the wind knew me
then,
a brittle leaf shrinking into a needle,
and in its ancient knowing
searched my insides like a compass point,
and brought me
there
in tears.
For I am full of things I have not known
and will never release.
I clutch to my chest
that which I do not understand,
and in holding on
I am held.
manna
I carried my daughter in my arms
out to watch
another Indiana sunset,
and as we staked our boots in the cold,
a flock of geese traversed the sky,
black ships navigating indigo seas,
between narrow burning isles,
and my daughter squeaked back at them
as they flew overhead.
We watched the clouds crocheting themselves into scarves,
in both of our eyes swimming
the sunset, ah! The glory
of that which fades,
and in its fading
fills us with further glories,
until we cease
to wonder what it is
and feast.
bread
The meadow grass gathers itself up
like shocks of wheat,
and the shocks gather together
flank to flank, heaving
out foggy breaths
over a bed of precious things.
And the precious things
gleam in the glancing
light until they melt away,
dew made daylight
in a winter dawn.
I look along the beam.
wine
I know again the winter trees
as structures
outlining a full-formed architecture,
as foundations of another world
intersecting, today, with my own.
And in them, through them, I know
again the winter sky
as a canvas spread flat
against which color may hold existence
and hold court with nature
and hold hands with truth,
a semblance of new sense
born of old sense
and held by senses here.
And by the sky, against the sky,
I know again the winter ground
on which I stand,
the potential of it,
the fullness of it, as great with Child,
a longing known in waiting,
a fullness felt by peace.
And of the ground, beneath the sky,
within the winter trees
I know again
myself,
a pair of feet wandering
over crypt and under tower,
beside the bones
of other beings: spread like stained glass,
speaking like saints,
lifting eyes like worshippers.
Unknown prayers bleed out of me,
released, it would seem,
by winter. Undone, it must be,
by the swelling belly
of a greater glory
pressing against
the groaning world,
longing to escape.
The mountains will always rise up before you as castles to be crested, proving the gold in your veins, cast on the earth merely for you to crumple into crowns.
They will always rise up before you, for their roots run deeper than your ambition, their arms spread wider than your visions, and you crawl across their backs
like an insect: planting flags to prove you are Significant, you are higher than the peak, you are enthroned atop stockpiled conquests. And then one day you will age beyond your ambition,
more quickly than the hills, who have waited long to welcome your stillness, O crippled conqueror. They will open their mouths and swallow you up, and get on with being mountainous.
four
I am unique, just like everyone else: a carbon copy of originality, and some days I want to scream this to the trend watchers and number counters: “I won’t add up!” I am me, meaning no one else, so shove your labels where the sun don’t shine, subtract my numbers from the census, write me out of your economy.
Until I get lonely, and take a number. Because it’s kind of nice to know there are others just like you.
burial
But then he left and we filled the hole in like a socket in the soil. We pressed the dirt down and scraped the top smooth; in hope, we planted no seed but one: a single stone.
It all keeps sinking further as we strive to raise it up. Perhaps it’s true, the only thing we agreed on: he could not be replaced.
So we water the stone with hope that someday it will wake and take on flesh.
ex nihilo
I made something, and it made me back. I will one day receive again the stuff of me I pressed into the pages, letters sent across borders from someone in my past, the one I will eventually hide from the world.
Yes, I plan to hide in embarrassment at being seen as I am now, young and full of it, brash and passionate. I will one day stuff this young me into cardboard crevices and pilfer it from shelves, relieving the world of the burden of knowing me undone, for what else, when you are young, can you be but undone?
The night descending took me with it into the long row, laid open like a wound in the earth. I wished to plant myself within it, and knelt, craving the coolness,
but then the moon came peeking round the corner of a cloud, full and round as a belly, and deep in me old hungers arose, and with them the fear: Must I always hunger? Will I always be torn apart by the cloak of flesh I wear and the devil within?
I fear the night not for its darkness, but for leaving me alone with myself.
unleashed
It was all a dream: the scrabbling at midnight, three long scratches on the glass, the crack along the frame where the lock once was, the splinters on the floor next to his tracks.
It was all a dream: the skittering along the floorboards suddenly stilled at my footstep, then rising in the walls to a fever pitch until the paint crackled and peeled back before a million slender legs.
It was all a dream: the rising shadow in the corner, the tall one with holes for eyes and long fingers pointing at my children in their beds, the widening grin, stiff and creaky and rotating like a wheel.
