Kiss

    

When Lynne saw the lizard floating

in her mother-in-law’s swimming pool,
she jumped in. And when it wasn’t
breathing, its body limp as a baby
drunk on milk, she laid it on her palm
and pressed one fingertip to its silky breast
with just about the force you need
to test the ripeness of a peach, only quicker,
a brisk little push with a bit of spring in it.
Then she knelt, dripping wet in her Doc Martens
and camo T-shirt with the neck ripped out,
and bent her face to the lizard’s face,
her big plush lips to the small stiff jaw
that she’d pried apart with her opposable thumb,
and she blew a tiny puff into the lizard’s lungs.
The sun glared against the turquoise water.
What did it matter if she saved one lizard?
One lizard more or less in the world?
But she bestowed the kiss of life,
again and again, until
the lizard’s wrinkled lids peeled back,
its muscles roused its own first breath
and she set it on the hot cement
where it rested a moment
before darting off.

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ), American poet, editor, and author

How to Apologize

   

Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton
you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying
silver carp that's invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling
the others into oblivion. If you don't live
near a lake, you'll have to travel.
Walking is best and shows you mean it,
but you could take a train and let yourself
be soothed by the rocking
on the rails. It's permitted
to receive solace for whatever you did
or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful
human. When my mother was in the hospital,
my daughter and I had to clear out the home
she wouldn't return to. Then she recovered
and asked, incredulous,
How could you have thrown out all my shoes?
So you'll need a boat. You could rent or buy,
but, for the sake of repairing the world,
build your own. Thin strips
of Western red cedar are perfect,
but don't cut a tree. There'll be
a demolished barn or downed trunk
if you venture further.
And someone will have a mill.
And someone will loan you tools.
The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours. Each night
we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night
we could dream back everything lost.
So grill the pale flesh.
Unharness yourself from your weary stories.
Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.
There is much to fear as a creature
caught in time, but this
is safe. You need no defense. This
is just another way to know
you are alive.

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ), American poet, editor, and author

Image: Alfred Sisley, Fish On a Plate, 1865-1867

Mused Mary in Old Age

   

The lengthening shadows of the cedar trees

Have blended into twilight, and the sun 

Has plunged in glorious gold precipitance 

Beyond the dim crest of the western hills, 

Bearing with it the day’s disquietudes; 

And now the stars, that lamp the feet of God, 

Are lighted, and night’s purple silences 

Steal gently round me fraught with memories. 

’Twas such an hour as this—long, long ago 

Yet seeming yesterday—he came to me, 

My little son, in joyous travail born 

Out there across the hills in Bethlehem, 

Where we who journeyed southward to be taxed— 

Strangers in our own father’s land—had found 

No shelter in the crowded khan, and shared, 

Perforce, a grotto with the stabled kine. 

 Ah, how it all comes back again to me! 

The courtyard, in the flickering torchlight, filled 

With huddled trav’lers sleeping ’neath the sky, 

The kneeling camels of a caravan, 

The patient asses dozing by the wall, 

A smell of roasting meat at little fires, 

The shouts of melon-sellers, the low drone 

Of reverend elders bending at their prayers, 

Barking of street-dogs, porters’ blasphemies, 

The laughter of a girl, the mellow flute 

Of some rapt lover, and the tinkling tune 

Of sheep-bells forward moving through the dark.

And then the hour supreme, wherein my soul 

Clomb the dark pinnacles of pain, and death 

Grappled with life through whirling aeoned years,

But fled at length and left the Miracle. 

 They laid him there beside me on the hay, 

A wee pink being in his world’s first sleep; 

My arm was round about him and his breath 

Was warm with life on my exultant breast, 

And they whose winged watch is set to keep 

Ward in the valley lands of heaven looked down,

Not up, that night to find their paradise. 

All weak with labor and soul’s happiness, 

I lay beneath the sapphire tent of skies, 

And in my heart I made a little prayer 

Of thanks that flew up to the throne of God 

On swift dove pinions of unuttered song; 

And as I prayed, lo, upon loops of stars 

Night’s velvet curtainings were lifted up, 

A wondrous light turned all the world to rose, 

And down the skies swept singing seraphim 

In mighty echoes of my little prayer. 

