The Soul Garden: a poem in progress

This poem is not necessarily complete but I am trying to be disciplined and regular in posting here, so I am sharing it with you all as it is.

The Soul Garden
 
In the day of darkness I rose far too early
And went, joints aching, to the garden where
All the flowers of the world wildly grew.
 
There in fallow fields grew flowers both real
And imagined, the blossoms of all hearts
And all minds, petals which we daily strew
 
Across footpaths, pathways of consciousness
Plucked from stems found deep in the soil of our souls,
The out-blossoming of each inner me and you.
 
And there some leaves and flowers stretched
Out to greet me, called me by my name, took
My hand up to their stems, coaxing me to
 
Pluck and take them again into my heart where
They had once all grown; like fey familiar friends
They sang me their songs once true and untrue,
 
Stories of times and times before then, when
Half-formed and pruned, grafted and weak,
I grew and grew foully what I now grew anew.
 
There, the black roses beckoned,
Their blood-red stems close kin to my own,
Their ink-dark centre a place I well knew,
 
And poppies promised fields of grass-deep sleep,
Flowers of forgetful remembrance dozing where
They grew, open-red blossoms to hold and to rue.
 
The sleep they promised drew me, and yet
As I drew near they slipped back farther afield.
Yet as I lagged, aching joints slumping deep into
 
The grass and mud beneath, I saw too the rows
Of grace tulips reaching high, waving, waving;
My dim heart dove, retreating, fainting, through
 
The softness of the soil, drifting further down,
Down, safe amongst the blossoms where,
Garden-weary, wilting, I fell then into You.

 

 

 

Untitled Poem

The day draws down its blinds
and aches in my bones bring
bed to my mind.
 
The promise of sleep pulls me
downwards as if to
balance the burden of gravity.
 
And there, horizontal,
the body may mend, and weakened
souls may suspire.
 
While the week shuts its eyes
and stars keep their vigil,
weary things drop
 
Into Your four-poster grace:
all-surrounding, Your love,
which sings inside sleep.

Dame Juliana and the Mule (For Julian of Norwich)

(This poem comes with a thank-you to my friend Bei-En for providing the story about Julian shaking her fist at God.)

All shall be well, she said, and all
Manner of thing shall be well. And yet
A story – perhaps apocryphal –
Tells of one glum day, when she
Went out upon a mountain road,
Riding on her mule, and found the
Rain fall heavily about them,
Keeping them from going forth.
Did the rain dampen her mind? Was
This just one rainstorm too many,
One mountain-road crisis more than
She was then equipped to bear?
The story tells, she shook her fist
Up at the God she saw beyond,
Behind the clouds and their wild storm,
And, in amongst the thundery rain,
She yelled a sterner, less calm refrain:
If this is how you treat your friends,
She cried to God, then it is no
Wonder that you don’t have many!
Do we shy away from these
Angry words? Or do we, in
Our hearts see the reflection of
Ourselves, spiteful, beneath those clouds?
All shall be well, she said, and all
Manner of thing shall be well. And yet
She, like us, knew how it goes
On windy, stormy mountain roads.
Did she forever feel the glow
Of everything always so well,
An endless state of quiet bliss?
The story tells us otherwise.
It does not show her fist retract,
Yet we ourselves all know the way
That angry fists can freeze and fall
With lowered and placated heads,
In the broken, contrite prayers of us,
The mules who moan at clouds that we
Don’t understand but fall beneath
The grace that makes all things most well.

The Treasures of Candace (Fifth Sunday of Easter)

Go to the south of the road where
In the wilderness sits one who
Has seen his nation’s full wealth,
Held in his hands the treasury key,
Has borne the trust, the security
Of Candace, his queen.
Go to where he sits, treasure locked
In between his hands. Hear him
Ask, beg, plead to have the treasure
Chest opened up for him. Show him
What he cannot see for himself.
You have the key: turn it.
Sit beside him; let the excluded
One see the beauty of words like
Amethyst and chrysolite fall
From my mouth. Show him the emeralds
That emblazon your sword; wield it.
It will surely cut his heart.
Go down to the water where the
Crystal streams shall open up to
Take him in, its child, made new,
A new explorer in a land of jewels.
Most of all, let him see the
Ruby red that flows from me.
And let the Humble One then humble
Him who has known treasures vast
Yet none like these, the treasures born
Of death and silent sacrifice.
Let him kneel, then, and throw
His treasury key into the sea.

The Least to the Greatest (For Saint James the Lesser)

The world will know enough about us, if it know this much: and even if the world know it not, it suffices so long as God knows it.
(Christina Rossetti, Time Flies: A Reading Diary)
In Portugal a statue stands
Where with one hand he holds a flame
And with the other he lifts high
Something which we cannot see.
The others have their glory-tales
Of crucifixions upside-down,
Beheadings, trips to India,
And maybe Spain. He has none.
Was he this James or that? we ask,
And scarcely can we hope for reply.
Our deepest diggings only find
A few dim guesses and blind leads.
Yet this we know:
He walked in footsteps which we all,
The greatest and the least of us,
Would give a thousand lives to walk,
And where he lives now he’ll rejoice
And lift his empty hands up high
To raise aloft the wondrous news
That one was great while he was less.

