The Gate: A Poem

I’ve been reviewing poems I wrote decades ago. I had forgotten much of what I’d written. So now I’m listening to my voice from a different time in my life, trying to understand what it has to teach me. Here’s a poem from 2005 about Christ’s life; it seems pertinent for Holy Week:

His path was not the one that others take,
to the aloof serenity of the mountaintop;
nor to the splendor of the palace--
its ceremony, livery, and sycophancy--
or even to the abstention and abstersion
that his cousin found beyond the river.

Christ instead walked to the gate--
its wooden frame hung on hinges 
nailed into an unbending post.
He loosed the hasp, and, with a groan
of unborn prayer, swung open what
was always closed before.
Astonished,
it still stands agape.

Image from https://paxtonvic.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/open-gates/

 

Vastness: A Poem

I enjoy the drive from St. Louis to Chicago through the open plains. I used to take the trip regularly, but now I go that way infrequently. The vastness of the vision reminds me of those times when I catch a glimpse of the divine presence. Here's a reflection on driving north on I-55 written a litte over a year ago:

North of Springfield plains stretch out
and in their stretching swell my sight.
Fields still chew the residue of last year’s crops. 
They’re chilled by winter winds, 
which in turn are harvested by giants—
turbines briskly swinging sickle-blades.  
Roads snip fields from one another,
barns and houses break the uniformity.

My vision, given freedom, 
reaches for the fullness, the dark
tree border often edging the horizon.
Scopic sight can be a trickster: 
a six-story high-rise will, a minute later, 
transfigure into five tall tubes for storing grain.

Such places of expanded vision
leave deep marks. Faith is fortified 
by vastness, the imprint of enormity lasting 
when the vista’s drawstring is again pulled tight
and liberated sight is only sourced in memory.  

 

Light is Lifted-A Poem

I visited the garden deep in fall, 
after many trees had been robbed 
of their summer dress. 
The sun was slow to rise 
and even in midmorning slouched low 
as it strolled the southern sky. 
The garden centers on a pond, 
a mirror to the stones and trees 
edging its circumference.
While I stood beside it, 
no leaves fell, or even rustled; 
nature was at rest, 
serene.

My life, in contrast, has it’s share of waves. 
The churn of change disquiets me, 
Foundations roll and sway with the uncertainty. 
Would that everything was like 
this still and sheltered place.

I watch a while, and notice that the water 
wavers more than what had seemed at first. 
Rays of sun bounce off the ripples, 
then scan a rock that’s cornering a nearby island, 
so that lines of light rise softly up 
its shadowed side. 
Maybe this is what I need.to see 
Until death, there will always be a breath 
or more to break tranquility, 
but the resulting waves are just a way 
that light is lifted, lines moving in the dark.

 

An Old Portrait

After my mother died in June, I went through lost of family pictures, including some from over a hundred years ago. It made me reflect on the people portrayed in them, thinking of who they were at the time they were photographed.

It’s a full-length portrait, head to foot.
He wears a dark suit, white shirt, and white bow-tie.
He bends his arms behind his back, hands out of sight,
the pose that’s favored by the awkward. 
She stands beside him, dressed in white from neck
to just above her ankles. She seems to lean
towards him the slightest bit. 

I’m quite sure who they are, though they 
don’t look like the people I remember.
In the days to come, he would grow his waist
and lose his hair; her face would hibernate 
behind thick glasses.

I see them through a grandchild’s eyes
but that is not the people whom they always were.
Unmoored once, 
they got to freely walk around the city, 
imagining the places they might live,
the people they might meet and marry,
and the man or woman each would come to be. 
I would have liked to travel back across 
the vast sea 
of time to meet them then: 
I wonder what our conversation might have been. 

 

Change Is Like a Highwayman

Highwayman.jpg from Wikimedia Commons

This is a poem I wrote last month. Sometimes I write something that I particularly like. This is one of those things. I don’t know quite why. It’s about the unpredictability of life, not a particularly pleasant theme. Maybe it captures my present situation-mom dying, having to move, lots of uncertainties ahead-fairly well. I’d be interested in reactions that others have when they read it.

Our lives are often linear, 
not wavering from course, 
so that we come to think we’re on 
a road that’s without forks. 
 
As things remain the same, we will 
increasingly take hold 
of calculations that provide 
illusions of control. 
 
But change is like a highwayman 
that’s lying just ahead 
to rob us of our certainties 
and leave our plans for dead. 
 
A bone will break, a car will crash, 
pneumonia grows from coughs; 
God uses ordinary things 
to throw the balance off. 
 