Oh, can it be that threescore years have marched 

In troubled caravan across the waste 

Of desert life since then, and can it be 

That I, who sit here in mine eventide, 

White with the snows of sorrow and of time,

Was once a bright tressed girl who heard the choirs 

Of heaven rejoice that she had borne a son? 

Why, I can feel that little heart beat still 

Close to my own, the touch of little hands 

Warm and caressing on this withered breast; 

Still I can hear the first low wail that marked 

His woe’s beginning and the tortured path 

That he should tread in mighty gentleness, 

With pain and anguish, ’til his love supreme 

And terrible meekness, overcoming death, 

Should lead him conqueror to sit with God, 

Pleading for sinful men in paradise. 

Today I stole into the synagogue 

And heard a rabbi read the sacred scroll: 

How that my lord, Isaiah, said of old, 

Thy Maker is thy husband, he hath called thee 

As a forsaken woman, spirit grieved; 

God, for a little moment, hides his face 

From thee, but with his loving kindness soon 

And tender mercies shall he gather thee. 

Then was I comforted, and peace displaced 

The turmoil in my heart, and minded me 

Of that great promise Gabriel bore from God 

And the immeasurable fruitage of his word, 

The life and death and glory of my son. 

 So in the shades of life and night I sit, 

Under the sheltering arbor of the dark 

That curves above, vined o’er with trellised stars, 

Waiting my spirit bridegroom, and the sound 

Of that loved voice—long silent save in dreams— 

Calling across the vibrant firmament, 

O Mary, Mother Mary, come to Me.

-- George M. P. Baird (1887-1970), American poet, professor, and civil servant

Image: The Virgin Mary in Old Age, by James Tissot

In Oklahoma

When you leave a Real City, as Gertrude Stein did, and go to 

Oakland, as she did, you can say, as she did, there is no there, there. 

When you are a Hartford insurance executive, as Wallace Stevens was, 

and you have never been to Oklahoma, as he had not, you can invent 

people to dance there, as he did, and you can name them Bonnie and 

Josie. But a THERE depends on how, in the beginning, the wind 

breathes upon its surface. Shh: amethyst, sapphire. Lead. Crystal 

mirror. See, a cow-pond in Oklahoma. Under willows now, so the 

Osage man fishing there is in the shade. A bobwhite whistles from his 

fencepost, a hundred yards south of the pond. A muskrat-head draws 

a nest of Vs up to the pond’s apex, loses them there in the reeds and 

sedges where a redwing blackbird, with gold and scarlet epaulets 

flashing, perches on the jiggly buttonwood branch. Purple martins 

skim the pond, dip and sip, veer and swoop, check, pounce, crisscross 

each other’s flashing paths. His wife in the Indian Hospital with 

cancer. Children in various unhappiness. White clouds sail slowly 

across the pure blue pond. Turtles poke their heads up, watch the 

Indian man casting, reeling, casting, reeling. A bass strikes, is hooked, 

fights, is reeled in, pulls away again, is drawn back, dragged ashore,

 put on the stringer. In Oklahoma, Wally, here is Josie’s father. 

Something that is going to be nothing, but isn’t. Watch: now he takes 

the bass home, cleans and fries it. Shall I tell you a secret, Gert? 

You have to be there before it’s there. Daddy, would you pass them a plate 

of fish? See friends, it’s not a flyover here. Come down from your 

planes and you’ll understand. Here.

--- Carter Revard (1931- 2022), poet, writer, Rhodes scholarship recipient, English professor at Washington University in St. Louis, medievalist, and member of the Osage nation

The Theory of Prayer

Not in the streets, not in the white streets
Nor in the crowded porticoes
Shall we catch You in our words,
Or lock You in the lenses of our cameras,
You Who escaped the subtle Aristotle,
Blinding us by Your evidence,
Your too clear evidence, Your everywhere.

Not in the groves, not in the flowering green groves
Where the pretty idols dwell
Shall we find the path to Your pavilion
Tented in clouds and fire:—
We are only following the echo
Of our own lyres.

