Kissing The Leper

Kiss the lepers that you meet,

as the spirit moves you;

embrace the uncomfortable in your life,

to grow in your light, as it behoves you.

Love, serve and remember,

instructed that beloved Swami –

who else had once said that and altered history?

This lends itself to no ideology.

One has washed the feet of transients

in the public parks or elsewhere;

hugged drunks, beggars, all regarded as sentient –

free of any trip about it, just showing care.

If you'd ever lain next to a dying AIDS-stricken,

body skeletal, sweaty, his mourning partner sickened,

and there hugged him together, held him close and tight,

then you've been there, you've known such nights.

If you'd been up to your knuckles in piss and crap,

or changed clothing on severely handicapped

with the same joy and aplomb with which you once wrung cotton diapers,

then you know what I mean, you know to adapt.

If you'd wiped spittle while feeding adults,

or felt love toward a huge bellowing, now quiet

psychotic in messed shorts, whose nails and beard you'd been trimming –

you know very well what I am talking about.

If your spirituality's too refined, you are only pious –

bring that refinement into the messy world and put it to use;

let no body be foreign to you, let the mess test the mettle

of that refinement, so that spirit has some gut and hooves.

Kissing the lepers is an internal acceptance

of forms as they are, not forced or imaginary "tolerance"!

It is most natural and native when about nothing

but loving, and serving, and remembering.