I saw a guillemot fall today off the nesting cliffs before it caught the wind; I saw it snatched by a seagull’s bill fast-disappearing in its maw. Lazarus-like it emerged again and I caught my breath for joy, when swept down another gull to swallow the fledgling whole.
Nature’s mien is none too keen on compassion for the young. The weak it passes over lightly as fodder for the strong. The world smiles at peace entraps hopeful souls then dogs of war do feed while songbirds chirp and children sing of innocence and joy.
What means this? cries the philosopher writing down his ethics. Why it’s nature versus nurture, exclaims the educationist. Oh, hollow man, feed on love, the poet strums a tune. The guillemot parents of a fledgling bird hear not the empty words. They see beyond a skeptic’s sight to an ordaining hand, and flying easy from an empty nest, they’ll return again in spring.
Oh God, who takes away and gives, our wounded hearts you see! O give us strength to bear the pain and rest in faith again. Our grief we give to you once more and pray our sight you’ll clear to see the hope of eternal days when tears no more we’ll fear.
I stand at the well at the desert’s end the camels noisy at the trough there’s the star blazing above me the night sky distraught with light. I, looking down as into a mirror, drawn to the abyss below.
The star grows preternaturally, soundless my cries echo it close, spilling embittered tears, so might the well’s bounds overflow, now the journey has been for nothing my hopes and fears for naught.
This cankered sore that my heart is this cauled face, disfigured husk, what the worldly-wise has given birth to, I sag to my knees and howl: there is no sorrow as impenetrable as knowing the road you’ve followed in the end was all a mirage.
Even as death hangs o’er me an eternal vision belies it; alone I stand under starlight alone I gaze at the night this wanderer as foolish as a beast wondering that the yawning darkness had not overtaken the light.
If birth is but a prelude to death what if death is the prelude to life? Here, across trackless sands following a star as bright as the morning shines to watch over me in the night; bemused I lift my eyes up to see a distant rise, there to see a babe born who set the star in the skies.
Slim, liminal, posterns of light these words given and received outskirting impossibilities and health-riven cheek-jowling pain absenting gormless vacuity, Jude not Judas, thirty pieces of silver husbandry of waterless clouds but faith’s Canaan vine-laden Jerusalem’s milk unfathomable peace Cross-borne recrudescence and a Kingdom come.
Eden’s light long since faded we no longer look to know or see as we once saw but question the light we possess, frugal, appalled at universal decay: but now You have come.
Contained within the palms of Your hands, not a leaf, not a flower, not a rock, not the universe in a grain of sand, but nails driven into You in whom we have our being.
You did not suffer apart from me as a celestial leaf in glory fallen shorn from root, tree, limb, but You in me, now dead, buried, risen to new life.
In this crucible of exile do not deny me now the fire of your Spirit along darkened veins, a reckoning, their pride of life burnt dry into joyous rivers of light.
Romans 6:22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
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
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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.)
