Speechless

I’ll be honest. Many contemporary worship songs just don’t do it for me with their repetitive, self-focused lyrics. Some songs even diminish words themselves by stressing “how words cannot express” one’s feelings for God. So then the words pretty much stay at the surface level, since they’ve been given the heave-ho, and my eyes glaze over into the expression of sleep.

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.

Read Full Post »

Don’t Drive By

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.

Read Full Post »

Mind Sprawl

Growing up–and then driving–in Southern California brought its stresses, especially the iconic So Cal freeway system with its clogged arteries of frustrated cars.  When approaching those giant concrete interchanges, the synapses must fire at an even faster rate as one considers, “Do I really want to go east? Why are there so many black skid marks on the side of that concrete bridge soaring into the clouds? How earthquake-safe are these things anyway?”

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.

Read Full Post »

Sarah Considers the Stars

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.

 

Read Full Post »

New Year’s Adam and Eve

This is the week we’re all thinking about new beginnings, of course, with 2012 just days away. I haven’t made any resolutions except for committing, I suppose, to greeting my fortieth birthday in August with a hospitable attitude.

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.

Read Full Post »

Easter in December: Resurrecting My Blog

Okay, let me be forthcoming from the get-go. I’ve neglected my blog for over a year and a half. When I started the blog, I enjoyed writing the posts; this is true. But a lot of other things crept into my life. Those creepy kids. Those creepy poems. Those creepy instruments begging to be practiced.

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.

Read Full Post »

Garbage Day Angels

Tomorrow is garbage day in Lindenhurst. Every Monday I hear the diesel engine, the grind of brakes stopping at every house, the clangs of trash cans and recycling bins emptying into the dumpster. Sometimes I notice the guys hopping out to deal with the bins, but usually I don’t. I’ve got children and brand new trash to deal with inside the house.

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.,

Read Full Post »

Planes, Trains, and Exploding Automobiles

In my last post I discussed my desire to listen to the Spirit throughout the writing process. After writing my draft for this week, I realized that I write the same poem over and over again: trying to conquer my fears by taking my thoughts captive. When I talk about fear, I don’t mean fear of rejection or failure or public speaking. Those things are child’s play. My fears are those of exploding planes, fiery car crashes, and dramatic, earth-swallowing quakes. My mind has always had a tendency to wander to these action-flick scenes, and I don’t quite understand why. But rather than trying to fight these poems, I’m letting myself go with them. Training my mind to focus on the “pure and lovely” is one my biggest challenges. Why not embrace the challenge and allow the Spirit to do His work? This week I spent some time thinking about Romans 8:6. “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” The following untitled draft emerged.

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.

Read Full Post »

Nativity Suite

Several years ago I wrote this set of poems as a gift to family and friends. I thought I would share them again. You will notice that Anna and Simeon are included but not the Magi; I wanted to include only those people from Jesus’ earliest days, not his toddlerhood. Yes, I am that Type A. Surprised?

I must also credit Willow Springs, in which the “Mary” installment first appeared.

If I don’t post until then, a blessed Christmas to everyone.

I. The Shepherd

Last night I watched another wet lamb

slide into the dark and beheld this same

drowsy beauty:  a mother bending toward

her nursing young. New limbs trembling.

Matching rhythms of breath.

The angels told us to praise and adore.

I spend my life trying not to love

such small things. But again and again

I carry my new lambs and name them,

play songs for them on the reed pipe,

bind their broken legs and search for them

in the foothills, until they are sold and worn,

served up, split open on an altar

and I feel my own blood rushing to the edge.

II. Joseph

Of any birth, I thought this

would be a clean one,

like pulling white linen

from a loom.

But when I return to the cave,

Mary throws her cloak

over the bloody straw and cries.

I know she wants me to leave.

There he lies, stomach rising

and falling, a shriveled pod

that does nothing but stare

at the edge of the feeding trough

with dark, unsteady eyes.

Is he God enough

to know that I am poor,

that we had no time

for a midwife, that swine ate

from his bed this morning?

If the angel was right, he knows.

He knows that Mary’s swell

embarrassed me, that I was jealous

of her secret skyward smiles,

that now I want to run into these hills

and never come back.

Peace, peace, I’ve heard in my dreams.

This child will make you right.

