hundreds
of young seekers. I think you must be here
with us, singing and dancing and praying for peace.
Fast forward to New Mexico, I’m dancing
in the Sufi circle at the ashram
where Ram Dass assembled his Book-in-a-box edition
of Be Here Now. I’m asking if I can stay.
They’re turning me down. I’m chasing mirages through
the desert all the way to Yogananda’s
seaside hermitage. I’m on a bench,
facing the ocean. I can see forever.
But the folks who run this place are stiff,
unwelcoming. And so I’m heading north.

— hours later

I pick up a hitchhiker. He listens as I talk
about my pilgrimage across the West.
He’s telling me how he searched, how he opened
his heart to Jesus, how that has changed his life,
encouraging me to do the same, suggesting
I stop at Lighthouse Ranch, a Christian commune
in northern California that welcomes newcomers.
We reach his destination, say goodbye.
I follow a side-road into a wilderness area,
walk into an old-growth redwood forest,
the kind of place where I can drop my armor.
As I walk deeper into the woods, my aching
heart cries out to you. I know for sure
that you and I have never been apart.

— 1972-73

I park and walk straight to the cross. The cross
is larger than life, too heavy to bear, for you
or me. It stands right next to the edge of the bluff.
The beach below is littered with sea-wrack and starfish.
I volunteer to work in the garden with Michael,
a soft-spoken, middle-aged man with a bushy, black beard.
There’s nowhere more healing to be than in this garden,
the wind blowing off the ocean, the salt of the sea.
This commune’s born-again mentality
is not for me, but it’s a welcome refuge.
I stay a year before returning home.
I can’t tell where the ocean ends, the sky
begins. The waves keep rolling in and in,
shaping and reshaping the sound of wind.

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John Whitney Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have been published widely. John lives in Colorado and loves hiking in the mountains.

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