This spring morning as I sort these precious verses, watching cherry petals drift past my window, I find myself contemplating how Mari’s words flow like water - finding their way through any vessel while maintaining their essential nature, somehow finding their way into every crack and crevice of a wounder soul. Her poems carry the scent of both East and West, like the morning breeze that brings both mountain snow and sea salt to my garden.
When Mari spoke or wrote, she naturally blended the languages she had gathered on her journey - Prakrit flowing into Koine Greek, Sanskrit emerging through Aramaic tones. Like watching a master weaver at work, I’ve seen how she would catch a word’s gleam in one tongue and let it cast new light through another. A single verse might carry the precision of Sanskrit philosophical terms alongside the emotional directness of Greek lyrical forms, yet somehow remain as clear as temple bells at dawn.
Her poetry style is unique, like her. Her poems often come in threes, like waves approaching shore - each one carrying the thought a little deeper. First the physical reality that anchors us in our humanity, then the heart’s response to that reality, and finally the spiritual truth that emerges when we have the courage to embrace both. I’ve noticed how she rarely speaks of the divine without first grounding us in the earthly, as if to remind us that transcendence grows from, not despite, our human nature.
The images she chooses are simple - lotus flowers pushing through mud, water finding its level, light catching in dewdrops. Yet through these ordinary things, she shows us the extraordinary. A butterfly emerging from its chrysalis becomes a teaching about transformation. Market vendors calling their wares become a lesson in the nature of impermanence. Even a child’s skinned knee can open into a discourse on compassion.
What moves me most is how she transforms suffering into wisdom and experience the divine in the ordinary. Having walked through the darkest places a human can go, she emerged carrying light for others. Her poems don’t hide the pain - they acknowledge it fully, yet show how even our deepest wounds can become windows through which divine love and wisdom enters the world.
The Lord once told her that truth needs no ornamentation, and you can see this in her style - clean as a freshly swept temple floor, clear as morning light. Yet within that simplicity, she manages to bridge worlds. Eastern wisdom and Western spirituality flow together in her verses like tributary streams joining to form a mighty river.
When I read these poems now, years after first reading them as a child, I still catch new layers of meaning, like finding deeper pools in a familiar stream. Perhaps that too is part of their nature - to reveal themselves gradually, teaching us patience even as they illuminate truth.
*Shall we look at some specific verses together? I find each reading brings new insights, especially when shared with fellow seekers on theWAY. *