It was all a dream: the house emptied of anything precious except a single figure weeping in the dark, sinking slowly down into the dark.
If only I could wake up.
of the soul
For this one long night Evil has its say,
Speaking from borrowed lips in a purloined tongue.
little light of mine
The merry scrape echoed as the candle was lit in the other room, and my mother’s face hovered with it into ours, covering the cowering with a blanket of light. We huddled then, together, pooling our little flames into larger beams, to wait out the night,
Before it got too dark to see we gathered fallen leaves and snap-dry sticks
and tepeed them there in the pit.
My father crumpled up yesterday’s newspaper, my brother struck the match.
With our backs to the night, we gathered together, half of each lit like the underside of a leaf. We stayed until the flames licked the bones down to coals,
and spoke our stories over the ash.
let me love you
Oh, let me love you like the errant flame that burns the field to ash before the wind, a wand’ring knight with neither place nor name except that which is given here to him.
And let me love you like the passing rain that cools the fever in the furrowed gash. A salve of justice choking out the pain, a promise that the fire will someday pass.
But let me also love you like the sun that drives its drowsy flocks to pastures new and lifts the heads of those who live undone, that they may enter in through gates of dew.
My love is still untamed, a trinity of doubtful forces, yet He harvests me.
speak
When it’s wrong do not withhold the fuel that sets the blaze to reveal what it truly is beneath the shine and glaze.
Do not hesitate, my friend. Strike the spark and lay it deep within the pile, Let fury split the ash, that what remains is only purer for the trial.
What burns within you now but a joining torch of the Eternal Flame? Let all other fires falter but the Holy One, the Same.
solarflare
yes, we carry fragments of the sun with us into the void,
but I am not God, and that makes all the difference.
The pit-pat of rain and little feet, the splash of a puddle then like liquid laughter, and the storm is just another plaything to tiny toes.
artesian well
Perhaps the hole will fill gradually, as long-filtered rains seep down, the weight of old winters eroding the edges until it all runs over into the earth.
Perhaps it will flood in an instant, like my heart at the sight of her, leaping to suffuse my face with heat, and rapid waves of hope will be enough.
Perhaps it will never fill.
To be empty and to know it may be best, for such cisterns know true fullness when it flows.
stormcloud
Rearrange the clouds around this shadow of a hope, that the sun will fall upon us like the rain.
Drench our souls with truth that darker days will slip away, like the shadow of a cloud upon the plain.
The bitter will be swallowed as the fields lap up the storms. We all will rise up with Him bearing fullness in our forms, and the night will flee before us and the peace ascend like dew out of the pain.
still waters
Just past our door is a little rising hill with an oak tree and a maple sprouting ten yards apart, as though planted in different years by different hands. It inclines its chin to the neighborly fence of the forest framing it, against the still water of the sky.
And my daughter sees this hill whenever she walks out our door to play. Each passing is an imprint of a deeper rest, a widening assent of where she lives: a place of hills and trees and pond-like sky. She has grown to love this little hill across the way. To her, it is the most beautiful place in all the world.
It’s only a hill. But it is ours, and it is green, and it is proof of home — the simple strength of diving roots meeting rising earth just past our door.
“The storm, the blackout, the quiet sea You went running right into it, away from me…” “So Far, So Fast,” The National
maelstrom
He said then, “Do not free me. The sea is hungry, and I have no strength to turn my ear from the song upon the waves.”
As he spoke the lightning flickered, mirrored in aquamarine. “Do you hear it?” And creatures moved in the deep.
When the rope snapped at last, he looked long through me, luminescent: “The call is stronger than the fold.” And then he leaped, heeding what he held in his heart.
The morning brought him back again, floating in the tide. He never looked more human then when seeking to be filled.
erosion
I want more of Your blood, one cup is not enough, and this book ended too soon for my liking, I want 29 sequels, spin-offs, and backstories. And while we’re on the topic,
the life You promised me is hardly as exciting as the one that I read about in the brochure. The least You could do is show up once or twice, a little fire in the night, a miracle or two, a modern-day revival — seems like You would be into that sort of thing, at least, that’s what Your flyer suggested.
I guess if there’s not more than this, I’ll have to take my business elsewhere.
floodplain
Falling down is something I know.
It feels at home in my hands, like the hungry fingers of my children, who also know it.
We are like rivers, I guess. It is in our nature to go down, and down again. and only when we are cupped in a hand or folded into doughy clouds is such a law suspended, only when we fill the thirsty earth.
