Poems I

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"For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand." --Psalm 84:10, NKJV

* * * * *

Four Walls

There are three sides
to every story:
what was,
what will be,
and the collision
in between.
Yet in this
beginning, plot
and end
is but a
single thread
in the veil of
the Holy--
it is one
moment
still.

* * * * *

I. Story

"First bits and crumbs of the piece come and gradually join together in my mind; then the soul getting warmed to the work, the thing grows more and more, and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets almost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were a beautiful painting or a handsome human being; in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as a succession -- the way it must come later -- but all at once as it were. It is a rare feast. All the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong dream. But the best of all is the hearing of it all at once." --Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

* * * * *

The Story

To tell the story.

That was the reason

for being there,

so the reporter said.

If that is legacy

it is because

it is given

away.

In the end

what we leave

behind

is our story,

the heart of

the matter,

the heart given

away.

* * * * *

Richard

Like all good
story tellers
he told the stories
with a smile,
delighted at
the simple things
that are the vessels
for the deeper places
in the heart.
Blessed by
the grace found
in the brighter moments
as the darker places
in our lives,
he would rather
laugh and smile
with the sinners
than wear the airs
of a lofty saint.

Here was someone
with whom
you could
sit in a circle,
legs crossed
and head cocked,
with a child's
eyes of wonder,
straining to hear
each word
as if life
at that moment
depended on the
nouns and verbs.
And in these stories
it did.

Like St. Francis
before him,
he blessed the animals
and preached
as sincerely to
those with soft ears
as those with hard teeth
and claws,
remembering each
one's name
with an interest,
care
as if we were his own.
And so
we were.

In this place
we are the flock
resting about
this simple hearth,
this simple table,
in a neighborhood
without roots,
the nomads of
the urban outland,
we are gathered by
this shepherd,
the gentle face
of the creed,
and our
belief.

* * * * *

Wilson

She is standing

at the doorway

of the old

white church,

with her cane

between the

pillars.

It is dusk,

the shadows

long

and we cannot

see

which way

her head

is turned,

what comes

or goes is

lost in the

silhouette.

So much life

has made

the journey

between this nave

and altar,

the rug is worn

with turns

of time.

This is the

house of obelisks,

totems,

cross,

that mark

the date and mile.

We are talking

in the breezeway

on a summer

morning after mass

she sits on a cold

gray slab of bench,

I am squatting low

so she can hear.

She wants to know

about the new church

we may build,

she who saw the

dream,

and I so want to tell.

I say we set a goal,

a challenge to

the artist

whose work must

wean

the people onward

as a magnet from

tomorrow,

so the old

white church

is left behind.

With an arch of

eye and brow

she says a broken

"no",

we can never

leave these walls

behind--

too much

of her life

was written

here--

baptism,

confirmation,

wedding,

eulogy.

These are the

defining markers,

as clear as

the corner stones

upon which

these clapboard

walls are set.

In the spirit

of a breezeway,

at the end

of a story,

in silence

we rise and go

on to the beginning.

* * * * *

"I see, hear, and know simultaneously,

and learn what I know as if in a moment." --Hildegard of Bingen

At once

I wonder
about this
seeing and
hearing and
knowing
all at once--
that in the
explosion and
compression
of the moment,
it is caught
in the throat
of the poet
who coughs
and hacks at
it until
it blows free
falling from
Gabriel's trumpet
with words
not to fear.
Yet when the
poet looks at
each instant
each encounter
as an opportunity
to sense
and write
this density
of life,
I wonder
whether those
he meets will
flee in terror
at the endless
prospect in
the poet's
eye.

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