A Believer's Journal

Victory disguises itself over time
Toil and trouble tarnish the sublime
Duty and drudgery dominate the mind
While once-firm beliefs inexorably unwind
And hopes and dreams are left behind
But what will be is no less certain
We only wait to raise the curtain

I am of the ground
lumpy and misshapen
not yet beautiful
but in the eye of your imagining

You knead me and you shape me
the image conceived in your mind now birthed in my body
its curves and edges sculpted under the careful caress of your fingers
its form reflecting the wonder of your genius

Like the clay in the potter’s hands
so am I in your hands

A poem written this morning in response to an image painted by Gebre Kristos Desta, an Ethiopian painter and poet.

Blood.
Blood red,
battered, scattered, splattered.
Is this what we do best,
build cravenly cruel machines —
crosses and guillotines, gas chambers and nuclear submarines —
to batter and scatter and splatter
blood?
Blood red,
blood of hundreds of Ukrainians and hundreds of thousands of Syrians
blood of a million Cambodians and six million Jews,
blood of three thousand New Yorkers and forty thousand Nagasakians, your
blood.
Blood red,
brightly, brilliantly red,
battered but vibrant,
scattered but brimming with energy,
splattered but pulsating with life.
Blood.
Life blood.
Life is in the blood. Life is in your
blood.

Three short poems written this morning playing with rhyme …

Out of the muck

What luck
Got my truck
Out of the muck
In which it was stuck

1 John 4:18

Spiders and snakes,
heights and quakes.
Strangers and failure,
Loneliness and censure.
Falling and flying,
losing and dying.
All of our years,
filled with fears
nothing can alleviate,
nothing can ameliorate,
nothing can attenuate,
but love.

Listening to Bela Fleck’s “My Bluegrass Heart”

What fun! the fiddle diddles and dances
while banjo clucks and mandolin prances.
Bravo! the bass galumphs and ambles,
as dobro glissades and guitar gambols.
Bela and Michael, Molly and Sierra,
Justin and Mark, a bluegrass coloratura.

it is not merely the notes that matter
but the spaces between them
          and the silence

four arms and four appended bows unmoving, suspended in air
the last vibrations of violin and viola and cello strings now unheard
yet indelibly etched into feeling and memory by that exquisite moment
          of silence

breath and bones and bosom seized by the sudden cry of the loon
its ebbing wail pulling water and wood and paddle and body into its ineffable yearning
yet its power to transfix, transform, transcend is released in what follows
          in the silence

it is not merely the words that matter
but the spaces between them
          and the silence

the poem speaks as much by what is left unwritten
and the sermon by what is left unsaid
the Lord is in his holy temple, let all on earth
          keep silence

A poem I wrote at this morning’s Deer Isle Writers’ Group gathering …

two leaves
two branches
two towering maples

two owls
two seals
two frolicking weasels

two moose
two geese
two chittering mouses

two wolves
two leopards
two rollicking orcas

two notes
two melodies
two shimmering symphonies

two hours
two days
two sun-drenched mornings

two words
two sentences
two soul-baring prayers

two
two
two

that there are two is a wonder
a communion
a not being alone

I am glad for two
I am glad for two
I am glad for me and you

“I will remember that who I am is a figment of my imagination.”
      Then is who you are a figment of your imagination?
      Or is it that you too are a figment of mine?
Is it that all that I can name is a figment of my imagination?
      Homo sapiens, canis lupus, thymus vulgaris, salvelinus fontinalis?
      Mountain, forest, prairie, sea?

I will remember that who I am is a figment of my imagination,
      and that from imagination comes all the rest too:
      me, you, us, them, a world, this world.
If there were no one to imagine, then nothing would be.
      Imagination names and naming identifies and identity is being,
      a clutter of atoms becomes some thing, some one.

In the beginning all was formless and desolate and God said.
      The saying is the making.
      The naming is the birthing.
I will remember that who I am is a figment of God’s imagination,
      I and you, quaking aspen and chipping sparrow, spring tide and aurora borealis,
      all of us, all of this, a figment of God’s imagination.

Thanks be to God.