Now is not enough and never will be, so we roll on to the ocean. We wait to be lifted, filtered, fed — to fall again.
golf-ball sized hail
We were standing in the line for ice cream when the hail started, so we hunched our shoulders and endured for the sake of “two scoops peanut butter cup in a waffle cone, thanks.”
and it’s true, we were made to eat and drink, to like it, but if I see brimstone I’m out of here.
“I do not understand what I do.” The Apostle Paul (Romans 7:15)
i. the mirrors
The day arrived when the darkness crept in like a lame animal and wrapped itself round my feet in repose. It sighed, and I sighed, and I put out a plate of leftovers and let it stay the night.
ii. me, now
Taking You to my lips means less of everything, means nothing else, means everything all together. But I like to think that even when I return he snarls at the wine on my breath and the crumbs in my beard, like a jealous lover over lipstick on my collar.
It makes me think, just maybe, I can hate him enough to leave him for good.
But for now,
I’ll return again to this table and drink deeply of Love until the sun rises on the morning after.
iii. the smoke
Before I lit the match, I looked too close – negatives and clippings in the brown paper bag, clinging, static, to the side of shoeboxed memoirs. What a life. It was a life.
I don’t hate you, not like I should, I just need to burn something to ash to know I’m different now.
Last night I woke to the smell of smoke — I’m different now. But I still rock myself to sleep, slow and desperate next to you.
iv. You, once
I would live as if You had brushed my lips with Your finger not a second ago, lifted a lock of hair back, and looked me in the eyes.
I would live as if nothing mattered but that moment, that my days would be spent in recall and repetition.
My days are not spent this way, so I wish them gone for the sake of tomorrow, for maybe tomorrow I will be better, tomorrow I will be closer, tomorrow I will be…
Some things just aren’t worth the time. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow — I will kiss You again,
Ice
at the tip of my finger,
smooth
on the glass, a smudge
against my other eyes,
staring back at a face I know.
I see you in me,
all backwards in the mirror,
all wrong within the mirror,
all bent behind the breaking —
and I flinch against the sliver
diving deep
into my palm.
Behind the blood we hold tight to heaving chests,
we reach through windows
and come back cut to the quick,
bearing
a wound
for the world.
call & response
I believe in the power of the broken
to attract,
like blooms, precarious
on the stem. They cast
nectar-sweet lines to passing bees,
fluted stanzas on a summer’s day.
Pass me by
if you will,
but it will do your heart good
to shelter here
and sip
the bitter with the sweet.
hide & seek
Where are you, beloved?
I adore your lips.
Let your answer
be my breath.
I wish that this was
only hide-and-seek,
but I smell death.
Where are you, beloved?
I know why you
flee, and my heart
within me grows.
The deeper in
you hide from me,
the deeper I will go.
Where are you, beloved?
Come to me.
I have seen it, and
know the cost.
Come to me and
rest, for I am
willing to be lost.
half & whole
He crosses the threshold.
The place is hollowed out
like a pumpkin’s skull,
eyes cut at odd angles,
strings of cobwebs dripping
from the shell.
He broods,
a smile hovering
behind the frames.
The bones are strong,
if tinder-dry,
and welcoming
if only for what echos
down the hallways —
a life,
known to some as
a home,
time-riven
yet intact.
So he nods,
the architect,
and consults the blueprint.
Yes.
This is indeed a home,
if we can only see
the fragments
by way of the whole.
“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
i. set in stone
I envy the arciform angel
in the far corner
of the churchyard:
eyes heavenward,
lyre uplifted.
He watches the sliver of sky
between the belfry and the rectory.
His is a direct line to the lips of God,
the determination to see.
At vespers, he hovers over
the shuffling congregants,
wings reaching
to the way, an arrow eternally aimed
at the heart of God.
As I exit I too watch the waning sky
for a sign that flight is possible, and all I see
are
birds:
an arrowhead of geese,
a pair of wood ducks
(they mate for life)
and a solitary sparrow,
who nests in the angel’s ear.
I envy the arciform angel,
for though he will never fly,
he wakes to birdsong
at matins,
and is forever looking
into heaven.
ii. starling
the morning after:
feathers of a starling
on the front lawn.
the cat snoozes sunward,
slit-eyed, in regal repose.
iii. flightless
The wealth is in the wandering, they say.
I’m running far afield to prove them right.
I have no equal when I race the day,
not one to welcome me into their sight.
I see the insides of these piles of sand.