The wise man’s blood
Freezes in every vein and artery
With the blue poison of his own indelible prudence.
And the lover,
Caught in the loop of his own lie
Strangles like a hare:
While the singers are suddenly killed,
Slain by the blades of their own song—
The words that clash like razors in the throat
Severing the tender strings.

For the things that we utter turn and betray us,
Writing the names of our sins on flesh and bone
In lights as hard as diamonds.
And the things we think have sold us to the enemy
Writing the names of our sins on the raw marrow
In lights as sharp as glass.
And our desires,
Uncovering their faces one by one
Are seen to be our murderers!
How did you break your jails, you black assassins?
How did you find us out, you numbered men?

Logic has ruined us,
Theorems have flung their folly at us,
Economy has left us full of swords
And all our blood is gone:
Oh, how like a death, now, is our prayer become!
We lie and wait upon the unknown Savior
Waking and waking in the guarded tomb. . . .

But the armed ocean of peace,
The full-armed ocean is suddenly within us.
Where, where, peace, did you get in?
And the armed ocean of quiet,
The full armed ocean, stands within us:
Where, from what wells, hid in the middle of our essence,
You silences, did you come pouring in?

But all our thoughts lie still, and in this shipwreck
We’ll learn the theory of prayer:
“How many hate their own safe death,
Their cell, their submarine!”
“How many hate Your Cross, Your Key, the only one
To beat that last invincible door
That will surprise us, Peace, with Your invasion
And let us in those soundless fathoms where You dwell.”

-- Thomas Merton (1915-1968) Roman Catholic monastic, priest, poet, and author

Driving in Oklahoma

    

On humming rubber along this white concrete,
lighthearted between the gravities
of source and destination like a man
halfway to the moon
in this bubble of tuneless whistling
at seventy miles an hour from the windvents,
over prairie swells rising
and falling, over the quick offramp
that drops to its underpass and the truck
thundering beneath as I cross
with the country music twanging out my windows,
I’m grooving down this highway feeling
technology is freedom’s other name when
—a meadowlark
comes sailing across my windshield
with breast shining yellow
and five notes pierce
the windroar like a flash
of nectar on mind,
gone as the country music swells up and drops
                         me wheeling down
           my notch of cement-bottomed sky
                        between home and away
and wanting
to move again through country that a bird
has defined wholly with song,
and maybe next time see how

                          he flies so easy, when he sings.

-- Carter Revard (1931-2022), poet, writer, Rhodes scholarship recipient, English professor at Washington University in St. Louis, medievalist, and member of the Osage nation

The One Who Turned Back

The Ten Lepers, Jorge Cocco Sántangelo

      

(Luke 17:11-19)


Ten shattered bodies cried out
for mercy.

Quaking voices carried across distance
propelled by desperation,
a white sail of hope against hope,

their plea not answered in words. Only
"Show yourselves to be confirmed as clean"
and off they ran, aching
to cast off the smothering weight
of exile, the shunning
of those who affirmed their suffering
as mark of curse.

Each step feeling lighter, they rushed on,
all but one. The one who,
even when cleansed, would be
scorned as a mangy mongrel.
Doubly outcast,
his most tenuous claim to hope
convicted the wary heart, and
ignited the fragile embers of faith.

Perhaps for him, the gift
loomed larger, the removal
of living death more precious, the kindness
the more radiant
for being given despite barriers.

Mercy admits no calculus
of worthiness;
gratitude respects no boundary.
One turned back to rejoice and sing out thanks
from the dust.

Ten were cleansed.
One was healed.

-- Leslie Barnes Scoopmire

Fungus on Fallen Alder at Lookout Creek

     

Florid, fluted, flowery petal, flounce

of a girl’s dress, ruffled fan,
striped in what seems to my simple eye
an excess of extravagance,
intricately ribboned like a secret
code, a colorist’s vision of DNA.
At the outermost edge a scallop
of ivory, then a tweedy russet,
then mouse gray, a crescent
of celadon velvet, a streak of sleek seal brown,
a dark arc of copper, then butter,
then celadon again, again butter, again
copper and on into the center, striped thinner
and thinner to the green, green moss-furry heart.
How can this be necessary?
Yet it grows and is making more
of itself, dozens and dozens of tiny starts, stars
no bigger than a baby’s thumbnail,
all of them sucking one young dead tree
on a gravel bank that will be washed away
in the next flooding winter. But isn’t the air here
cool and wet and almost unbearably sweet?

