Category Archives: poetry

We long for the cool change.

nature, poetry, , ,

Many times in the last week, when Mr. Glad and I have put on our jackets and gone out the front door for a neighborhood walk, we have been confused by the pleasant springtime air, the sun shining down on us. Briefly pleased, then remembering that it all means drought. It’s a year when I can appreciate this Christmas poem.

ADVENT

And there was already light:
A stainless steel glare breaking through the eucalypts;
The sky enamel, cobalt-washed, lapis lazuli blue.

The north wind blew in from the desert:
Drowning in the hot scent of mock orange and ripe mango
We longed for the cool change and the sea breeze.

It was already the longest day:
Why should I await the Light of the World
When I already have a surfeit?

Into the crowded starry midnight,
The neon and electric city festival,
Into the early dawn jangling with birdsong,

Into my summer:
Then came the Christ Child into the brightness
And he was more than the sun.

— Katherine Firth

 

Thanks to Anna of Peacocks and Sunflowers for this poem that can be read with notes on the author’s site.

The Neighboring Sea

history, poetry, water,

For a few years of my life I lived a few blocks from the beach near Santa Barbara, California, but my world was so full of other kinds of excitement in those days that I gave very little thought to my neighboring kingdom. It pains me at this stage of life to think what I missed by not spending more time at the ocean’s edge or at least gazing from the cliffs.

I’m reminded of that experience when reading Anne Porter’s description in this poem. In the wee hours she is “remembering” what must have been as near in the daytime, just at the end of the street. It’s from her collection Living Things, which was given to me at Christmas. My husband read this poem first and shared it with me only this morning. Devils-apron is a type of kelp.

THE NEIGHBORING SEA

At three in the morning the village is all in silence
But the silence is afloat on the roar of the sea
And all the streets are bathed in the roar of the sea
The waves are at their labors
Cresting and flooding all along the shore
Tumbling and spinning the kelp and the devils-apron
Threshing to meal the morsels and crumbs of stone
And the light seashells with their storm-blue linings.

This is the time of day when I remember
That down at the end of the street there is an ocean
A Nation of fishes and whales
A sky-colored country stretching from here to Spain
A liquid kingdom dragged about by the moon.

-Anne Porter

Ke’anae Peninsula, Maui

The morning air is all awash with angels.

housework, poetry, ,



Lots of us homemakers, in the Northern Hemisphere anyway, are writing about laundry, as the summer sunshine makes it easy to use the fresh warm air to do part of the job. Cathy even posted a poem, which reminded me of my own favorite laundry poem. Funny, it’s from a man’s point of view, and written by a man who probably didn’t have too much direct experience, but maybe that’s why he could see not just the mundane and practical aspects, but the poetry and love of washing and drying the clothes of our fellow humans.
.

 Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

    The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
                          Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks; but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;
    Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                                       The soul shrinks
    From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd  day,
And cries,
                  “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”
    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
       “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in pure floating
Of dark habits,
                          Keeping their difficult balance.”
–Richard Wilbur

What the World Needs Now

love, poetry, quotes, , , , , ,

A recent confluence of thoughts began with hate and destruction, in a blog post from Fr. George:

When we dream about changing the world, we are expressing our own dissatisfaction with it, and thus our rejection and disdain for it. Can you really change something you hate? Not really. What you really want to do is kill it. We want to destroy the world to build one of our own liking.

To love is to accept things as they are, calling the good as good and the bad as bad, and not needing to change them in order to accept them. The truth is you can only change yourself, and even there we have limits because we were all made in certain ways and some things were not made to change.

Fr. George’s exhortation to love and accept “things as they are” brought to mind this poem by Mary Oliver that I have posted in the past:

MESSENGER

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

When I pay attention, I can hear that a message is always being sent my way, a choice is set before me every day, and on some days it seems to come every few minutes: Will I receive life, and my life, as a gift, or will I fight against what is handed to me, and try to create my own life and self the way I see fit?

I’m familiar with the teaching from wise church fathers that acceptance is a large part of humility. And when I read this passage from Metropolitan Anthony (from “Meditations on a Theme”) it seemed to go right along with these other expressions I’ve gathered here, on what should be my attitude in this life I’ve been made steward over. Met. Anthony credits St. Theophan as the source of his comments about how the earth can teach us:

Just think about what earth is. It lies there in silence, open, defenseless, vulnerable before the face of the sky. From the sky it receives scorching heat, the sun’s rays, rain, and dew. It also receives what we call fertilizer, that is, manure—everything that we throw into it. And what happens? It brings forth fruit. And the more it bears what we emotionally call humiliation and insult, the more fruit it yields.

Thus, humility means opening up to God perfectly, without any defenses against Him, the action of the Holy Spirit, or the positive image of Christ and His teachings. It means being vulnerable to grace, just as in our sinfulness we are sometimes vulnerable to harm from human hands, from a sharp word, a cruel deed, or mockery. It means giving ourselves over, that it be our own desire that God do with us as He wills. It means accepting everything, opening up; and then giving the Holy Spirit room to win us over.

This week I’m getting ready for a trip to the mountains, to My Lake (see posts with the label cabin). I’ll be getting the garden watered, and in the mountains I’ll be seeing lots of earth and its fruiting forests and wildflowers. I will try to take it all as a reminder to open up and give the Holy Spirit room.