Our Lady of Ice
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Our Lady of Ice
"The earth reels like a drunkard,
it sways like a hut in the wind;
so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion
that it falls---never to rise again."
(Isaiah 24:20)
Tears pour from heaven
clasping stone on crystal grave
littering yellow lawns;
To muffle angels' songs,
to toss blossoms aside.
Lady, how long since the dinosaurs slept
with the howling wind and ice;
how long until all that man has wrought
will counterfeit such great price?
it sways like a hut in the wind;
so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion
that it falls---never to rise again."
(Isaiah 24:20)
Tears pour from heaven
clasping stone on crystal grave
littering yellow lawns;
To muffle angels' songs,
to toss blossoms aside.
Lady, how long since the dinosaurs slept
with the howling wind and ice;
how long until all that man has wrought
will counterfeit such great price?
Setting out for America (excerpt)
What kind of artistry is equal to the silver glisten on a river, or a sunset, or lightening in the sky?
What kind of man’s artistry can compare to the great artistry of creation?
What, indeed, could compare with the silver glistening on this white iron lake?
The poet is only an echo of what he sees and hears.
A transmitter, a go-between.
Little wavelets lap this rock on which I sit.
Having been refreshed by a swim, a cool swim,
the poet has a prerogative to swim in whatever fresh water he sees fit to swim in anywhere in America.
That’s the poet’s prerogative to bathe in nature.
It’s his primary right to do so.
No law can touch this.
This water is like a tea, like in Black Moshannan, brown cola-colored like the intertidal pool of the Missouri River.
The hard granite I sit upon, moss covered, rather lichen.
The wonderful green of lichen, and beneath it this pink granite.
This very hot and dry evening in May.
And the van, a stone’s throw away behind the little trees hidden beyond the rushes from the water.
And the calm fluttering in the elm and birch.
The little leaves amidst the steady ever-present roar of the waterfall over which Route, highway number 1 passes.
The little leaves are spindling around, waving as if in a game, then pausing for just a millisecond, standing there and then starting again, waving, teetering, now calm, now still.
And the blue sky emerges.
Then they begin their fluttering again and the sky disappears.
They come to the center of the stage and clamor for attention.
Some type of sign language I am as yet unable to read, but I know intuitively what it speaks to me.
As God speaks through these little things in nature, nothing grandiose, it’s all in the details.
Only with man do we find the ambitions to overcome and dominate the world, to rise above, to be higher than the world.
But it’s all here.
And in Minnesota, north.
Great calm.
After so many miles.
And I admit my weariness.
This road is very long, indeed.
And I’ve still got a very long way to go.
But knowing that poets like Dylan and Whitman have gone before me gives me courage and strength to move on, to carry on, not knowing where I’m headed, not lonely, but somehow disjointed, out of sorts.
We thank God for this beautiful day and we ask God to continue to bless our work and to bless Bob Dylan and to honor poets everywhere, especially those on the road.
There’s a Ptarmigan, or some such forest-type bird, poking around and stamping loudly like an angry squirrel.
By Lake La Moyant I see an ant running across this white lichen-covered stone.
He achieves his goal.
Or if there is an obstacle in his path, he turns and finds another way.
The ant is a lowly, small creature but very diligent and hard working as the book of Proverbs says.
But there’s always two sides to every story.
Went through Ely.
The Chamber of Commerce there has the website: www.ely.org.
Look it up!
The scent of the forest is truly wondrous, dry perfume.
There is a beautiful Monarch butterfly impaled right into the center of my hood ornament.
Yellow and black wings with one wing having 3 blue windows and behind it, an orange window, like stained glass.
Smashed, broken butterfly.
Ornament on my car.
Symbol of resurrection.
What was once larval state,
died, rose again, chrysalis,
then it is a colorful, beaming, radiant, beautiful, resurrected body.
And as I drive away, I see five more perfect yellow butterflies, two together and then three together.
And I notice that the name of the lake where I was swimming was Birch Lake.
Oh, Lord, I have sought to escape you, fleeing on the highways and byways, speeding down the road, all over America from state to state, county to county.
Fleeing.
We are trying to hold onto some liquid before it races erases from my fingers.
I cannot hold onto it all the same.
And now I stand empty-handed.
You, God, are working your work in me.
I’m your putty and I’m your man, Lord, and I’ll stand by.
I will stand by you.
Restore me, oh Lord, even if it means losing my voice and my poetry and my music.
If it means losing my house and my family.
If it means losing all of my possessions, my love.
You are first.
You are the Lord, most high, Jesus Christ.
What kind of man’s artistry can compare to the great artistry of creation?
What, indeed, could compare with the silver glistening on this white iron lake?
The poet is only an echo of what he sees and hears.
A transmitter, a go-between.
Little wavelets lap this rock on which I sit.
Having been refreshed by a swim, a cool swim,
the poet has a prerogative to swim in whatever fresh water he sees fit to swim in anywhere in America.
That’s the poet’s prerogative to bathe in nature.
It’s his primary right to do so.
No law can touch this.
This water is like a tea, like in Black Moshannan, brown cola-colored like the intertidal pool of the Missouri River.