But I can only stand here,

not a husband, not a father,

my hands hanging dumbly

at my sides. Do I touch him,

this child who is mine

and not mine? Do I enter

the kingdom of blood and stars?

III. Mary

The angel said there would be no end

to his kingdom. So for three hundred days

I carried rivers and cedars and mountains.

Stars spilled in my belly when he turned.

Now I can’t stop touching his hands,

the pink pebbles of his knuckles,

the soft wrinkle of flesh

between his forefinger and thumb.

I rub his fingernails as we drift

in and out of sleep. They are small

and smooth, like almond petals.

Forever, I will need nothing but these.

But all night, the visitors crowd

around us. I press his palms to my lips

in silence. They look down in anticipation,

as if they expect him to suddenly

spill coins from his hands

or raise a gold scepter

and turn swine into angels.

Isn’t this wonder enough

that yesterday he was inside me,

and now he nuzzles next to my heart?

That he wraps his hand around

my finger and holds on?

IV. The Angel

Oh, God, I am heavy

with glory. My head thunders

from singing in the hills.

This night will come once.

Enough bright lights.

Enough shouting

at shepherds in the fields.

Let me slip into the stable

and crouch among

the rooting swine.

Let me close my eyes

and feel the child’s breath,

this wind that blows

through the mountains and stars,

lifting my weary wings.

V. Anna the Prophetess

Widows of Jerusalem, I too was once

young enough to believe my life mattered.

When I woke, the sun rose for me. I tucked lilies in my hair.

Now I am eighty years a temple dweller.

What a wonder of faith! they proclaim. Truth is,

I cry in the dark. I beg priests for bread

and pick insects from my hem. But today,

an infant came to be blessed. He curled

into the crook of my arm, and when his eyes

wandered to mine, I remembered every hope

stored in my childhood’s heart: gazelles

and henna shrubs, doves perched in the crags.

I touched his face—

that skin we were meant to wear forever.

*         *          *

Widows of Jerusalem, this is what I know.

You are not dying. You are falling slowly

into another world, where bread will grow

from a thousand fragrant fields; where lilies

will clothe you in sunrisen petals;

where everyone will call you beloved child again.

VI. Simeon

As a boy, I lay awake

at night, jealous of the stars

that rose over my roof

and climbed into the lap of God.

They whispered to him,

and he whispered back.

He loved their cool blue devotion.

I prayed as the moon

traveled, as the night birds

sang in the cedars.

He is the Rock.

His works are perfect.

Upright and just is he.

But at sunrise, I always

felt alone. Perhaps

I didn’t pray long enough.

Perhaps my words

got trapped in the rafters.

Now I am old. Ah, bed,

receive these heavy bones.

I have seen my salvation.

I close my eyes, and warmth

spreads through my skin

like the laying on of hands.

Go ahead and rise, stars.

Whisper about the origins

of the universe, your secret,

holy fires.  Tonight I will remember

the child I held to my chest.

I will pull my cloak to my face

and drift in the sweetness of milk.

Read Full Post »

Nibbling Back Time

As we near the end of the year, it hardly seems original to talk about how fast time passes. A year, a decade, my entire adult life–they have all fluttered into some mysterious storehouse of synapses in my brain. Most events and memories lie dormant until some trigger–a picture, a song, a smell–brings them into bud again.

Sometimes I feel time passing so quickly I almost experience a sort of breathless panic. 2010 seems so hard-edged and space-age, so beyond the scope of anything I imagined when I was asked as a fourth-grader, back in 1981, to write an essay describing what I would be doing in the year 2000. (I said I would be a single woman living in the mountains and raising Siberian huskies. Ironic, given my aversion to large dogs. And the fact that I’ve been married for 16 years. And live in Illinois.)

We have no control over the future, of course, but we can write poetry. Poetry can do the hard work of preserving the moments that make up our lives. And I believe the Holy Spirit has used poetry, both others’ and my own, to transform me as I reflect upon the rushing past.

This beautiful poem found in Scintilla, a magazine out of Wales, captures the way I want to live in 2010.

At Staplehurst

by Hubert Moore

No need to cross the bridge

to catch the train to London.

It sides up to you

and what you miss

is rabbits lounging in the present

green and easy

on the other side.

You don’t have to climb

the steps and look

at how they don’t consider

when, how long, how soon,

but keep time tender

by nibbling back and back

its blade-tip as it grows.

Read Full Post »