At last a new poem! The Good Samaritan is in here somewhere, and as for the lilies, I like lilies. I like the sound of the word and it just seems to work. That’s the image that started the poem coming. Also as ever, the ‘me’ in the poem is me and also humanity in relation to Christ.

Where Lilies Lie

Ah! Lead me, Lord, where lilies lie

Like damask-dawn light dimly echoing

The ecstasy of Your eternal and deifying day,

Like bridal lace chasing the uncharted borders

Between time’s changing chance and true being’s boundless becoming,

Breaking the charm of the merely charnel

That immortality might at last drown death in real life!

I ask this now sincerely, Sir,

And yet I know my feet will falter,

In fact, are faltering now,

Though from my fallen state I call for aid

And seek some salve which I alone can never buy,

Because the road has robbed my purse of all its coin.

Yet You have trod these weary ways before

And know the lilies and what lies beyond.

Oh, come and find me, bind my wounds,

And let me walk, Your blessed and broken hand in mine,

To where lives the deepest of delight

As my hurts are made holy things

For Paradise to ponder and to praise.

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Here is a poem about the actual wind, the winds of history, and yes, the wind of God. I’m talking about forces that, though involving human beings, are beyond our control to stop. We all have these in life. It’s a scary place to be, but it can make room for good things as well. I’m not talking about evil exactly, but it may look like misfortune. I suppose it’s just a restatement of the saying that “it is an ill wind that blows nobody no good.”

To Windward

The wind is up now, high and singing

In the sighing of swaying trees,

No mere breeze, but something brave,

Something brilliant with destruction, a seeming demon,

And yet perhaps kindly, kingly, kindling life

Even as it strews its own chaotic strangeness

Across the world that it has always shaped.

Against its unrelenting roar

We rave and rage,

Lamenting lost things felled by it in their fullness,

Calling it an enemy, a foe, a foul fiend,

A thing to be feared

For its loud voice and unsparing speed.

Yet there is a need for wildness,

A time for truth untethered to timid form and custom,

A place for positive power,

For might unmixed with malice, fit for purpose,

Though still unbound, unbridled, not broken

Or gentled to the ways of humanity’s brief will.

It forces us to face it

With neither fear nor favour,

And when we meet it,

Our mortality is unmade for a time,

Uncovered as its weakness wilts and is whirled away

By the shining strength which will soon come

To stand surely, purely in its place.

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This poem celebrates the contradictions of my outer life as a homebody and the crazy way my brain works in trying to make sense of the world.

Pilgrimage

To wander is the province of pilgrims,

And here I sit, no staff to carry,

No boots to bear me beyond these walls

Built of both concrete and self-restraint,

Hemming me in by choice as well as by chance.

And yet to roam through streets,

Or ramble in the bright woods

Is what my spirit longs for,

That spirit closed in clinging castle ramparts

Fitted with stones of uncertainty

And mortared with mortal fear.

Even here, though, there is a part of me

Which packs its bag and vanishes at whiles,

Roving with the winds of words

Through glades of half-formed fancy,

Returning richly laden with treasures never noticed before,

The minstrelsy of joy unbidden and abiding,

The lays of love unparalleled and without peer

Which lift me free and bear me far afield

To where all wanderers come at last to rest,

Where no walls wait to bind me fast,

But for freedom’s bond of faith and blessed fealty.

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I don’t think I need to say much about this poem, except that leaf-time in Autumn has always been one of my favourite times of the year! Enjoy!

Leaf Lesson

Leaves fall and lie,

Swirling and swinging free from their branches,

Dead and yet alive in their mortality

As they bring to my nostrils their scent of vital decay.

How I long to lie down in them,

To press their brownness to my face,

To feel it rasp there as once I did,

As once I did when I was young.

Their dying recalls me to life.

Is this perhaps a lesson for living well?

It takes, after all, falling leaves to bring the spring

Spinning its new-green spirit into matter

And into my soul, it would seem.

