This is the second entry in my 100 Poems in 100 Days project, which I soft-launched yesterday, by which I mean that I never mentioned it at all until today. Enjoy! And wish me luck!

I wrote this poem precisely because the image would not leave me alone. Is this wanderer a weary and travel-worn Reepicheep the mouse, or perhaps some kind of St. Brendan? Or is it me? Or is it you? And is the boat just a boat? I really don’t know, but I like the poem. I hope you will too.

Wanderer

This broken little boat of mine,

Once brightly built of willow bones and strung

With supple sinews of the hallowed hazel tree,

Was warped and wefted well, made fine

And strong to stand the sounding surge,

Its skin hull scudding the wave-crests

And urged to dance above the drowning depths

By swelling and by plunging tides,

Lunging to the pomps and prides of the wind

As it sang its subtly-woven love-songs

To my welcoming sail.

And now it tells a true bard’s tale

In scuffs and scars, in mars

Made by many a far and star-strewn flight

Beyond the beating wings of gulls

To where the sunset sunk itself in sacred fire

And the sky alone was my companion.

Yet here it is, its hide salt-cracked,

Its sail torn and tangled,

Its mangled mast still somehow standing

To keep me from the bitter rocks of ruin

As I ride the shallow surf to shore.

And I, uncanny sailor though I be,

Return with treasures carried safe within myself,

Which, though you find them wild and fey,

May be for you a burning beacon

When this boat and I are buried deep

And nothing of my wandering is known

Save only what I bring you now,

These faithful words which found me lost

And led me home to rest once more,

Heart harmed yet ever charmed

By the lonely siren call of the long waves

On the bright and bitter sea.

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I wrote this one just today, or rather, it seems to have written itself. Where the circus rider image came from I will never know!

While a Paraclesis is a specific litergical and poetic form in Orthodox Christianity, Called a Supplicatory Canon in English, I used the greek word Paraclesis here merely in its more general sense of asking for comfort. Apologies for my unlovely Greek pronunciation.

Paraclesis

Ah! Heaven, haunt me here,

Here among these broken hours,

These fallen towers of time

Where tears flow and terror flowers,

And all seems blasted

By the unlastingness of love!

Reach me Your hand and rescue me,

That I may stand a little steadied

Atop the white tips of the waves

Of this life which lies before me

As circus riders balance bravely

On the backs of hurrying horses

Which course without care beneath them,

Bearing them onward in their hellish haste!

Compel me with Your pregnant peace

To work against the entropy

So central to this place of perishing,

Which only grace can shake

And make of it the garden we have lost!

Seduce me now, another Eve,

As surely as the snake seduced the first,

And teach me to taste Your tang upon the wind,

That ceaseless wind which brings all things to dust,

And yet must carry couched within it

The other wind which does not wound

But wills our wandering footsteps homeward!

Ah! Bear my bruised and broken body

To where the desire of my half-dead heart

Will meet among the green and gold and azure hangings

Of the marriage bed of eros and agape

Its eternal and undying end,

Which is to lie, alive at last,

In the sweet embrace of endless joy!

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This poem springs from my usual experience of life: waiting, hoping, wanting things to change and yet seeing no way to change them, and then the golden times, the sad yet unsurpassedly beautiful times when I know, the way a child knows where to run when he or she needs help, that there is more than my wavering will and the well of my mostly-self-seeking fellow-humans on which to depend. We have to slog through the mud to find the mountain, and we have to climb the mountain to find the meadow. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say here, but of course, the poem itself may say something else to you.

A note on the word ‘apocalypse’: I mean it in its original sense of a revelation, an unveiling, not as zombies, volcanoes, asteroids or killer bees.

Apocalypse Here

What is it to wait

While time weighs heavy,

Sitting solid and solemn

In the balance of the soul,

Its attendant train of days

Desperately dashing themselves headlong

From dawn to dusky diamonds,

Leaving only loneliness

As the dark draws down?

How is it to hope

Though healing comes unhurrying,

Tarrying through years and tears

On some seeming errand of its own,

Staying its gentle hand,

Delaying, while despair holds sway,

Even its slightest, its very slightest, caress?

It is what we must do,

And yet not what we are meant for.

It is our lot in this life

To live little by little,

Seeing truth at ten removes

Through eyes scarred by our own scandal,

Their lids half-closed with lies

And the unassailable desire

To meet with something more,

Some holy fire true beyond all telling.

So here on this good earth we stand,

Borne on her overburdened back,

This foster-mother we have torn in our madness,

And here we keep our watch for wonder

Yet working in our wearying age

To bring us weeping into joy

As she stills time’s steps for a time,

Lulling limitless longing to sleep

With the merest gleam from glory’s Kingdom!

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While all my poems are personal in some way, this one is definitely about me. I hope, however, that it is relatable.

God-haunted

You call me, and I try to come,

To follow where my longing leads my love,

And yet with no clear end

Except Your shining self caught in shadowed glimpses

To guide me on my way.

I see You bright and burning, it is true,

With that eye which is not an eye and yet beholds

What I can scarcely even grasp

As the years flee with the winds of change

And life lengthens before my faltering feet.

