Wednesday, June 27, 2007

High-Maintenance Paradise

27 June 2007, 11:42 PM

The most beautiful Paradise,
this side of Eternity, requires maintenance.

I know this,

and so there is no unexpected bitterness to deny
as muck and mire settle in, reminding me that happiness-
even contentedness- is not a given. Deliberate
effort is required in order to keep chaos at bay.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Whole Again

20 June 2007, 11:51 PM
St. Augustine, Florida

There’s another half
to this shell. I look
at its gentle but persistent curve
and I wonder whither the other half went,
whether another shell collector
has picked it up, turned it in his hand,
pondered its mate, or his,
or the insurmountable odds
which would have to be surmounted
in order for the halves to be whole again.

Beautiful to Me

20 June 2007, 2:29 PM
St. Augustine, Florida

Beautiful, broken bits-
the tides give them up,
pull them back,
give them up again until
they scatter on the beach,
and I come to sift through remnants,
finding beauty in slivers of silvered
purples, pinks, ivories,

and think of you, of me,

of the pieces we’ve salvaged
from the chaos of our seas.
I’m bringing home to you these
pieces of things once beautiful,
still beautiful to me.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

High Flight

HIGH FLIGHT
by John Gillespie Magee

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Constellations

12 June 2007, 11:11 PM

The stars are not as distant
as I once supposed. You linger
to count and connect seemingly random
patterns- it takes imagination to see

the sense of things; sanity
in the midst of chaos gone mad,
madness coerced into some strange
semblance of order, when everyone knows
there is no order in darkness-
there is only one rule when light fails:

No one can see,

and under such unwholesome law,
all hint of beauty fails in me,
in you,
in her,
in humanity.

No one wins if goodness fails,
though as of yet, ill has not prevailed.
The constellations are still ours, a guide
when all else fails- the sun, the moon,
the azure sky, and all the sundry forms
of wherefores and of whys. The stars prevail-
they cannot fall but that they leave the evidence,

a trail

by which we trace their origins
and find the Source of light.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Seed for Songbirds

5 June 2007, 8:42 AM

I.

The Raven never leaves
off- seeds are falling
to the ground, scattering too far
ever to be found in their entirety.
She’s like a sower, casting seeds
only on the dry, rocky, wounded soil,
knowing full well they’ll never sprout;
only find arid places to bake in the sun,
crack, return to dust with never a
chance to find what might have been
if only the Sower of Discontent
had left a little seed for the Songbirds.

Even in the parable of the sower,
very little seed found the soil-
and he was just doing his job. If I remember
rightly, the seeds that found rocks,
shallow ground,
thorns and thistles became food for birds.

II.

Even so, some seed was found
on fertile ground- it does exist. All is not lost.
There are corners of Paradise untouched
by ravens and serpents. There are trees
growing strong and tall beneath suns rising;
moons waxing and waning as they ought,
with no regard for stark, raving blackbirds.

And there are other birds- Songbirds nesting
in the limbs of Oaks and Sycamores,
among the intertwingled branches of white roses,
growing wild and unexpected in the Haven,
bearing, unapologetically, beauty and brambles...

And I wonder if the doorway to Peace exists
in understanding the Songbirds
were never ours to begin with- a precious
charge within our keep, entrusted
for their sake, and not for ours. We must
allow the days and nights, the suns and moons,

the roses and the brambles

to bend and sway, listening all the while
to these precious life-songs of birds
who rest in our Haven for a time, only
a time- listening when their songs are bent
with tears or free to find the uppermost
branches and the sky, the sun, the moon,
the stars and the heavens behind them.

George MacDonald

"Home is ever so far away in the palm of your hand, and how to get there it is of no use to tell you. But you will get there; you must get there; you have to get there. Everybody who is not at home, has to go home."

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