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David Walters: “watching sparrows”

David Walters: “watching sparrows”

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A wonderful poem about humility, about neither overstating or understating our own place among all God’s creatures …

watching sparrows

I don’t think that I like house sparrows.
Brassy, aggressive and flying in feathered gangs,
Scaring smaller chickadees, nuthatches and juncos
who are eating and singing their carols.
Sparrows can use their thick beaks like sharp fangs.

They crush and eat our cracked corn or sunflower seeds,
Pushing and shoving away even their own kindred.
They don’t wear prayer shawls, read a bible or use rosary beads,
Each one is too busy fighting for victory and to get ahead.

Then one day I watched a sparrow stop, and ponder,
Or so it seemed, as he reminded me of me.
Did he pause to see how hard he strove and did he wonder
Why he scrabbled all out to fill his belly in each deed?

Because I have often judged sparrows they may not like me.
But I see now they are only being who God created them to be.
And since in truth, “God’s eye is on the sparrow!”
He seems happy with them just as they are,
so maybe there is hope for you and me.

david walters
February 2015

David Walters: man of faith, husband, father, grandfather, poet, friend

David Walters: man of faith, husband, father, grandfather, poet, friend

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My heart is broken. I am devastated to learn today of the sudden death of my friend, David Walters. He and his wife, Debbie, were members of our church in Waterloo, Iowa, faithful and engaged members, careful and honest practitioners of their faith, both of them highly intelligent and introspective, unparalleled in their commitment not merely to mouth the values of the gospel, but to live them.

David WaltersDavid was a poet, sharing his poems with me during my tenure at the church and still as we have both lived in retirement half a country apart. His poems are sometimes hard to read, because they expose the world as it is in all its cruelty and hypocrisy and injustice, but never, never despairing, always holding up the bright light of hope, hope rooted in a compassionate and faithful God, for all to see.

I grieve for a world without David’s voice, his voice that will not let us look away from the hurt and need around us, his voice that prods our consciences and pricks our apathy, his voice that invites us to rest, to believe and to rest and to live, within the loving embrace of the Lord.

As a tribute to David, and as avenue to permit his voice to be heard still, I intend to publish here in my online journal in these days before Christmas some of the poems David has shared with me. I begin with a poem especially dear to me because it was written during a sojourn shared by David and Debbie and me and other dear friends from the First Congregational United Church of Christ to Scotland and the Isle of Iona. Here is his poem …

finding Iona

Soon, the moment will pass and Iona will be a memory.
But the pictures we colored in our minds each day,
Of Scotland’s undomesticated beauty and perfect symmetry,
Will long remain etched beyond what words can say.
Yet I believe that the heart of Iona is not in what we see.
It lies at the center of where we feel
The love of One who lived and died without asking a fee.
And now dances laughing with anyone who would be free.
The vision of Iona reminds us of what we forgot,
Of two people who walk side by side willing to accept the cost.
They are you and me, broken and lost,
Until by faith we joined hands and became one with Him
whom we sought.

david walters
May 2015,
Isle of Iona, Scotland

The Gift

The Gift

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(A new poem based on and inspired my introduction to yesterday’s sermon.)

it’s all gift
     old tree stump beside the path covered over with green moss sprouts new spruce seedlings of deeper green from its top
     oaks and maples and birches along the road dappled in ochre and magenta and burnt orange offer a last lingering visual treat before long months of unrelenting gray
     fire in the hearth sparks and crackles taking the edge off the chill and intimating deep mysteries of the universe in its dancing flames

it’s all gift
     eagle glides on still wings surveying its edgeless domain
     seal soars for a magical moment above the waves before plunging back into the sea
     young girl soars on a backyard swing freed from ground and gravity

it’s all gift
     young Misty speaks her Name to crawdads and crows and creeks and they speak their Names to her and the world is suddenly enlarged and I don’t want the novel to end
     young Sierra’s fingers dance fantastically over the strings of her mandolin and I don’t want the music to end
     old man climbs down the tawny scree slope nine miles and three summits in and I don’t want the hike to end

it’s all gift
     this earth, this life, my every breath

April 12, 2020

April 12, 2020

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Sunrise through the woods

April 12, 2020

Late winter snow blankets the ground
Vernal pools lie still and frozen
But the sun rises …

Existential dread blankets the globe
Self-isolating households hunker down
But the sun rises …

Doubts claw at the edge of consciousness
What if what we have known what we have been what we have loved
Will never be the same
But the sun rises …

An Easter dawns like no other Easter
Subdued, unravelled, disoriented
No gathered voices raised in alleluias, the shadow of death lingering into morning
But the Son rises …

Tim Ensworth
April 12, 2020

Coronavirus

Coronavirus

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Coronavirus

coronavirus
        invisible ravager of bodies and economies
        ineluctable disrupter of culture and the social fabric
        insidious sower of dread and despair
what you can’t see can hurt you

you and me
        shown to be like by our common vulnerability
        choosing to be like in listening carefully, thinking wisely, acting bravely
        reacting, adapting, embracing life as it is now for hope of what it will be
what you can see can heal you

Roque Island Haiku

Roque Island Haiku

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Encouraged by members of the Deer Isle Writers’ Group, I am trying my hand at writing haiku. Here is a series of ten haiku describing a circumnavigation of Roque Island that my son, Matt, and I did together several summers ago.