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ) American poet and  Chancellor Emeritus of the American Academy of Poets

Jesus Feeds the Birds

And it’s not always pretty.

Those lilies clothed in Solomon’s splendor
splotch with the leftover tufts

of field mice. For every hummingbird
darting at an orchid, every goldfinch
nibbling a quivering primrose stalk,

is an osprey disemboweling a flounder
or a golden eagle snapping
a badger’s neck midair. They do not

sow or heap seed heads in barns.
They swoop and pluck
in the moment, just as their meals

suddenly find themselves
sliding down a gullet. Of course I can’t
forget them, the ragged spirits of prey,

the grains and spores that never
had a chance to germinate. The dead
scamper and bloom in the shadow

of my wings, spreading and trailing
in a train of many colors, and oh,
the conversations we have.

-----Tania Runyan, NEA fellow, and poet

Scripture reference: Luke 12:22-31, 11th Sunday after Pentecost C

Sonnet: Prayer

     

Was it in Sunday school that we were taught
That prayer only counted when by rote;
This notion somehow lodged deep when we thought
To talk to God as if reciting quotes?
The words staccato sounds in breathless rhymes-- 
To bless our relatives, while half-asleep;
Confessing each day’s sins with guilty minds;
The fear of “praying God our souls to keep.”

We never thought that God might answer back.
We never thought to listen without words:
To feel God’s hand in midnight’s sacred black,
To hear God’s blessing in the song of birds,
To make a grateful bowl within each heart,
To practice prayer as welcome and as art.

------------------Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, 2025

Refugee Blues

Jewish refugees flowing Hitler aboard the M. S. St. Louis in 1939. They were turned away in Ellisville Europe, Cuba, and the US.

    

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said:
“If you’ve got no passport, you’re officially dead”;
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
“If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread”;
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: “They must die”;
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

---W. H. Auden (1907- 1973) seminal British-American poet, and Pulitzer Prize winner for The Age of Anxiety. He wrote this poem in 1939 in response to the flood of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and being turned away throughout Europe and even in the United States.

You can learn more about the M.S. St. Louis here and here.

[Hosanna! Welcome to Our Hearts, Lord]

    

Hosanna! Welcome to our hearts! Lord, here
Thou hast a temple too; and full as dear
As that of Sion, and as full of sin:
Nothing but thieves and robbers dwell therein:
Enter, and chase them forth, and cleanse the floor:
Crucify them, that they may never more
Profane that holy place
Where Thou hast chose to set Thy face!

—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)

Image: Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), Christ Overturning the Money Changers' Table

Scripture reference: John 2:13-22; Daily Office Year 1, Tuesday after 1st Sunday in Lent

Sign of the Cleansing of the Temple

   

Since His twelfth year, He year by year went up
To the temple with His kinsfolk. But this year
The Lord of the temple to His temple came,
Messias before men to manifest!

And worthy of Messias, sure, a pile
More vast, magnificent, costly in detail
Of marble, gold, rare stone, and carvenwork
Than any building earth sustains to-day!

Little knew Herod he had raised a palace
Greater than that of Solomon;—for why?
Greater than Solomon should go in and out,
Should teach and heal within those holy precincts,
Should there first utter words, sounding to-day
To His kingdom’s utmost verge, words of our life!
The King had come to the house prepared for Him
Of His Father, through King Herod’s liberal care—
Unworthy he to know grace laid on him!

All that vast reach of cloisters, hemming in
The outer court of the temple, searched His eye;
Corinthian pillars, white, innumerous,
Of purest marble, delicately wrought,
Of height surpassing and majestic grace,
Reaching toward the heavens,—fitting were these
For His Father’s house, made ready for the Son.

