As one who lives and worships with words, lines like that get under my skin. I can and wantto express myself with words! Is there something inherently unspiritual or unfeeling about vivid images or surprising diction? However, I have to face the fact that Paul speaks to the whole phenomenon of wordlessness in Romans 8:26: “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26 ESV)

I am not a biblical scholar. I can’t say for certain whether this verse refers to emotions, speaking in tongues, or a mysterious silence we humans aren’t privy to. But I do know in those rare times of deep communion of God, I can sense a feeling, almost a wave sweeping over me, that does not attach itself to language. Perhaps I can capture the sense later in a poem, but in the moment, it’s just Spirit, just the wave.

I’ve been enjoying David Keplinger’s collection of poems, The Clearing The Clearing (New Issues, 2005). His poem “Without” speaks to this sense of wordlessness in a way that I’ve never been able to articulate. (How’s that sentence for some irony?) Enjoy this beautiful poem.

Without

“Where knowledge and desire ends,
There is darkness, and there God shines.”–Meister Eckhart

Upon his stroke, he did without. Still
He found that he could think, lacking words.
Seeing it, he could think a wooden table,

A glass, its dusty water, its blue,
Unsinkable stars. What spoke to him? He didn’t
Think the names. He had to listen. Like an ache

Far into the yard and to the neighbor’s yard
And to the neighbor’s neighbor’s even cows
As dark as hammers flickered in that self-

Same cloud. Twilight, they and all the lights
Would fade. No sense could hold the cows,
Their figures indistinguishable from the land,

In the same late angles as the land, when
He knew: This is God thinking. But he was
Thinking it without. Without This. God.

In the Dinah section of A Thousand Vessels, I explore the story of a young woman who is raped–then sought as a wife–by Shechem. In a vengeful rage, her brothers proceed to kill every male in the city. I’m sure they felt justice was done, but in the end, Dinah still carried the pain of her brutal attack to the grave. Of course violent perpetrators should face the consequences of their actions.  I can think of few missions more important than breaking up a child sex ring and bringing these criminals to justice. But in the end, the pain and memories remain. Fight for justice for victims, yes, but also take the time to reach out to them, listen, and show unconditional love and grace. There are probably more than you know, right in your neighborhood.

Drift (originally appeared in Nimrod as “The Hiding Place”)

At last, April. We drive past the forest preserve,

treetops simmering green. I roll down the window

and press my palm to the wind.

I’ve read that in spring, young girls are driven

to places like these, forced to huddle under damp logs.

Some are thirteen, some are ten, some are six,

shivering in stilettos and halter tops.

They draw daisies in the dirt with sticks

as they wait for the men to appear at twilight.

The girls teach themselves to float away,

drifting to the canopy of branches.

One girl becomes a wisp of cloud;

one becomes a squirrel. One becomes a sparrow,

flitting among the open spaces

until she alights on a bud. She perches there

and refuses to move. When the wind tosses

the branch, she dips and sails with it, oblivious

to the whimpers below, the sudden pops

of raindrops, the rush of passing cars.

This week, one of Scott Cairns’ poems, “Sacred Time,” has proven to be a spiritual touchstone for me. He does not speak of freeways but of the “sprawl and velocity” of our minds. I know my mind, anyway, whether in California or Illinois, constantly swerves on and off the ramps of my daily decisions and preoccupations with little thought of the God who keeps this whole mess together–and speaks through it all. I’m thankful for poets who can speak so clearly of our need to slow and abide. Enjoy the poem.

Sacred Time

Not time at all, really, but space

like you don’t know, and knowledge there,

in general, finally admits

how meager a consolation

it has been all along. Once

you grow accustomed to the sprawl

and velocity your own mind

articulates (and that queasy

rocking tapers to a hum) you might

have pause to entertain a sense

of presence reaching suddenly,

and now, and deeply, ever so.

Sarah was beautiful. She rode the waves of faith and doubt and perhaps laughed at inappropriate times. She also carried a spark in her womb, the star that birthed a constellation of generations. When writing about Sarah, I too explored the depths of my doubt and the feeling of loss that accompanies every gift. The poem “Sarah Considers the Stars” delves into some of the emotions Sarah must have surely felt as her life and body sagged into what seemed to become an unending, desolate future. Small footnote: the star “scraping” through her body somewhat painfully refers to the release of an egg. Some women, myself included, experience sharp pain at the time of ovulation. That may be too much information, but hey–it’s all for the art, right?

Sarah Considers the Stars

“He took [Abraham] outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” –Genesis 15:5

After Abraham feel asleep,

she pulled her cloak

around her shoulders

and walked out to stare

at the night. Stars collected

in the crevices of mountains.

They spilled into the oak groves

and clung to the branches.

And when she spread her hands

to the sky, they rested in the sags

of flesh between her fingers.

The world is dripping with stars,

she thought, and still not one

belongs to me. She considered

hating them. She considered

wishing a heavenly storm

to drown them. But she only

murmured, I am through

and walked off, holding

a sudden sharpness in her side,

as if a star had dislodged

there, and turning and scraping

and shining its path, settled

into the bare sky of her body.

When writing the “Eve” section of A Thousand Vessels, I of course explored all sorts of geneses. I imagined a suburban business park as a new, wild land; identified with Eve’s first experiences with marital discord and birth; and considered my own new beginnings in marriage and motherhood.

In “My Daughter’s Hands,” I recount a moment when I began to realize that my daughter was a separate entity ready to explore her own Eden of discovery without me. As I’m sure many parents will agree, these moments are bittersweet: we must allow our own “creations” to make their own choices, good or bad, with the beautiful freedom God affords.

My Daughter’s Hands

When did you hatch these pink birds
that alight on everything in the house?
They land on power cords and houseplants,
perch between the window blinds.

At communion, I hold you on my lap
as I take a cup from the silver tray.
Every muscle in your body strains.
You want nothing more in this world,
love nothing as you love this purple vial.
Color swims there. Light bounces.
You whimper, stretch and shriek.

People turn. Yet I know the moment I say no
your world will begin to go wrong.
You will learn that most bright things
are never meant to be touched
and have purposes other than your joy.
You will learn the tension in my neck
as I shake my head to the beautiful movements
of your flesh. You will swim against
the current of my voice jutted with stone eyes.
And eventually, even when we embrace,
a curtain will fall between us
like the thinnest, coldest silk.

So child, take the cup and let it splash;
suck the sweet plastic and grin.
May your saliva roll down your chin and neck
like jewels, sparkle on your fingers
that have just this brief time
to fly over the world.

Jeanne Murray Walker, a fabulous poet of faith, explores the birth of Christ in its most physical sense in her poem “Silent Night.” God rips through Mary like lava, like a “wild train.” Mary, Murray writes, “is blown apart.” May you, too, be blown apart by the eruption of God’s love this Christmas and in the coming year.

SILENT NIGHT

–for Marjorie Maddox

The holly bush stands by the peeling door

she stumbled through last night, under the stare

of curious eyes. She didn’t make it far

beyond the first stall, so she lay down there

to let her body have its way with her.

Rubbing her back, he braced himself against the door.

Maybe she wished that she could give it up–

the greeting of the angel on her stoop,

her yes, the thousand future paintings. She would swap

it all to stop this lava. Not to erupt

with God. To halt the bleeding of the Infinite

into that barn. Peaceful? Silent? It was abrupt,

loud, violent. She was blown apart. Body went

one way, she went another. Just to keep her blunt

place in the world, she sent her eyes hunting

the holly: that woman, sister, aunt, waiting

patiently outside to help. As God came ripping

through–a wild train–her eyes kept holding

that tree. She rests now. Wind is leaking

into the barn, the animals are sleeping.

Outside, the holy holly bough is breaking.

That’s not to say that all was quiet over that span of time. I published two poetry collections, got a generous grant from the NEA, and, most significantly, potty-trained a child.

But did I mention the poetry collections? This one, A Thousand Vessels, was just released by WordFarm Press. I mean, really just released. I haven’t seen it yet, but a friend of mine who got it in the mail yesterday said it was. . .you know, pretty okay.

“All right,” you may be saying, “this woman’s obviously returning to her blog in order to promote her book. What a narcissist! What an opportunist!”