Contra Mundum (For Athanasius of Alexandria)

He wrestled with the Emperors;
His pillar stood firm, unshaking,
While all around the edifice
Quaked and quivered, prone to fall.
The world threshed about like a serpent,
Enthralling the Bride in its grip,
And charmed bishops and kings with
Its every sleek and fork-tongued word.
And as the wand’ring minstrel sang
Songs of the once when He was not,
And every town danced to the tune
Of Arius’s piper-song,
Athanasius begged them all
To look upon the God-made-flesh
And see in Him the answer to
The dying world, the godless mess,
The Image now forsaken, once
Thriving in the breath of God.
He saw the arms of living grace
Stretch out and hold us in the Word.

Enough (For the Feast of St Philip the Apostle)

Show us the Father, you pled,
And that will be enough for us.
He looked into your eyes and, with
All the gathering frustration of the teacher
Who day after day is ignored, who teaches
Quadratic equations that they be forgotten,
Beats out iambic pentameters that
They be lost in the drumming numbness of heads,
Said:
Philip, you see me. Whoever has seen
Me has surely seen the Father.
You looked back then with the blankness of one
Who hears, and hears nothing.
His words to you were a strange, stern dissonance:
A voice without sense, barking orders that cut
Right through the logic of numbers,
Claiming, among other things, that
Five loaves plus three fish made a feast.
You heard the promise of his words to you all,
Words swarming, coalescing in pictures:
A mansion full to bursting with rooms,
Places soon to be prepared at tables
Full with the feast born of mustard seeds
And all our nothing made wonderfully Everything in him.
The promise beat into your blackboard-hard ears,
You who then could not know or conceive
Of the radical grace that would grab you,
Emblazon you, sear your conscience and soul.
But somewhere in the ether of noise and confusion
You saw your reflection in his eyes fixed on you,
And held in that mirror, these two blaring symbols:
A cross bearing two loaves,
And a basket, full to the brim with bread.

Untitled Poem

The thing that takes bravery is
a sheer wall, and you’d rather scale it
carefully, with the abseil of sight
and the guide-rope of reason
with the cheers of your onlookers spurring you on.
 
Yet these ledges fall off
when you hold them too hard, and there’s no
room by this wall for onlookers,
no space for them to stand, though
they may well descend with you, if they choose.
 
Most likely, they won’t. The voices
you’ll hear most often are those
who prefer to raise their mocking cries
from the foothills and the valleys. Let them!
Their echo, flying back, will mock them too.
 
And if the sky, too, is too bright
for your darting eyes’ weak perception,
don’t wait for it to set or fall,
nor stare too hard, but let the glare
shine full upon all you can bare to see.
 
Just know that soon the time will come
to stop your circumambulation.
These rocks, though patient, decay like you,
and the majestic ground upholding you,
will wait no longer. It bids you leap.

The Broken Mystic (For the Feast of Catherine of Siena)

Oh, wretched man, the darkness of self-love does not let thee know this truth. For didst thou know it, thou wouldst choose any pain rather than guide thy life in this way; thou wouldst give thee to loving and desiring Him who Is; thou wouldst enjoy His truth in firmness, and wouldst not move about like a leaf in the wind; thou wouldst serve thy Creator, and wouldst love everything in Him, and apart from Him nothing.
(From the letters of Catherine of Siena, translated by Vida Dutton Scudder)
The life she lived
went further than is comfortable,
both for our reason and our flesh:
giving up both that which we greedily crave and that
which our Father knows we all need.
She gave up food
yet drank the discharge of the sick,
fed only on illness and the sacraments.
She took no comfort from the food of earth
and craved only the things above.
We rightly cringe at what
we know now to be sickness, not piety.
We shake at views she held which now
bring to mind the farthest flung
extremities of the Christian galaxy.
And yet she knew what we deny:
that we who love our bodies and
our comforts more than our creator
can only blow about like leaves
and leave behind the firmness of
His ground which bids us stand upon
Him alone and nothing else, and
His love which makes us hate our lives
so we might love as He has loved
and die and live as He has done.

The Shepherd, the Wolf and the Hired Hand (Fourth Sunday of Easter)

The hired hand once saw the wolf
That came upon the fold of sheep
And, hitching up his garments, fled
Far away from the looming wolf
And hid himself safe in the woods.
The sheep stood waiting, helplessly,
And bleated to the silent woods,
The cold indifference of the night.
The shepherd in another fold
Saw wolves and dangers fast approaching
And stood his ground there in the fold,
Made of himself a shield between
The savage creatures charging in
And the sheep who stood there waiting,
Helpless, near the silent woods and
The indifference of the hired hand.
The shepherd stood while the wolf pounced.
His body took the wolf’s swift blows
But gave back to the wolf each one
And in his dying killed the wolf.
My friends, my children, think upon
The shepherd and the hired hand.
I am the shepherd; you’re the sheep.
I’ll keep you safe in pastures deep.
The wolf has come to kill and steal.
The hired hand will leave you dead.
I lay my life down for my sheep,
Laid down to take it up again.