Since my last poem, “October Fire,” I encountered “The Bright Field” by R. S. Thomas, a Welsh poet and Anglican priest of the last century. It’s theme of illumination is so allied to mine (though its poetic genius far eclipses mine) that I’d like to share it with you, that it might enflame and brighten your heart with hope. We are living in times that make us distrust the very leaders and experts that vie for our trust, and suspect the motives of those who claim to speak for the general welfare, for the sick, the poor and the oppressed. Our hopes have been misplaced if they have been placed on men and women. In the days leading up to our national election, let us pray that many will turn to the only true source of hope, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and reach out again to their neighbor on every street and every corner with grace and love.
A field in the Shenandoah Valley
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
Once, a child alone when October came I hear his footsteps just in the next room and when I rush to see him there he wasn’t there. He was everywhere.
Much later I cross a river, climb the embankment of trees, upwards to the plains, dry and dusty their breath, until I choke, my breath raw diseased, my bones on fire, the pain rasping pits of agony, feet twisted into unnatural screws. He stands clothed like a burning bush in wilderness autumn’s cloak across the mountaintop a fire unnatural, burning yet not burning for blind eyes to see, deaf ears to hear, “I AM.”
Now as another October comes I feel him near, the warmth of his presence a river running through the weatherized windows and doors, invisibly clear.
I know this darkness before light I know this voice before sound I know this death in life where bush burns but is not consumed.
I wait.
Mish's Open Link Night #275
Click on Mr. Linky for more poems and join in.
It’s a paper moon in a darling’s tomb On the wallpaper in the green-lit gloom There a swallow-tail with a robin’s breast Speaks an omen of a tailor dressed In a silk-hat heavy on his balding pate A dark coat collared, the pants of slate Graveyard shoes that steal starlight An iron key balanced and held upright. Off he flew from the paper moon Left a keyhole remark like an empty tune Sung by a voice in the gloaming mist Heard by a tailor holding in one fist Secrets stitched by a loveless hand On a flightless bird o’er a clouded land.
Floral display in front of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, August 2020; Copyright Debbie Smyth; Used by permission
Unspoken Stretches
The newly sprung Black-Eyed Susans, the weighty towers of St. Paul’s, Touch the sky equally, centuried grandiose the one, the other idly, Like the newborn in her pram reaching talcumed arms to a light blue Or the redoubtable keen-eyed woman, confined within, searching clouds, Hope-stretched each, bodies strung diversely, each her own, Stalwart with suffering and age, supple green in yearning: My God, not to touch the sky, but that You would touch our faces And by that material touch, transfigure space and time to glory, joy unspeakable.
2 Corinthians 3:18And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Revelation 22:20He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
Father of the trumpeting air and the setting sun the purple skies and rainbow grasses flapping ears and ardent eyes grasshoppers dancing with the breezes thunder of my feet singing of the stars beating of my heart, I thank You whose hands have made whose breath gives life to me.
God of the aurora glorious invisible Light of lights towering, blazing across glacial mountains and hearts over blue ice, silver melts, resounding majesty of fiery life bursting, joyous song of sky and sea in solitary havens of the northern vasts, I thank You whose hands have made whose breath gives life to me.
Ah, God of the waters, You who laughs into the inky darkness of the sea across floors of the cavernous deep to arms that embrace liquid melodies as anemones sway and the fishes race currents that play as tentacles trace buried landscapes, coral castles rising to unbroken nights where moonlight shimmers across my eyes, I thank You whose hands have made whose breath gives life to me.
Master of the universal grains of sand, where wrinkled feet that plod in burning heat find cactus bread and succulent juice treasures raining immeasurable mottled lee of rock and flowers that fade then rise like fallen sun and distant moon reappearing wondrous from spacious shell, I thank You whose hands have made whose breath gives life to me.
Great Lord and King, hidden Wanderer painting forests of pale brook-riven beech shades that ripple in gray-patched play on bark and grass, lantern-lit, daylight falling through canopied sky of quick-silver leaves whisper, break and bend the golden light to clothe supple burnt-orange strides of an elemental frame, I thank You whose hands have made whose breath gives life to me.
Psalm 98: 4-6Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD!
Genesis 2: 4-7 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up–for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground– then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Lyrics: Salvator mundi, salva nos, qui per crucem et sanguinem redemisti nos. Auxiliare nobis, te deprecamur, Deus noster. (Translation: Saviour of the world, save us, thou who by thy cross and blood hast redeemed us. Come to our rescue, we beseech thee, our God.)
Some of the happiest moments in my life have been spent in church. Some of the dullest too, thanks to a sluggish spiritual frame. But nothing can withstand the sheer love of God shed abroad in our heart by His Spirit.
Those moments are intensely personal and intensely communal: my union with Christ paralleling my union with His church.
How can I explain, but by likening them to the sweet psalmist’s when he exclaimed to the Lord: “you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever” (Psalm 23: 5-6).
Since March, millions of us around the world have been restricted from going to church because of COVID-19, either because of regional restrictions or because our health and/or our age puts us in a high-risk category.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: This week’s CFFC topic is Special Request: Wilting, dead or aging flowers and leaves.
The topic is fitting somehow. This week I finished the last pages of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light (2020). I had dreaded what was coming, so thoroughly had Thomas Cromwell and the world of 16th-century England peopled my imagination, a testimony to Mantel’s literary genius (see Well Met, Jude: Mann & Mantel).
Excited to announce the writer at WalliesWentletrap’s latest: her novel Good To Be Bad, a half comic-satire and half tension-filled, suspenseful young adult novel that takes you on a roller-coaster ride through the world of teenage angst in a dystopic landscape.
Good To Be Bad Are you a supervillain? If so, this may be the super-evil book you’ve been waiting for!
At Walkawai’s Academy for the best and most villainous minds, Kay Nutter is bullied for her name, her style, her size. Her foster parents’ advice? Bully them back. Kay is determined to be the worst, the meanest person ever. That’s alright. Lex Lattimer has picked tonight, of all nights, to be “Good” for her.
Good To Be Bad is now available and free on Kindle Unlimited.
If you’re not familiar with A. A. Azariah’s work, check out this link for a listing of her published short stories and poems.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: This week our topic is Shadows and reflections. Be creative if you feel like it, and fun with this challenge this week. Remember your photos need to be black and white, desaturated, sepia (brown tones) or selective color.