Roque Island

Fair day gentle wind
We launch from shore aflutter
A new adventure

Crescent beach tall cliffs
An astonishing vista
Even better shared

Sun on the water
Twin kayaks bob and glisten
Crossing Shorey Cove

Great Head looms starboard
Eight miles of voyage complete
Gratifying day

Sudden wind cold mist
Two miles of open water
Dare we make the crossing?

Dense fog obscures all
Clenching compass in my teeth
I paddle forward

Son in the water
Kayak upended by waves
Grim brume fills my heart

Rushing to rescue
We get him back in his boat
Brief lifting of fog

A glimpse of shoreline
Taking another bearing
We paddle with hope

Kayaks touch the beach
Alighting and approaching
Sharing happy hug

Soul

Soul

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Another poem, written today …

Soul

          wind, rock, shoreline, bay, mountain, island,
soul
          breath, horizon, ocean, headland, sun, tide,
soul
          Cadillac, Newbury Neck, Long Island, Naskeag, Isle au Haut, Megunticook,
soul

          what if soul is not contained within me
but me within soul?
          what if soul does not belong to me, “my soul”
but I belong to soul?

          what if I am what I appear to be
animated body: breathing, moving, lifting, eating, thinking, feeling, writing,
swimming, hoping, crying, laughing, reaching, growing, aging, dying, being?
          what if me is not some hidden, ethereal, immaterial , immortal soul
but what you see is what you get is me
          and soul, far from hidden, ethereal, immaterial, immortal
is like me, made of the same substance, made like me or me like soul?
          what if we are made not merely of the soil of the earth
but of the soul of the earth?

          when I look out from the outcropped granite on the southern flank of Blue Hill
          I do not merely see a view that pleases me
I see me,
          the me that is part of something much larger than me
soul
          and I am not merely in a place, but of a place
of this place

          wind, rock, shoreline, bay, mountain, island,
soul
          breath, horizon, ocean, headland, sun, tide,
soul
          Cadillac, Newbury Neck, Long Island, Naskeag, Isle au Haut, Megunticook,
soul
          in this moment, in this place, woods, pond, boulder, tree, you, me,
soul
          alike made of the soul of the earth
          in the image of God

Little Splat

Little Splat

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A poem I wrote today …

Little Splat

silent and still and slow,
    very slow
        is this what it is like to die?
silent and still and slow,
    very slow?

I am here for joy
    for the joy of emerald water
        pouring and twisting among grey boulders
        churning over drops and plunging into holes and piling up in frothy mounds
    for the joy of the dance
        pas de deux, me and the river
        lean, glissade, pirouette
    for the joy of comradeship
        eight days and eight of us, two thousand miles of road and sixty miles of stream
        paddling and paddling some more, talking paddling and dreaming paddling
    for the joy of the adventure
        Zoom Flume and First Island, Little Splat and Wonder Falls, Wonder Falls!
        launching boat and body over the lip of eighteen-foot Wonder Falls, exult!

and now,
silent and still and slow,
    very slow

not able to breathe, but able to see
    seeing only the subaqueous darkness
not able to move, but able to feel
    feeling canoe and me stuck, stuck between rocks, between foot pegs and saddle
able to think, but silent and still and slow,
    very slow
no panic, no terror, no dread, no self-pity, no despair, no regret
    only silence and stillness and slowness
and watching, watching myself, watching myself from outside myself
    and wondering, wondering, wondering
        is this what it is like to die?

I try again to move
    and I am out

there will be no dying today
    no second-guessing or rueing or wishing myself somewhere else
because I am here
    because I am here
because I am here for joy!

Timothy Ensworth

 

(In April 1991, I traveled to West Virginia with seven other members of the Maine Appalachian Mountain Club whitewater canoeing group. Along the way, we paddled the Indian and Hudson rivers in New York, and Stony Brook and Dark Shade and Shade Creeks in Pennsylvania. In West Virginia, we ran the Shavers Fork of the Cheat, the Middle Fork of the Tygart and Tygart Gorge, the Upper and Lower Big Sandy River, and the Cheat River. This poem comes from my descent of the Lower Big Sandy and a capsize at Little Splat.)