Red Bird

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason–
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens–
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else can do.

This one comes from her collection by the same title.

I learned to be a poet
from my Father,
a farmer,
who talked to trees.

I saw him cry once,
as a young man,
when lightening struck his
towering cypress best friend

Now he’s older
says he can’t understand
my poems.
Could the trees be talking back?

j.d. walt

p.s. I’m glad my mother encouraged me.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
fs

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint…They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else’s experiences or write somebody else’s poems.”
— Thomas Merton

This is a poem for the ages, one to dwell on (even rememberize) over the next few weeks. The closer we come to Christmas the less that prose will do. We turn to poetry. As we draw near, poetry catches flame and becomes song. Slip into this poem’s meter and read it aloud. If I were leading a Christmas Eve worship gathering, I’d simply perform this poem for the message.

THE CHRISTMAS HOUSE (G.K. Chesterton)

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

#254

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Emily Dickenson

Something about memorizing poetry does something in one’s spirit. Yet, poetry will not submit to mere memorization.

My 10 year old taught me a new word some time back: Rememberize. Memorization comes through rote repetition. I don’t know about you, but I find I can’t remember the vast amount of material I have memorized over the years. Rememberizing comes as a fruit of dwelling on and living with over time. It imprints on the soul in an indelible fashion. This is why people with Alzheimers disease forget everything and yet they remember hymns (sung poems). Noone sets out to “memorize” a hymn. They rememberize it over time and it’s theirs forever.

Try this: print this poem off. . . . better yet– copy it down on paper and carry it with you all week. read it a couple of times each day. over the course of remembering it, you will find that you have rememberized it. it will be part of you. you will be glad.

Day In Autumn
Rainer Maria Rilke

After the summer’s yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,   
and, along the city’s avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

— Translated by Mary Kinzie

HELL ON CASTORS

So different they look here
bright colors
row upon row
glistening with synthetic dew
probably travelled a thousand miles
to get here.

Like the child slaves who plucked
them from the greedy farm,
they no longer resemble anything akin
to the soil of their origins.

I shuffle through bananas, lettuce, apples,
and from somewhere among these bins
I hear the faint cries of children,
“See me beneath this veil of perfect,”
“Rescue me from these aisles of sameness
Spring me from your cage of steel,
this hell on castors.
Let me not pass through the captive hands
of another money changer
who handles me like a mother
who never knew I was her child.

Just put me back on the shelf
and flee this place!
Find a Farmer’s Market and
touch the hands of a laborer
and see the face of God

Better yet, plow up the plastic sod
of your yard and plant a garden.
Cleanse your hands of all this
with the dirt of here.

Then listen for the playground voices
of my friends as they kick the ball
of freedom into the clouds of childhood
and joy in the knowing
your dirty hands now serve them.

Just leave me here to rot
in this refugee camp of exiled fruit
and then, maybe my life
will have mattered.

John David Walt. 10.14.10

The last fruit of holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child, the simplicity of the children of  God. It is the simplicity which lies beyond complexity. It is the naivete which is the yonder side of sophistication. It is the beginning of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busyiness for the Kingdom of God–yet how many are caught, and arrested in development, within this adolescent development of the soul’s growth!

The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy. It lives in the Fellowship of the Transfigured Face. Knowing sorrow to the depths it does not agonize and fret and strain, but in serene, unhurried calm it walks in time with the joy and assurance of Eternity. Knowing fully the complexity of men’s problems it cuts through to the Love of God and ever cleaves to Him. Lke the mery of Shakespeare, ’tis mightiest in the mightiest.’ But it binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple adoration of Him who is all in all.

I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one’s personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity’s whisper, walking with a smile into the dark.

Thomas Kelly. A Testament of Devotion. (Harper: San Francisco, 1941). p.45

Advice to Writers

The Sound of the Sea

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
  And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
  I heard the first wave of the rising tide
  Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
  A sound mysteriously multiplied
  As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
  Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
  And inaccessible solitudes of being,
  The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
  Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
  Of things beyond our reason or control.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow