“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,
I was reading about a church that did away with the Palm Sunday processional this year for clarity’s sake, to add weight to the final days of Christ, when my wife asked me to take out the trash.
The bag was overflowing with cast-offs, coffee grounds, and trampled palm branches from the morning’s service. I tied it up and took it out.
On the cross-section of lawn parallel to the bins, the wind was whipping up water to meet me, spackling my face with pellets. Two days back it was sixty-five and sunny. A false spring, they say, because now, at just above freezing, Winter was lashing out one last time (for good measure), as if we hadn’t been beaten down enough.
But after I discarded my burden and turned again homeward, the wind leaped upon me like a hound, greeting me with force and the wet-dog scent of what was to come, a power beyond winter licking the bones of the earth clean and growling in play as it shook us all.
I recalled Bartimaeus making a scene, Zaccheus scuttling from the tree, the riot of palms and coats amid shrieking, grimy children — that joy, of all things, doesn’t require clarity of theology, but only faithful welcome and a bit of clumsy glee.
The child in the front row whacking his friend with palm fronds knows more of Christ than the grumpy seminarian wielding Grudem in the back.
I suppose even the stones know more, crying out as they do.
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!
I woke today
to scrabbling in the nest,
an irresistible urge
to leap.
In looking past the edge
of all I knew
I saw a vast expanse,
alive and impossible,
and in taking a lungful of it
I knew that
embracing air
was all it would take.
So I woke to the world,
I woke to the sky,
and I took it as it stood:
empty and full.
In climbing to its back
I spread my wings
and met the ground
violently,
like an old friend.
And I knew I could
never walk again.
ii. albatross
The battered beams below
frame fathoms of color, and I am
as one who paints – immersed
in another world. The horizons
spread like boundary lines
of pleasant places,
pleasant all the more
for the freedom to stay within them,
and I journey,
awash in aquamarine.
Paint me an ocean
of far-off hope, brimming
with white-caps,
ringed ‘round about by
luminescent creatures,
an end to the longing.
The current lunges
sleek beneath me, and I am
as one who fights – forgetful
of another world. I taste salt
filming like blood, the scent of
quickening metal,
quickening all the more
for the unknown dangers below,
and I am lifted,
awash with fear and fire within.
Guide me by little lights
above and below, dimming
only when consumed
by brighter joys. Set me
upon the wind,
that I may end.
iii. snowbird
If not for
seed flung aside
by raucous jays,
the winter
would be lean.
If not for
vibrant plumage
that draws the gaze,
the talons
would be keen.
Let me be
small and brown
and content
with thistledown.
iv. blackbird
It’s always spring
when I hear it – feathers in the wind,
the hollow-boned chirrup
of the red-winged blackbirds.
They perch
perpendicular
upon the weathered posts,
old boundary spikes
at the edge of the next field,
naked of wire and lonely
as a wintered heart.
They perch there,
like petals pinned to bracken,
a thicket of red –
and they sing.
I don’t remember the song
until I hear it, but I think
the lonely thorns
can’t help but
love the rose.
And I, a passing soul,
remember things I’d forgotten
and go forth
rejoicing
with the blackbirds.
There was a giggle and a flash of a smile,
Red-tinged and wild for the release
Of something she’d prefer not to show
And couldn’t help but let go.
And behind the eyes
The simple phrase, a tiny
“I think he likes me.”
And it struck lightly a blow
To my soul, memorized and remembered,
Of the moment I realized that of You.
Something so infinite
Capsuled in a feeling so tiny
That it was the only place it could fit.
