It’s true. The heart,

whatever it is, tumbles downward.

We were lying under a ceiling fan, doing nothing

like deathless people, imagining we'd be fine here

when that e-mail pinged— it was only by chance we heard it.

Pray for strong life signs. Please pray now.

We looked into each other, silent, then turned away.

Not the first time.

We’d made this passage before,

lived through it, and so had He. So we sat

quiet, with a news channel muted on the wall

and the Gateway of India in terrorist flames.

Not one minute later, a second, bolded note.

A medical emergency—

gather immediately in empowered halls.

We moved, faster this time,

parting the bamboo screens to His room.

We lit a votive candle and laid ourselves out flat

in a heap of red hibiscus flowers at His feet.

He met us as we rose.

The room embodied Him like scent.

Palm leaves batted against the windowpanes.

What exactly is a medical emergency?

My cell phone rang, a brother in California.

"He’s had no pulse. Twenty minutes, maybe more."

I sat on the wood floor on my knees.

Watching the incense ash grow taller, tumble down.

Then I dialed my closest friends. “Twenty minutes, yes.

Well more now, I’ve been on the phone.

Tell those who need to know.”

The night reeled on like that.

A rush of unbearable words: Invoke Him.

Draw Him back to the body. Stay in vigil,

He depends on us. Remember Shirdi Sai Baba.

And what about Nityananda? They came and left

at will. Many times. Who knows how many.

Gone for hours, days at a time.

A recorded fact.

We bumped along a country road under a waning moon

to a white marble dome.

Where we prayed in our way,

not like supplicants, like the found,

until sleep gently pressed us away.

I opened my eyelids to sunlight scalding my face

and the sound of running. Pounding.

Louder and louder on the long cherrywood floor.

She leapt up on the mattress into my arms. Wailing.

I held her in a quiet, eternal morning.

Alone.