Poets’ Corner
Trinities
I the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost (I John 5: 7) The spirit, the Word, and the Father –Three in One – from eternity, gatheredThe earth, sky, and waters together. II the spirit and the water and the blood (I John 5: 8) The spirit, the water, the bloodBear witness on earth…
Words
Let me not hasten words, as wind the leaves Of fretful autumn’s dissipating dither, Which all the rains of spring, and breath he breathes, Fail utterly to wake or make un-wither. May buds that burgeon out from tender reaching, Rooted deep in thoughts that take their time Ripen most from patience’ trammels teaching Tendrils surely,…
The Rose Window
by Rainer Maria Rilke In there, the languid pacing of their paws creates a stillness that can almost daze; then one of the great cats abruptly draws your gaze (which periodically strays) forcefully into its great eye, and there your gaze, held fast as if within the whirl of a maelstrom, stays afloat a little…
Postscript: at the ruins of St Mary on the Rocks, St Andrews
From Caledonian Postcards Was it just legal fiction brought us here?The batteryIs silent on the question, gone cold for fearThey’d wake the dead. They won’t but you know me—A “ruin bibber,” unreformed, Romantic. The morning’s clear, if cold. I sit in choir,Intone a requiem in foreign diction.Communed with gulls, asperged by the Atlantic,Would that I sang…
To Reap the Whirlwind
When, loud and lauded, grifters drift along Who crease their purple pants and sable jackets, I think to beg my memory for a song That bundles sunshine up in yellow packets. Sometimes, however, all I hear is a racket. When funnel clouds demolish mobile homes, We lose both cozy throws and stylish chromes.
Ordinary Time
On a sweeter day of sun and windy sky, The hermit stands in his doorway drinking tea. Though spring declares itself, it’s only January. These gentle southern mountains seem to sigh With longing. Above the trees, a hawk’s thin cry Unspools, a silver thread of hunger. He Listens. Hears his heart’s reply, its plea For…
The Endurance of Memory
My sister Laurene at twenty returns as a vision: a young bride, slender in a blue suit carrying a simple bouquet of white flowers. It’s May 31st, the 35th anniversary of her death,warm and sunny in the Gulf South as hurricaneseason approaches. I am not surprised by this image, remembering her years before she bore…
The Ebbing
She was beginning to mislay our names And also where she came from, who she was— Her childhood inside house and orchard walls, The fruit as warm as sunshine on her palm: The words that should have held the world fell back. Yet in her gestures, there was mystery And something luminous that tried to…
Grey Stone
From youth this cool, grey stone enchanted me, Its beauty one with its simplicity: The Archer of Aphaia poised to strike, Or mighty Neptune with his triple spike, The pointed arches of the Notre-Dame, Ascending heavenward with perfect calm: Their colors were but subtlety and shade, Nor garish nor flamboyant, rather made of naught but…