this picture made me smile...

source

There is much to learn
here by the blue water.
Her soul is ever drinking
in the sky
and she moves
to touch every little thing
with life.

the dream that was the dream

as the winter wind closed
upon the year,
the clouds wept bitterly above.
i stopped dead, wondering if
it was all a dream,
the fog gathered
round me like a sheath.
still, i went further
to hunt the soft light
hiding behind hesitant corners.
small lambent wings
rummaged for harbor
through the shifting
crepuscular streets.

Featuring...an old favorite

Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I took a class on Hopkins a few years ago with about 12 other students and one Loren Wilkinson of Regent College. It has proved to be one of the most influential classes I've taken in my life. Hopkins' poetry is no mere feel-good art, nor has it perfect poetic meter. What it does have is the kind of theological depth that when tasted, nourishes for long periods of time. Here is a beauty:

Binsley Poplars

felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew -
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

its been awhile since i've posted anything on here... maybe it is due to a lag in inspiration, or maybe its been awhile since i had a chance to breathe.


blue lights burn dimly
through the grey shadow of night.
there are children in this city
orphans seeking bread
hunting down the dancing ribbons
that have strung life along
so far.
the darkness would spread
its hand over them, if it could.
but they hold within them the quiet seed
of the morning -
the everlasting morning -
a song that echoes without end
to which darkness has no threat.

sunlight

Sunlight
rests gently upon my sleeves,
sheltering
then moving
throughout the anxious turning
of the breeze.
A storm will no doubt arise
from beneath the layers of
such warm, dark
summer nights.
Wait
for the cloudburst torrent of rain
coming restlessly to wrap up the world
in its garments again.

the matrix

It's no a secret that I'm afraid
of a lot of things in this world.
All the right-winged left-brained people
keep telling me
(over and over)
that there is nothing to fear.
However -
because I am afraid of exactly them
- it doesn't help.
Help!

How can I tell you how I feel?
You are like the grass,
root and blade
growing into my heart.
You are always new life -
a fresh patch of pasture -
a sure place of rest.
My heart is different now,
green, soft, and ready.
In a world of drought,
You keep sprouting.

a favorite

The Old Poets of China


Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.


Mary Oliver

passing through

beauty has deep roots
and durable clothes on.
there is something earthy
and eternal in her walk
though we can't know
where she'll go next.
where she might crop up -
in the most unfavorable places,
most likely.
her journey is arduous,
grievous and far,
but the ground beneath her steps
pools with joy, every inch.