But what of them who occupied their business
In these fair chambers? The Lord of the house hath come:
What meaneth then that lowing in His ears,
Lowing of cattle, innocent cry of lambs,
Cooing of turtle doves in sacred place,
And, worse offence, that clink of many coins
Changed at the dealers’ tables? He is come
That should come! Scourge of small cords He grasps,
And this slight weapon, plied with burning zeal,
Sufficeth all the horde to drive before Him:—
The lusty butcher used to handle beasts
Immense and furious, money-changers’ greed
Stronger than ten strong men,—of what avail
That any should resist the arm of God
Wielding His lightest weapon? Forth they go,
An ignominious crew, nor dare to seize
On coin or beast of all their greedy store:
One Man drave forth the money-getting crowd,
Their beasts and they quailing before the Judge!
And John, who saw all, held the sight in his heart,
And knew thenceforth, Wrath of the Lamb, how dread!

“Make not my Father’s house a house of sales!”
Cried He whose house it was. And all at once
The disciples bethought them of that word of prophet,
“The zeal of Thine house shall eat me up!” and knew,
With sudden rapture, sign of the Messiah!
Scared in their pride, the Jews, the priests, stand by;
They see a sign, they know it for a sign,
But have not grace of truth sign to receive.
As cobwebs swept He specious pleas aside:
‘’Tis well that beasts for sacrifice be close
At hand, lest the people’s zeal to offer cool;’
‘They come from far, here let them change the coins
They bring, for pieces meet for temple dues:’
‘Why hinder we the ignorant, hither come
To do God service?’ None of this they plead;
Christ’s word about a place of merchandise
Had found them out; they, too, were traffickers,
And knew the rebuke for them; not for nought
Had they afforded all these stalls to merchants!
Swift to the mark goes every word of His,
And, cowed, they ask for sign that they might know
By what authority He did these things.

“A sign?” saith He: “Destroy ye this fair temple,
In three days I will raise it up again!”
They, hearing, understood not; how could they
Receive that doctrine of the holy place
God made in each man for His habitation?
“Full six and forty years,” they said, “this temple
Was building! Wilt thou raise it in three days?”
But of the temple of His body spake He:
When on third day He raised Him from the dead,
The Eleven remembered how He said this thing,
And all the more believed and knew the truth.

Men say, “Now, love we but our fellow-men,
And all the secret know we of Christ’s grace;
A passion moved Him, all-consuming love
For the weak and helpless, pity for the lost:
Let us but burn with love for suffering men,
And so are we disciples of the Christ,
Name we His Name or not, as pleaseth us!”

But, as through same grey skies breaks sudden light
And glorifies a space the common earth,
So through the dull complexion of the days
He walked with men as Man, sudden brake forth
A glory—the master-passion of our Master!—
“My Father’s business” and “My Father’s house,”
“My Father worketh hitherto,” and, “I
And My Father are one,”—as when cloak blown
Aside by wind reveals rich garb beneath,
Such glimpse get we, through words He spake by times,
Of passion serene, enthusiasm meek,
Ideal, burning zeal, in heart of Christ:
“My Father,”—lo, fresh spring of all His days!
Sole Origin and End of all His ways;
And for His Father’s love of men He died!
“But He, too, loves us?” Yea, verily, for He
And the Father, One! How should He save us else?

St. John ii. 13–22

-- Charlotte Mason (1842, 1923) British educator, education reformer, philosopher of education, writer and poet

Image: Alexander Smirnov, The Cleansing of the Temple

Cana

Once when our eyes were clean as noon, our rooms

Filled with the joys of Cana’s feast;
For Jesus came, and His disciples, and His Mother,
And after them the singers
And some men with violins.

Once when our minds were Galilees,
And clean as skies our faces,
Our simple rooms were charmed with sun.

Our thoughts went in and out in whiter coats than God’s disciples’,
In Cana’s crowded rooms, at Cana’s tables.

Nor did we seem to fear the wine would fail:
For ready, in a row, to fill with water and a miracle,
We saw our earthen vessels, waiting empty.
What wine those humble waterjars foretell!

Wine for the ones who, bended to the dirty earth,
Have feared, since lovely Eden, the sun’s fire,
Yet hardly mumble, in their dusty mouths, one prayer.

Wine for old Adam, digging in the briars!


