As a ritual, my youngest
lines up the wooden tiles of letters
for the word I have added to the board
so the edges are as if a ruler
were laid against their side.

Half a state away
I am listening to a fellow pilgrim
speak about the chaos
that has crossed her life
a husband plucked from an idyllic scene
extinguished by an indifferent tower of a wave.

Our teacher speaks of order,
the holy as not the momentous
but the mundane--
I am feeling only momentous disorder,
as if someone knocked the game board
and the tiles are jagged lines.

7 Mar 08


Getting Up

"What do you here?"
the monk is asked;
"we fall down,
we get up;
we fall down,
we get up"

I am at the bottom of the stairs;
in my hand
I hold a Q and Z
but no matching vowels
I listen to the letters' sounds
and stutter.

7 Mar 08


Disconnecting the dots

She called them blowers
with the wonder of a four year-old;
she held one by the stem
a tiny constellation
at the purse of her lips
and blew--
all the stars in this orb of spores
tailed off into the wind
its dots disconnecting
into the air,
scattered, random.

I was left
with a stamen moist at the end
of a shoot that leaves stains
on my fingers.
It is gone;
or just becoming?
Is it is?

7 Mar 08


Integrity

He tells a story
of a group grappling
with definitions--
integrity is today;
it's sharing roots
with integrate
and integral.
In this teaching,
the clutch pedal lifts,
the hidden gears
mesh, turn and hum
as a chord engaged.

7 Mar 08


Connections

Watch for those times
in your life
when you come alive,
animated, he says;
see your arms gesturing
like two old men in the market
relating the news—
pay attention;
there lie the clues
to authenticity,
authority,
author.
Go to that place;
write it down.

7 Mar 087


Slowing

The river slows here,
full of froth
from the rapids upstream;
it makes a turn,
nudged by this rise of land
as a liner coaxed by a tug--
it moves with a weight
of all that is.

I go to the summer,
a slowness in the air

legs and arms
over the inner tube,
floating

7 Mar 08


Awakened

"She hath often dreamed of unhappiness,
and waked herself with laughing" --Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"


I am telling the story
of the pig with a wooden leg--
a bit of a shaggy dog
with a surprise turn at the end;
we are both laughing
from our hips
and life is good.
It may be a hundred times
and still I laugh,
awakened from the season's misery
in the shining of the telling.

7 Mar 08


Morning Prayer
“In you we live and move and have our being.” BCP

We read the morning prayer
and I remember
a teacher’s story of the two baskets:
the kingdom in the outer
and our fragile wicker abode
afloat in the center.
I imagine two handles
up above,
and reaching for them;
at times I can steady the rocking.
When we die, she said,
the smaller basket falls away
and we see
that we were always in the larger one—
and I dream of falling
through the loose weave of life
and being held
in nothing at all.

7 Mar 08


The Unmoving


The uphill path
through the pines
has remnants of ice,
pine needles,
bark;
half-way up the rise
two naked pine trunks
have fallen across the way,
short limbs of broken branches
radiate out as the spokes of a ship's wheel;
I grab hold as if to turn--
arrested!

I lean into the unmoving.

8 Mar 08


Speaking out loud


In the midst of naked trees
x-rayed wet with cold raw rain,
the lichen shines as lime dots
of paint on a grey canvas--
fog hangs over the river
and the luminous
is not silent.

8 Mar 08


Evening Prayer


The smoke pirouettes to the rafters
with a flourish from the candles,
extinguished to an end,
one then the other,
with a brass rook—
a bow before, between, following
the blessing.
Wicks beacon orange,
then fade into night.
Lent yearns toward Easter.

8 Mar 08


Lesser Feasts and Fasts


Putting away the Bible,
I see a slim volume
deeper in the cabinet,
in the last row of books
leaning into each other—
“Lesser Feasts and Fasts.”
I close the paneled door,
then saying its title twice
to myself,
I open the door anew,
reach for the volume,
run my fingers down its contents,
and enter in whatever small way
I can
within the food of words.

8 Mar 08


Outlet


On a night of troubled sleep,
I dream about the electrical outlet,
the one without its cover,
the one I’ve neglected for years,
since the basement office was built.
It was a combination
of round and square fixtures
no standard plate would fit,
its wires exposed—
I had not searched for it,
nor changed it
to two rounds
or two squares,
where the proverbial holes
would fit;
nor was I ready to say
it would not work,
I’d make do—
obvious now that it would never
pass inspection.
I woke with a sense
of incompleteness,
aware.

8 Mar 08


After the storm


After the storm,
the river surges
angry at its banks;
in a small eddy
four white mergansers
forage;
the sun is still new,
the shadows long,
and this quartet
eats the silence,
feeds on the being in the world.

9 Mar 08


Rehearsal


I rehearse the routines,
the morning and evening
rituals,
making lists
as I imagine
reaching for things
assumed in hand.
This is how I prepare
to journey,
making the granted
new.

9 Mar 08


Broken for me


In the prayers of the Eucharist,
in the brokenness and redemption,
I am aware that I have lived
my life in chapters,
full of words and fury,
peace and kindness,
climax and close
and ever after.

9 Mar 08


The words

Before he reads the Gospel,
the teacher asks us to listen for the word
or phrase that speaks to us.
I choose “with her hair,”
this washing of feet not with cloth or sponge,
but a part of herself.
I imagine Mary on her knees,
leaning forward so her tresses fall
about his feet—
this is a giving that is an emptying
an opening to be filled.

9 Mar 08

Cf. John 11:1-45. Lazarus dominates the passage, but Mary is the one who shines.


In the eye of light


The sun moves to the high window
and blinds me,
the dust on my glasses
opaquely luminous—
I cannot read the hymn.
Visoring with my hand,
leaning forward in my chair,
the rays move over my head.
At the end of the a capella song
I look up—
The single iris on the table
is a aflame in the eye of light.

9 Mar 08

Good Friday and Easter lie ahead. As in Advent, we watch and wait. More poems will follow as this Lenten wandering unfolds.


An invitation to breathe

A sea of crocuses
rolled in early
and surprised me,
violet so not the shade
of winter,
but the stole of Lent--
oh the hope and welcome
in that upturned cradle
of a delicate palm!

15 Mar 08


Leaving

Leaving on Good Friday,
the night is a bolero--
air cold, as winter
will not relent.

Through the boughs of pines
supplicating to the wind
shines a moon
so piercing
the clouds caught on either side--
illuminated.

So this leaving
down stone steps,
the crunch of sand and salt so crisp
I am in its hand

21 Mar 08


In the fullness of time

She opens the purple bow
on the oval box
of chocolate eggs
"oh ho ho," she says
touching the green foil wrapped one
with her tiny hand.
"Later," I say.
Wonder dashed in her eyes,
she backs away.
After dinner,
she is covered in chocolate,
ringing her lips and each finger,
the arrival sweeter
from the longing.

Easter 08

* * *

All Poems © Copyright 2008, E. Granger-Happ, All Rights Reserved.

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