The Calm

Our storm is past, and that storm’s tyrannous rage,

A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth ‘suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady’as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress’ glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now; and, as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir’d church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,
Like courts removing, or like ended plays.
The fighting-place now seamen’s rags supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.
Earth’s hollownesses, which the world’s lungs are,
Have no more wind than the upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes’ jaws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboil’d wretches, on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encag’d, the shepherds’ scoff,
Or like slack-sinew’d Samson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th’ emperor’s lov’d snake invade,
The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.
Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov’d and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push’d me first,
I lose my end; for here, as well as I,
A desperate may live, and a coward die.
Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies.
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay
A scourge, ‘gainst which we all forget to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas,
Is man now, than before he was? He was
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

--John Donne (1572-1631), English priest, poet, and essayist

Scripture reference: Matthew 14:22-33, Proper 14A

On the Parables of the Mustard Seed

Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.

No. He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,

was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
                Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.

Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique –
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,

as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom

                                                a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.

The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.

--Denise Levertov (1923-1997) Anglo-American poet, daughter of a Hasidic father who became an Anglican priest; his daughter was an agnostic, but converted to Catholicism later in life.

Image: James B. Janknegt, World's Smallest Seed

Scriptural reference: Proper 12A, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52; Proper 21C, Luke 17:5-10; 

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

--Jane Hirshfield (1953- ), American poet, translator, and essayist, from Of Gravity & Angels, 1988

Scriptural reference: Romans 18:12-25

Aftermath

When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.

--Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet, essayist, translator, and teacher

Scripture reference: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Weeds

My emerald legions, how tall you have grown:
so many. With what supernatural speed

you overlord the weakest in the garden—
frizzled hydrangeas, sere mint, sun-starved basil.

Tousle-headed, you can see the sky
above the cowering, defeated plots.

This is your day of triumph: Eager sugars
rise up through your ramifying stalks.

And I allowed it. My cool inattention
found good reasons to look the other way,

since all that grows is good, or so I thought.
How soon would height recall high thoughts, and yet,

if I uproot you now, how I would miss you.
Sweet knotgrass, heartsick briar, purple thistle.

Even tilled up, the garden wouldn’t be
as it was when I played here years ago

and my grandmother warned me, since I’d gotten
lanky, not to grow too fast. She lived

to be a hundred, early years wiped clean
from her memory, all except for this:

a vague lightness, as though a sense of wings
lifted her above the loamy ground,

and all she thought of, as the wind upheld her,
was of falling, how tenuous her flight.

Or so I imagine. Though half her age,
I, too, can’t quite remember what it was like

to feel light-footed, open to the sun,
without the clogging stems elbowing out

what I had meant when I first planted here:
larkspur, geraniums, cilantro, lime.

--David Yezzi (1966- ), American poet, editor, librettist, and teacher