The hard granite I sit upon, moss covered, rather lichen.
The wonderful green of lichen, and beneath it this pink granite.
This very hot and dry evening in May.
And the van, a stone’s throw away behind the little trees hidden beyond the rushes from the water.
And the calm fluttering in the elm and birch.
The little leaves amidst the steady ever-present roar of the waterfall over which Route, highway number 1 passes.
The little leaves are spindling around, waving as if in a game, then pausing for just a millisecond, standing there and then starting again, waving, teetering, now calm, now still.
And the blue sky emerges.
Then they begin their fluttering again and the sky disappears.
They come to the center of the stage and clamor for attention.
Some type of sign language I am as yet unable to read, but I know intuitively what it speaks to me.
As God speaks through these little things in nature, nothing grandiose, it’s all in the details.
Only with man do we find the ambitions to overcome and dominate the world, to rise above, to be higher than the world.
But it’s all here.
And in Minnesota, north.
Great calm.
After so many miles.
And I admit my weariness.
This road is very long, indeed.
And I’ve still got a very long way to go.
But knowing that poets like Dylan and Whitman have gone before me gives me courage and strength to move on, to carry on, not knowing where I’m headed, not lonely, but somehow disjointed, out of sorts.
We thank God for this beautiful day and we ask God to continue to bless our work and to bless Bob Dylan and to honor poets everywhere, especially those on the road.
There’s a Ptarmigan, or some such forest-type bird, poking around and stamping loudly like an angry squirrel.
By Lake La Moyant I see an ant running across this white lichen-covered stone.
He achieves his goal.
Or if there is an obstacle in his path, he turns and finds another way.
The ant is a lowly, small creature but very diligent and hard working as the book of Proverbs says.
But there’s always two sides to every story.
Went through Ely.
The Chamber of Commerce there has the website: www.ely.org.
Look it up!
The scent of the forest is truly wondrous, dry perfume.
There is a beautiful Monarch butterfly impaled right into the center of my hood ornament.
Yellow and black wings with one wing having 3 blue windows and behind it, an orange window, like stained glass.
Smashed, broken butterfly.
Ornament on my car.
Symbol of resurrection.
What was once larval state,
died, rose again, chrysalis,
then it is a colorful, beaming, radiant, beautiful, resurrected body.
And as I drive away, I see five more perfect yellow butterflies, two together and then three together.
And I notice that the name of the lake where I was swimming was Birch Lake.
Oh, Lord, I have sought to escape you, fleeing on the highways and byways, speeding down the road, all over America from state to state, county to county.
Fleeing.
We are trying to hold onto some liquid before it races erases from my fingers.
I cannot hold onto it all the same.
And now I stand empty-handed.
You, God, are working your work in me.
I’m your putty and I’m your man, Lord, and I’ll stand by.
I will stand by you.
Restore me, oh Lord, even if it means losing my voice and my poetry and my music.
If it means losing my house and my family.
If it means losing all of my possessions, my love.
You are first.
You are the Lord, most high, Jesus Christ.
Friday, January 07, 2005
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Transcendence
Death is but a passing scene
You turn over and you do it again.
The ancient rite of pyre
the night,
the wind
to suspire;
billowing transcendence.
On the ocean spray
in the opaline,
green,
blue
and red yellow wave
the mad bubbles dance
to reach up and to hold
the honey gold
light.
.........................................
[Light and life he becomes;
the weary work of days tossed
aside like the crackling of orange red oak leaves he'd raked.]
To the memory of Scott McMaster
You turn over and you do it again.
The ancient rite of pyre
the night,
the wind
to suspire;
billowing transcendence.
On the ocean spray
in the opaline,
green,
blue
and red yellow wave
the mad bubbles dance
to reach up and to hold
the honey gold
light.
.........................................
[Light and life he becomes;
the weary work of days tossed
aside like the crackling of orange red oak leaves he'd raked.]
To the memory of Scott McMaster
Monday, January 03, 2005
Poetics
Aristotle has written in his Poetics that poetry is higher than history with regard to revealing the truth. This is so, he states, because while history attempts to record and describe what has been, poetry is able to describe what may possibly be, or what may possibly become.
Like the photographic images which mirror (icon) the phenomena in their coming to be and coming to pass, poetry refers to a world that is and also to a world that may be. A poet may experience a jarring in his/her existence particularly in the material world; particularly in this era, and particularly in this culture (U.S.). This is not entirely true. Each human being experiences a full quantum of limit in the material world. To state this more eloquently I quote Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom": "Is the bird free from the chains of the skyway?" The cerulean sky is the limit to man's freedom. Airplanes and rockets that defy gravity prove nothing, and add nothing to man's freedom. Images of the blue sky so commonly employed in modern PR and marketing to depict an icon of freedom and limitless space is a pious lie.
Bungie jumping and rock climbing and all of these "feats" do not prove one's freedom---far from it. They actually further highlight and underline the human limitation. The impetus to move history forward according to a myth and theology of progress as adopted in the U.S., as thoughtful people have realized, is a dead end, because in the face of a potential infinite freedom each and every step outward in this technic progress is an insult and slap to the face of serious thinkers or anyone who has realized that the purpose of human life is not to be entertained.