Their shining glory must be shed

To bless with blossom the land where now they lie

Unknown and unremarked,

The once-bright leaves now browned and brittle,

But giving themselves as sacrifices on the alter

Of some future time to come.

So too the heart, whipped by winds of worry

Must show itself to be itself,

No longer green with growth

Or crimson with cries of rage

Against sorrow and great grief,

But shorn of all this,

It must lie naked to the chill,

Bruised and even broken for a time,

Till it is born anew in love

And in the new and dew-dappled dawn

Of some splendid spring day.

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First, a note on rebranding. The Substack publication of which this podcast is a part, formerly known as Think on these Things, is now called Reveries and Ramblings. Everything else is still the same, however. Now for the reason you’re here.

This poem has been kicking around for over a month, and I’m glad I let it stew a little, because it has finally become what I hoped it would. It was inspired by an episode about angels which was recently featured on the podcast called Men among Demons, hosted by two friends of mine, and also by actual experiences I have had which, though I believe they are real, should not be taken out of proportion or given undue weight in life. I believe that we are always having encounters with eternal things, whether we know it at the time or not. Wordsworth called them “spots of time,” and I recognized them in my own life when I read his descriptions in The Prelude. One could also use another Wordsworthian phrase: “Intimations of Immortality” to describe what I’m talking about. Anyway, here’s the poem.

Meeting

Well met once more, Forever’s Bright Flame,

Royal Ray seen certainly with the inward eye,

Though when You come, I weaken and I weep,

Brought for a brief time to true knowledge of my state,

And yet not driven to despair, but rather awed to ecstasy

By the peace which You have that I lack.

You come with joy attending You,

A joy which knows no cause that I can rightly name,

Except to call it life unmixed with murder or deceit,

Or love without the heavy leaven of hate to weigh it down.

In your wake, words come,

Things thought but seldom spoken,

Spilling like spikenard from my new-made spirit

Which is carried for a time in consolation,

Upheld by love’s unfading fire,

Bound in blessed bonds of true freedom

To seek things far-seen and yet near-known.

You haunt me with what Heaven is,

Though still I cannot see that home

And would rather hide from it at times,

And yet You show me surely it is there,

Or here, or near enough to touch,

If we can let it come, little by little,

And be born in us, though we are broken,

And make of us the vessels of its final victory.

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This I can only describe as something special. Glory to God!

Dove

Again I have come, wet-winged and weary,

Heart hammering, hunger gnawing me to namelessness,

As the sun sinks to ashes in the west,

My flight furtive and fleet

Over the wide and water-ravaged wastes.

The ground grieved, Beloved, where I passed,

And did not welcome me as it had before,

Though there was plenty of work for the raven, flying this way and that,

Fatly feeding on the end of all things,

Never seeming satisfied to stillness,

His foraging a fruitful feast I could not share.

I failed, of course, the first time you freed me,

Roving restless and lost as the billows rolled beneath me,

Finding nothing firm on which to set my foot,

And so I let You lift me from the lonely sky,

Stroking my feathers to finished fineness

And sending me again to seek some truth

Beyond the bitter waters of the world.

And now I have it, barely grasped,

Bent and broken, bruised, I know,

But living still beyond all hope,

Though all seems sunk in sorrow’s surge

And the raven gluts his gorge on all his eye surveys.

Oh, lift from me this olive leaf,

Its edges torn and yet still green,

And bless its brokenness with blossoming,

That I may bear its fullness, swift and sure,

To where I may finally fold my now-bright wings,

Singing this precious proof of Paradise,

My voice your voice’s vessel

As the new day begins!

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Here is a poem I didn’t know I was going to write till I wrote it.

Exhortation to Joy

Is there room still to sit and sing

Of wondrous things which mute the mind that meets them,

Sending it soaring from the sensible

Into realms of real and unassailable ecstasy?

Is there time still to seek in silence

The words to set a sleeping soul to stirring,

Leaving it thirsting for what lies waiting

Beyond the wall of its habitual slumber?

Is all that finished now?

Are we parted forever from Paradise,

Where names meant true knowing

And words were bearers of The Living Word

Whose singing began the beginning of things?