-- Thomas Merton (Father Louis), contemplative, writer, poet, spiritual autobiographer, and Trappist monk

Image: Wedding at Cana, 1968, Sadao Watanabe

The Poem Rising by Its Own Weight

     

The poet is at the disposal of his own night—Jean Cocteau

The singing robes fly onto your body and cling there silkily,
You step out on the rope and move unfalteringly across it,
And seize the fiery knives unscathed and
Keep them spinning above you, a fountain
Of rhythmic rising, falling, rising
Flames,
And proudly let the chains
Be wound about you, ready
To shed them, link by steel link,
padlock by padlock–

but when your graceful
confident shrug and twist drives the metal
into your flesh and the python grip of it tightens
and you see rust on the chains and blood in your pores
and you roll
over and down a steepness into a dark hole
and there is not even the sound of mockery in the distant air
somewhere above you where the sky was,
no sound but your own breath panting:

then it is that the miracle
walks in, on his swift feet,
down the precipice straight into the cave,
opens the locks,
knots of chain fall open,
twists of chain unwind themselves,
links fall asunder,
in seconds there is a heap of scrap-
metal at your ankles, you step free and at once
he turns to go —

but as you catch at him with a cry,
clasping his knees, sobbing your gratitude,
with what radiant joy he turns to you,
and raises you to your feet,
and strokes your disheveled hair,
and holds you,
holds you,
holds you
close and tenderly before he vanishes.

-- Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Anglo-American poet, daughter of an Anglican priest, and convert to Catholicism.

Marked by Ashes

 

     

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .

This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
      halfway back to committees and memos,
      halfway back to calls and appointments,
      halfway on to next Sunday,
      halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
      half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
   but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
      we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
         of failed hope and broken promises,
         of forgotten children and frightened women,
      we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
   we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
   some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes

   anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
   you Easter parade of newness.
   Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
      Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
      Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
   mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.


-- Walter Brueggemann (1933- ), American theologian, pastor, author, poet, and former professor at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves.

St. Gobnait and the Place of Her Resurrection

   

On the tiny limestone island

an angel buzzes to Gobnait
in a dream, disrupts her plans,
sends her in search of nine white deer.

She wanders for miles across
sea and land until at last
they appear and rather than
running toward them

she falls gently to wet ground,
sits in silence as light crawls across sky,
lets their long legs approach
and their soft, curious noses surround her.

Breathing slowly, she slides back
onto grass and clover and knows
nothing surpasses this moment,
a heaven of hooves and dew.

Is there a place for each of us,
where we no longer yearn to be elsewhere?
Where our work is to simply soften,
wait, and pay close attention?

She smiles as bees gather eagerly
around her too, wings humming softly
as they collect essence of wildflowers,
transmuting labor into gold.

-- Christine Valters Paintner, Benedictine oblate, teacher, spiritual director, poet, artist, and Abbess of the online Abbey of the Arts.

February 12 is the feast day of St. Gobnait of Ballyvourney, the Irish patron saint of beekeepers (along with St. Ambrose and St. Valentine).

Image: Stained glass window of St. Gobnait, Honan Chapel, Cork, by Harry Clarke, 1914.

Fishing in the Keep of Silence

There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in the massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the egrets
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: there are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.

--Linda Gregg (1942-2019), American poet, from All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems, 2008

Scripture reference: Luke 5:1-11, 5th Sunday after Epiphany C

Rend Your Heart

     

To receive this blessing,

all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.

Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.

It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.

And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you

to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.

- Jan Richardson, Methodist writer, author, artist, and poet

Glory Glory/ Psalm 19

The heavens bespeak the glory of God.

The firmament ablaze, a text of his works. 

Dawn whispers to sunset. 

Dark to dark the word passes: glory glory. 

All in a great silence, 

no tongue’s clamor— 

yet the web of the world trembles 

conscious, as of great winds passing. 

The bridegroom’s tent is raised, 

a cry goes up: He comes! a radiant sun 

rejoicing, presiding, his wedding day. 

From end to end of the universe his progress. 

No creature, no least being but catches fire from him.

-- Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016), American Jesuit priest, poet, anti-war activist, teacher, and pacifist.