Each human being by trying to get "more" freedom actually disproves the unlimited nature of their freedom. More on this paradox later...
I was stating that it is particularly strange to be a poet in the USA in the 21 st century. It is to be a "stranger in a strange land". Still the poet has his finger on the source---i.e. beauty. Beauty is all that matters and is the object of every one of my poems---even when I attempt to describe the bare, gritty, mean streets, or the "failed poet" drowning the croaking throat of the nature poet in the bog water. There is beauty in truth---in fire, in water even when fire my scorch and water may drown.
Folks join clubs, become members of exclusive social groups in order to experience the "good life"---that is good taste, good food and drink, aestheticism, "pretty people". And they avidly seek to know which film is best and which music really counts, or which painter paints well. All those things called 'culture'. Members of society want to have a "corner" on culture. They purchase art, stack their newly painted bookshelves with poetry and literature, and somewhere hidden behind all of this they are searching for some real contact with the beautiful. I want to say to them: "leave behind your clubs and society and walk awhile with me into the woods or down to the stream. I find more life and culture in the dewdrop on the moss than I find in any yacht, yacht club, dinner club, or even country club!"
And the beauty is to be found there on the golf course, in the water---and beauty is what we are all seeking. It is the very presence of the godhead in material manifestation. For some people the work of art is as close as they can get to beauty itself. For example, my poetry opens up and shows beauty---it reveals a world above and beyond this world and hence suggests as Aristotle so eloquently noted in his Poetics that poetry is indeed higher than history. If I could have my way I would first of all teach philosophy and then reach up to poetry and music, and finally lead my students to walk in the fields near streams and along the seashore. We begin with rational question which leads us to mystery and then we discover music and the music in poetic language, and finally we search directly for beauty in the worms that ply their way through God's moist soil, or in the trout whose sheen glimmers beneath the cool water, and on and on and on... Why anyone would prefer the image, the fake, and phoney, even if it is artwork, to the actual I cannot imagine.
Beauty alone is worthy of our complete devotion.
Like the photographic images which mirror (icon) the phenomena in their coming to be and coming to pass, poetry refers to a world that is and also to a world that may be. A poet may experience a jarring in his/her existence particularly in the material world; particularly in this era, and particularly in this culture (U.S.). This is not entirely true. Each human being experiences a full quantum of limit in the material world. To state this more eloquently I quote Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom": "Is the bird free from the chains of the skyway?" The cerulean sky is the limit to man's freedom. Airplanes and rockets that defy gravity prove nothing, and add nothing to man's freedom. Images of the blue sky so commonly employed in modern PR and marketing to depict an icon of freedom and limitless space is a pious lie.
Bungie jumping and rock climbing and all of these "feats" do not prove one's freedom---far from it. They actually further highlight and underline the human limitation. The impetus to move history forward according to a myth and theology of progress as adopted in the U.S., as thoughtful people have realized, is a dead end, because in the face of a potential infinite freedom each and every step outward in this technic progress is an insult and slap to the face of serious thinkers or anyone who has realized that the purpose of human life is not to be entertained.
Each human being by trying to get "more" freedom actually disproves the unlimited nature of their freedom. More on this paradox later...
I was stating that it is particularly strange to be a poet in the USA in the 21 st century. It is to be a "stranger in a strange land". Still the poet has his finger on the source---i.e. beauty. Beauty is all that matters and is the object of every one of my poems---even when I attempt to describe the bare, gritty, mean streets, or the "failed poet" drowning the croaking throat of the nature poet in the bog water. There is beauty in truth---in fire, in water even when fire my scorch and water may drown.
Folks join clubs, become members of exclusive social groups in order to experience the "good life"---that is good taste, good food and drink, aestheticism, "pretty people". And they avidly seek to know which film is best and which music really counts, or which painter paints well. All those things called 'culture'. Members of society want to have a "corner" on culture. They purchase art, stack their newly painted bookshelves with poetry and literature, and somewhere hidden behind all of this they are searching for some real contact with the beautiful. I want to say to them: "leave behind your clubs and society and walk awhile with me into the woods or down to the stream. I find more life and culture in the dewdrop on the moss than I find in any yacht, yacht club, dinner club, or even country club!"
And the beauty is to be found there on the golf course, in the water---and beauty is what we are all seeking. It is the very presence of the godhead in material manifestation. For some people the work of art is as close as they can get to beauty itself. For example, my poetry opens up and shows beauty---it reveals a world above and beyond this world and hence suggests as Aristotle so eloquently noted in his Poetics that poetry is indeed higher than history. If I could have my way I would first of all teach philosophy and then reach up to poetry and music, and finally lead my students to walk in the fields near streams and along the seashore. We begin with rational question which leads us to mystery and then we discover music and the music in poetic language, and finally we search directly for beauty in the worms that ply their way through God's moist soil, or in the trout whose sheen glimmers beneath the cool water, and on and on and on... Why anyone would prefer the image, the fake, and phoney, even if it is artwork, to the actual I cannot imagine.
Beauty alone is worthy of our complete devotion.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
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