He baffles and befuddles us 
disturbing our neat rows; 
the Holy Spirit hasn’t come  
to coronate the known. 

 

Grass Withers–A Poem

Photo by Kasia Palitava on Pexels.com

This was my first poem of the year, written in early January while reflecting on the year past and the year to come. It’s main image comes from Isaiah 40:8–“Grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of God endures forever.” It seems appropriate both in regard to the start of Lent and the present turmoil in the world.

Grass withers and the flower fades
winter comes to take away
whatever lacks abiding root
whatever lacks tenacious truth.

For metal rusts, the moth consumes;
the wealth that promised to accrue
gives little help when health erodes
thus proving a deceptive hope.

But we are blessed, not cursed by rust
for it discourages false loves
and losing is a discipline
that lights the way when dreams have dimmed.

Grass dies and human strength erodes
the word of God continues whole--
his grace and goodness are the hinge:
he opens and we enter in. 

 

Romuald’s Rule–A Poem

Here is the Brief Rule of St. Romuald, who founded the Camaldolese Order in Italy a little over a thousand years ago. The rule is taken from https://camaldolesedownunder.com/st-romualds-brief-rule/ this website of an Australian Camaldolese monestary:

Sit in your cell as in paradise;
put the whole world behind you and forget it;
like a skilled angler on the lookout for a catch, keep a careful eye on your thoughts.

The path you must follow is in the psalms – don’t leave it. If you’ve come with a novice’s enthusiasm and can’t accomplish everything you want, take every chance you can find to sing the psalms in your heart and to understand them in your head; if your mind wanders as you read, don’t give up but hurry back and try again.

Above all realize that you are in God’s presence, like a little chick tasting and eating nothing but what its mother brings.

Reflecting on this rule a year ago during the time of isolation imposed by covid19, I wrote the following:

This room has become the cell sustaining me,
with its bed and chair and desk,
its wallpaper looking just a bit like burlap,
a calendar that usually lags a month or two behind,
and stacks of unread books and magazines.
Art hung here and there tells me of the world
beyond these walls—a field in Idaho,
a lake spread like smooth flooring 
beneath clouds plastered softly to the sky,
a quaint European street,
and a room somewhere that’s always sunlit
even during these cloudy winter days.

Wanderlust reaches out of the frames to tug
at me, but I isolate in place,
fishing just among my thoughts,
freshened by the sunlight streaming
from the psalms that my heart sings.
I peck gratefully at whatever seeds
my mother-God supplies.
Contentment visits and
my cell expands to paradise.

 

Waiting Is

Photo by George Becker on Pexels.com

Advent comes, I wait, and know
that all of life is waiting.

I wait for the particular,
what I’m sure will happen—
school to start, graduation to occur,
guests to arrive, Christmas Day to come.
Waiting is faith.

But I mostly feel the weight of my wait
when I’ve left my certainty for contingency;
I check my watch more often when unsure
the train will come on time.
Waiting is doubt.

I wait not in completeness, but in lack—
no Invictus here for me, but need, 
for I am not enough. Other souls
and the mangered God must come
to fill me where I’m incomplete.
Waiting is emptiness.

And emptiness is such discomfort
that I seek some substitute,
some easy way. Yet all the while,
the One for whom I wait
waits steadfastly for me in hope 
that I will disavow distraction
and give myself to him.

Waiting is surrender. 

 

Reading, Dozing

Necessities accomplished,

in stillness I sit down and read.

I find the place where I left off,

backtracking a bit to find

headwaters of the stream

spilled out by the author.

I row among the words a while,

their black debris floating

on a sheen of white.

There is much worth netting,

remembering, collecting.

Five pages in, my eyes,

winched at first to thought

and concentration,

   slowly

       uncouple,

          skittering

        across

    the

  lines,

    nothing

       understood.

           They

                       close,

            and

 the

            snow

                           of

     slumber

                           softly

 falls.

Clouds empty

inadvertent blessing

on the earth.

 

Summer Ends-A Poem

It is summer yet, but barely—
some days already suitable for sweaters.
Light’s vast expanse is shrunk, 
tailored ever tighter, as if the year
became obese but has been dieting
and will with winter shrink 
to skeletal. 

After eight, my dog and I go out 
and find the yard is deep in darkness.
I thought to take a flashlight
to help us find our way, but discovered 
that the scant rags of light left over
from the day’s rich finery 
are enough for us. 

Wendell Berry writes about a hunter
so exasperated by his temperamental
lantern that he tossed it down a hollow,
then proceeded better than before. 

Perhaps I’ve huddled
close to lamps and lanterns overmuch. 
The darkness has more light 
than I imagined, and in it 
I can see the stars.