I found You first as wind in my hair.

You were waiting in the warmth of the sun

For me to dream awake,

To chase You in the flight of falling leaves,

My cheek kissed by Your snow

While the cardinal sang a hymn of midwinter.

I sought Your freedom between two playground chains,

Swinging high and higher yet

To somehow find forever

Because I knew it, always knew it,

Never doubting it was there.

Then came the cross and the rites,

The walls and the veils,

The singing which was lovely, yes,

But which was like the swing,

Freedom bound in chains of chanting,

In red rules on a page.

I let it overtake me to my shame,

The words walling my spirit and Yours with their silence,

Before again I found You in the breeze,

Among gentle voices of encouragement and healing;

And now I bind myself to Your freedom

Even when it seems far to seek,

Because I knew You once when I was young

And will never more forget the yearning of years!

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This was inspired by an image which came to me as I was listening to a podcast some weeks ago. The best analogies for what God does in us are, I think, taken from His own creation. the “me” here is me, or you, or The Church, or whomever you need it to be, human nature perhaps most of all.

You Caught Me Up

You caught me up and carried me, my Christ,

From the deeps of death itself,

Where I lay bound and breathless,

No lamp to illumine me

Nor song to sing me awake till you came.

As the mother whale still bears the body of her baby

Though its life has long ceased,

Grieving the loss of its part in the long dance

Of sea and sky, of air and water and blood,

So You held me close, Beloved,

Bearing me onward though I showed no sign of response,

No bright knowledge of You in my broken being.

Yet you did not grieve the ghost of my lost song

As that great rover of the sea grieves her child,

But carried me in hope as the earth once carried You for a time,

You who in Your dying bore the living light of healing

To those bound by death’s tyranny.

And as from the depths that mighty mother

Comes rising to catch the dawn

Still clinging to the calf she will never nurse,

So toward the Light of light, Yourself, you now carry me,

Your once-dead but soon-risen sister, Your wept-for bride,

Nurtured by Your inexhaustible noetic spring,

Now singing to bring forth fruits of joyful returning

From the dark abyss of bitter grief.

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Here is a poem which literally came to me. That’s just it. It came. Take it as you will.

Bright Calling

Ah! Do not fear, my dear one!

Here shun the shivering shape you have always worn,

Days borne down to death by beguiling guilt

That wilts the wonder in you to a want,

A haunt of hurts soon healed now barely guessed,

Which, dressed in dreams of dread, can never save.

Be brave and trust, my glory!

The story is not done which echoes, spoken

In broken phrases of spite and grief,

Its chief message of cheer mangled by malice,

A chalice, silver-chased, shattered into shards of deep despair.

But there! Look there, beloved bride!

Denied, the dawn comes on apace,

Its face not dimmed by doubt or death,

Its breath bringing sweetness to your weary way!

Oh! Stay your wandering steps and stand amazed!

Come! gaze on goodness, lost one, and let it love!

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I cried this year during our church’s annual reading of the parable of the prodigal son. It wasn’t subtle either! I literally burst into tears! This poem is the result of those tears. Glory to God!

A Little Way

Come toward Me a little way, beloved!

Be no more lost, but let Me find you!

It is enough to stand, to start, to turn,

But even if you come on bruised knees bearing a broken heart,

I will meet you without malice,

And I will bid you rise and walk with Me.

Just walk as far as you can, and I will carry you.

I have looked for you with longing, staring hard toward the horizon,

And though you come tear-stained and travel-worn,

I will know you for My own beloved one,

The one whom I have mourned as dead,

But who is alive beyond all hope.

Come as you are, just as you are,

The fine clothes you wore when you left now gone to rags,

Your hair all knotted with straw,

Your shoes all eaten with the dust of the road!

Come, I say, as you are!

I will dress you in Me!

Then you will see your true self at last

As I have always seen you,

And we will walk together in wonder,

Weeping and laughing by turns,

Shouting and singing in a feast of sheer joy!

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This poem is based on a real experience I had recently, a second of eternal time that clarified something important for me. Thanks, Mr. cardinal, wherever you are!

Come Follow

Come follow the call of the free-flying cardinal,

The red bird, the bright bird, winging his song over snow-silences,

Whose flight does not freeze him nor fell him to earth

Though he never flees to find the summer southward,

But lives to lift his voice where day dies lonely and dark lingers late.

His hope is not hid in some far-off spring,

But bells forth in his crystal cry

That this day is sweet, this day is all he has,

While you stand waiting to welcome winter’s waning as your due,

As what you are owed for enduring not even an hour’s subjection to the wind

As he must do just to find his dinner.

What can he have to sing about, you ask,

This imprudent wanderer in winter woods?

And yet he goes on, never knowing if spring will come,

But singing anyway as though it were already here,

No fire but the fierceness of his own little life to warm him,

No food but what he is vouchsafed by the slumbering land.

So follow him, my heart, and let him lead you!

Let his joyful chanting change your ice to rivers of tears,

Your cold and stony places to sun-warmed soil,

For here is where you make your stand, and now is when you need to be,

No longer running to find the always-fading sun

But letting dawn live within you by facing your own dark night.

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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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