I’ll never see the sky the way you do.
I am becoming as the broken land,
and all because I know I can’t be you.
The flight is for the blest, not for the lost.
When sprinting, flying seems like but a snare,
for it is not a freedom at such cost:
a loss of ground for grasping at the air.
And yet I see the sparrow flying free
and wonder if he thinks the same of me.
iv. caged
I got this bird from my parents.
I kept it well, enjoyed
sweet songs and rich plumage,
until it wasted away
within the cage,
dropping scarlet feathers
on the floor.
I had just looked
over the top of my book
when I saw it fall,
featherless,
and at the impact
it burst its bounds
with white-hot flames
and melted the metal bars
to syrup all over my rug.
Then it blasted the window to shards
and flew away.
I sat still and stunned,
wishing to own
what I could not contain,
and knew desire.
Shortly after I posted my first poetry set on the affection of joy, I realized that I should probably clarify what this poetry project is, and why I decided to make it my focus this year.
This year, I am writing monthly poetry sets (3-5 poems per set) with the goal of exploring different affections.
affections as faithful motive power
The best way that I’ve come to understand affections is by contrasting them with emotions. Emotion is something that happens to you. We experience and exhibit various strong feelings as responses to various stimuli — a person, a place, a picture, etc. Often emotions are fleeting, superficial, and not necessarily related to action.
Affections, on the other hand, are connected to both mind and body in a more holistic way. Jonathan Edwards contrasts them with “passions” (or emotions) this way:
“The affections and passions are frequently spoken of as the same; and yet, in the more common use of speech, there is in some respect a difference; and affection is a word, that in its ordinary signification, seems to be something more extensive than passion; being used for all vigorous lively actings of the will or inclination; but passion for those that are more sudden, and whose effects on the animal spirits are more violent, and the mind more overpowered, and less in its own command.” (from Religious Affections)
Ultimately, affections are vitally connected to faith by the inclinations of the will.
When we accept Christ, our deepest desires experience a fundamental shift. While we still struggle with wanting those things we wanted in our natural human state, we begin to desire those things that are of God. We are awakened, in a sense, to the loveliness of our Father and alerted to the ugliness of our sin and everything that opposes our Father.
A war of attraction
In a regenerated person, our affections often war against our emotions and seek to submit them to this new paradigm of glorifying and enjoying our God. As we encounter attractions to things that are evil still existent in ourselves, we must fight against them for the sake of a higher attraction. Edwards says it this way:
“As all the exercises of the inclination and will, are either in approving and liking, or disapproving and rejecting; so the affections are of two sorts; they are those by which the soul is carried out to what is in view, cleaving to it, or seeking it; or those by which it is averse from it, and opposes it.
Of the former sort are love, desire, hope, joy, gratitude, complacence. Of the latter kind, are hatred, fear, anger, grief, and such like; which it is needless now to stand particularly to define.
And there are some affections wherein there is a composition of each of the aforementioned kinds of actings of the will; as in the affection of pity, there is something of the former kind, towards the person suffering, and something of the latter, towards what he suffers. And so in zeal, there is in it high approbation of some person or thing, together with vigorous opposition to what is conceived to be contrary to it.”
Part of my interest in exploring the affections is to develop a deeper understanding of how to let those affections thrive that make me love God more and more each day, and hate my sin and all that stands in opposition to Him. I’ve realized a deep need in my heart to love the Giver above the gifts He gives to me. So in some sense, the object of each affection I write about can be understood in this way.
poetry as exploration
I don’t ascribe to the viewpoint that poetry is exacting about its subject. Rather, I believe that poetry jumps into something and swims around for a while, getting used to its textures and dimensions, tasting, smelling, generally seeking to experience its subject rather than define it. It can be proclamation (“Hey, this is salty!”) or confession (“I can’t swim!”) or any other number of reactions – including definition. For me, poetry is primarily exploration, which is perfect for this project.
Lists of affections and/or emotions are numerous, so for the sake of my project I have selected 12 interrelated affections, as follows:
Joy → Envy
Grief → Contempt
Peace → Gluttony/Greed
Anger → Rage
Humility → Fear
Confidence → Pride
Some of these represent aspects of the same affection, but carry different directional motives or belief systems. I hope to explore them in such a way that the differences and similarities may become clear.
Anyway, thanks for once again granting me a moment of your time to pontificate about things I’m interested in. I’d love to hear from you about your current creative projects and what draws you to them in the comments!
