Category Archives: poetry

Expect kissing and fruit.

poetry, Psalms, ,

The poetry of this Psalm enlivens my spirit with its many action verbs that evoke the overflowing love and energies of God as we humans experience Him, being turned, quickened, gladdened; hearing our Father speak peace and living in His Kingdom where righteousness and peace kiss, truth springs up, and fruit naturally grows on the trees.

O God, Thou wilt turn and quicken us,
and Thy people shall be glad in Thee.

Show us, O Lord, Thy mercy,
and Thy salvation do Thou give unto us.

I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me;
for He will speak peace to His people and to His saints
and to them that turn their heart unto Him.

Surely nigh unto them that fear Him is His salvation,
that glory may dwell in our land.

Mercy and truth are met together,
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth is sprung up out of the earth,
and righteousness hath looked down from heaven.

Yea, for the Lord will give goodness,
and our land shall yield her fruit.

Righteousness shall go before Him
and shall set His footsteps in the way.

-From Psalm 84

Hummingbirds were stopping over.

poetry, ,

GIFT

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

-Czesław Miłosz
Berkeley, 1971

Man in His Garden by Gregg Caudell

 

Raised by their heat and light.

friends, poetry, prayer, saints,

HE WANTS NOT FRIENDS THAT HATH THY LOVE

He wants not friends that hath thy love,
And may converse and walk with thee
And with thy saints, here and above,
With whom forever I must be.

Within the fellowship of saints
Is wisdom, safety and delight;
And when my heart declines and faints,
It’s raisèd by their heat and light.

As for my friends, they are not lost:
The several vessels of thy fleet
Though parted now, by tempests tossed,
Shall safely in the haven meet.

We still are centred all in thee,
Though distant, members of one Head;
Within one family we be,
And by one faith and spirit led.

Before thy throne we daily meet
As joint-petitioners to thee;
In spirit each the other greet,
And shall again each other see.

The heavenly hosts, world without end,
Shall be my company above;
And thou, my best and surest Friend,
Who shall divide me from thy love?

-Richard Baxter 1615-1691

What is all your argument?

poetry, politics, reality,

POLITICS

You say a thousand things,
Persuasively,
And with strange passion hotly I agree,
And praise your zest,
And then
A blackbird sings
On April lilac, or fieldfaring men,
Ghostlike, with loaded wain,
Come down the twilit lane
To rest,
And what is all your argument to me?

Oh yes — I know, I know,
It must be so —
You must devise
Your myriad policies,
For we are little wise,
And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep
Too fast a sleep
Far from the central world’s realities.
Yes, we must heed —
For surely you reveal
Life’s very heart; surely with flaming zeal
You search our folly and our secret need;
And surely it is wrong
To count my blackbird’s song,
My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,
More than a world of dream.

But still
A voice calls from the hill —
I must away —
I cannot hear your argument to-day.

-John Drinkwater, 1917

Van Gogh, Lilac Bush