Oh, come and listen for a while!

Hear the hum beneath the heavy tread of humanity

That lingers latest in the shifting winds

As seasons circle one another in their turn,

As far and ancient stars now burn

And the moon brings the tides to its crystalline call.

Oh, come and hear it all!

Take time to know as once we knew,

As once we stood astonished by the greatness

Of creation as it came to us,

A gift freely given

From Wisdom’s willing hand.

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And so the new collection of poems begins, with the sound of the crickets of late summer. It's a sound I've always loved and something I've always wanted to write about. So, here we are. I'm happy to have found words for my feelings at last.

Crickets

They come as the long light of late summer

Lies drowsing on the dreaming land,

Drumming each day to its death

Among the moving shadows of grass stems,

Chanting the change that only they can feel,

Though the days still dazzle and delight

The rest of us who do not heed their fervent warning.

“Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear!”

Their brisk bodies exhort the witless world

To wonder as the summer wanes,

And

“Here! Here! Here! Here!”

Their peons point to patterns of perishing

That only they perceive,

The need to make new life

As what came before begins to fail.

Listen, my soul, to these singers of summer’s ending,

And heed their urgent rhymes of ruin,

For there is beauty in the dance of death they play,

Fiddling furiously while each day dies in fire,

And letting us know, if we would let them tell,

That there is always death in the beauty of every living thing,

At least for now, at least in this place.

But will they sing so in eternity?

Will their broken song still break the human heart

When change no longer chokes itself,

But deepens life with each mortal movement

We bring to immortality?

Let us pray they will be glorified,

These angels of the coming autumn,

And that they will sing forever and more fully,

Transforming longing into love,

Heralding the ceaseless harvest of hoped-for things.

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This may be the final poem in the current collection I'm working on. Whether I will ever publish any of these collections I don't know, but I like to start a new one every now and then to keep the momentum going. If I could write these poems in notebooks, I might consider cracking open a fresh one right about now. I think this poem speaks of many true things about being human.

To Your Call

To Your Call, O my Christ, I will come,

Though not, for now at least,

Like a dutiful dog to heel,

Nor even—dare I say it?—

Like a lost sheep seeking shelter,

Though the wolf runs close behind

And Your voice is the only one I trust

To bring me where I need to be.

No, I will come like a child,

Chilled to the bone and burned by the wind

In the deepening dusk of a winter day,

Who hears the call to food and fire

But still believes the snow to be a wondrous thing,

A fellow-conspirator in fancy and fun,

Though the sun has long-since gone its steeply-slanting way

To where it will rest beneath a blanket of cold stars.

Yes, I will come like that,

Finger-numbed, nose-nipped, foot-frozen and hungry,

And I will sit beside Your fire,

Slowly thawing, painfully coming back to life,

Reluctantly leaving the snow to itself,

While I remember the meaning of warmth and of wonder,

For the stars are in the fire too,

And the hearth is filled with the ancient and eternal fragrance

Of the sacred incense of invitation.

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This is a simple poem of tribute for someone very special, who all-but commanded me to embrace the creative side of myself as my Christian duty. It's almost been five years since his repose, and I wasn't sure I was ever going to write a poem about what his presence in my life meant, but here it is, and I mean every word.

May His Memory Be

(For Fr. J.)

May his memory be eternal,

Who placed into my waiting hands the harp of hope,

Bidding me to wring silver from its singing strings

With the fingers of fervent faith,

To trust in the truth of beauty

And to soar aloft upon the lightsome wings

Of whatever is good and lovely.

May his memory be perennial,

Who gave me the courage to care for myself,

To look to all the little things for joy,

The old things, the true things,

The things of childhood which bring us home,

And the loves and longings which send us forth once more.

May his memory be immortal,

Though autumn comes to kill the kindness of summer

With the blazing glory of its grief,

Though the winter of despair will spend, again and again,

The fires I have stoked against it,

Though life itself cannot linger here as long as we would wish,

May, Oh! May his memory be!

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