Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Altoona, PA
Monday, January 17, 2005
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Poet at Forty
Through an oaken door
Down a corridor
I marvel at the children’s play
animated and cruel.
The poet too observes with his pale, innocent eye.
I come to a noisy hall and open the second door
To a spacious room
Full of Summer light
pine desk in disarray
With lined pages
And crumpled sheets scratched in choppy verse
the poet dejected and howling in the corner of my eye.
The third door arrives after strange halls and hidden mazes
With guides in a vast archive of
Manuscripts living and dead,
A poet stands silently filing papers
Like a man who polishes stones
Editing these Collected works
Neither noticing my coming or my going…
Banquets and dissolution follow
Forgetfulness, lust and bitter dejection;
At last I come to the fourth door
Crack open to find an accomplished poet of some reknown
And swell to hear his voice:
“I stand in wonder before little things---
Breezes in the late evening branches
Bouquets for the memory
From sundrenched vaults of yellow---
Dreams that Summer’s heavy arm plows under.
I toss scraps of paper to the ditch
With breach of regulation, well considered answer,
With definition, and vow
“Wonder before little things---
Ash and burning paper
Dissolving minute traces of Spring
Coiling near the park bench
Pastel ribbons flitter and flow away
On November’s winding, muddy water.”
His word trails along the luminous orchard
To filter Autumn’s cider
Into a glass of Wonder.
Spilling,
The deep green liquid
Holds fast to cool frosted soil
The sun paints the blue
With cloudy white brushes.
No longer swayed in storming majesties,
The poet at forty is captive
To ribbons, twigs,
Triune clover sustaining
Inspiration’s pool
echoing tales
Of valiant days into richer speech.
Down a corridor
I marvel at the children’s play
animated and cruel.
The poet too observes with his pale, innocent eye.
I come to a noisy hall and open the second door
To a spacious room
Full of Summer light
pine desk in disarray
With lined pages
And crumpled sheets scratched in choppy verse
the poet dejected and howling in the corner of my eye.
The third door arrives after strange halls and hidden mazes
With guides in a vast archive of
Manuscripts living and dead,
A poet stands silently filing papers
Like a man who polishes stones
Editing these Collected works
Neither noticing my coming or my going…
Banquets and dissolution follow
Forgetfulness, lust and bitter dejection;
At last I come to the fourth door
Crack open to find an accomplished poet of some reknown
And swell to hear his voice:
“I stand in wonder before little things---
Breezes in the late evening branches
Bouquets for the memory
From sundrenched vaults of yellow---
Dreams that Summer’s heavy arm plows under.
I toss scraps of paper to the ditch
With breach of regulation, well considered answer,
With definition, and vow
“Wonder before little things---
Ash and burning paper
Dissolving minute traces of Spring
Coiling near the park bench
Pastel ribbons flitter and flow away
On November’s winding, muddy water.”
His word trails along the luminous orchard
To filter Autumn’s cider
Into a glass of Wonder.
Spilling,
The deep green liquid
Holds fast to cool frosted soil
The sun paints the blue
With cloudy white brushes.
No longer swayed in storming majesties,
The poet at forty is captive
To ribbons, twigs,
Triune clover sustaining
Inspiration’s pool
echoing tales
Of valiant days into richer speech.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Monday, January 10, 2005
Sunday, January 09, 2005
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
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