Yep.

During the next, oh, ten weeks, I will be posting my thoughts about one woman from the Bible per week, including a sample poem from the corresponding section of the book. (A Thousand Vessels is indeed based around the lives of ten women from the Bible. Some of the pieces are persona poems; others, personal, thematic connections to the women’s experiences.)

While I’m at it, I will return to my original purpose in creating this blog, which is to examine the process and experience of writing–and reading–poetry while stumbling toward Jesus. I’ll have time now, what with the diapers gone and all. I promise! Please join me.

Here’s an easy post: a poem I’ve already written. I’ve been writing poems based on Paul’s writings, including some of the headier stuff in Romans. I based this poem on the idea of being buried with Christ in his death. As I tried to imagine what that might be like, a poem emerged. Happy Lent!

This poem was first published in The Christian Century.

Buried With Him In His Death

We fought for one more sputter

of the old life. Even though a breeze passing

over your sieve of skin could send you

screaming, you muscled up your diaphragm

to whisk more air into the fire.

I held my own terrors to my chest:

failures and brush-offs, cancers and crashes,

all the anxieties I had grown to love

heaving and cracking like your ribcage

until we both gave out.

Then there was the mess of prying us loose:

wailing women and splintered lumber,

flesh stubbornly sticking to the nails.

But what swift hands, that Joeseph of Arimathea,

what purposeful footsteps crunching the ground!

He wrapped us in linen and spices.

Only the hapless world could think of packing

fifty pounds of aloe around a dead man’s wounds.

But we drank it in like deserts

until finally even the lizards scurried home.

I lay in the cave and wanted to touch you,

but my hands were no longer mine.

They closed in on themselves like daylilies.

The stone rumbled over the window of light,

and then our difficult rising began.

That’s right–I often forget to notice people, especially the predictable servants of our neighborhoods who clean up after us, deliver our mail, and plow our streets. What a miracle, really, that we’re all made in God’s image yet have the opportunity to move in and out of each other’s lives so freely, that we can pray for strangers, encourage them with the simplest of gestures, and capture them eternally in a poem.

Eamon Grennan’s poem, “Wing Road,” made me think about trash day a bit differently this week:

Wing Road

Amazing, how the young man who empties
the dustbin ascends the truck as it moves
away from him, rises up like an angel
in a china-blue check shirt and lilac
woollen cap, dirty work-gloves, rowanberry
red bandanna flapping at his throat. He plants
one foot above the mudguard, locks his
left hand to steel bar stemming
from the dumper’s loud mouth and is borne
away, light as a cat, red leg dangling,
the dazzled air snatching at that black-
bearded face. He breaks into a smile, leans
wide and takes the morning to his puffed
chest, right arm stretched far out, a checkered
china-blue wing gliding between blurred earth
and heaven, a messenger under the locust trees
that stand in silent panic at his passage. But
his mission is not among the trees: he has
flanked both sunlit rims of Wing Road
with empty dustbins, each lying on its side,
its battered lid fallen beside it, each
letting noonlight scour its emptiness
to shining. Carried off in a sudden cloud
of diesel smoke, in a woeful crying out
of brakes and gears, a roaring of monstrous
mechanical appetite, he has left this unlikely
radiance straggled behind him, where the crows,
covening in branches, will flash and haggle.,

I maneuver my minivan down a licorice stick
of asphalt. Salt spews from a cavalcade
of trucks, but the glacial shoulders advance.

I try to fight where my mind wants to go:
a bamboo foot-bridge swaying over a river,
a quarter-inch slip and plunge into white.

My family laughs about the Abominable
Snowman, imagining his stomping up I-55
and toppling a truck-stop Dairy Queen.

They’ve taken the side of the storm,
this morning’s watercolor of Doppler radar
now a miracle birth in our headlights.

I pray that I can unclench and love,
see the mysteries of the Spirit
in these swaths of black ice, the arms

of Christ in the muscled mounds of snow.
The exits count down toward home.
We’re safe, I say, we’re safe, we’re safe.

The kids trace their names in the fog,
flakes like sweet alyssum flowers
blurring their faces in the window.