Epiphany

Morning in January:

Eastern sky gleams lemon-yellow

Anticipating dawn.

Small children spill, splash,

Sleepily,

From vans and cars.

Teachers wrap chilled fingers round

Hot coffee mugs, sip, sweep straggling cobwebs

From corners of drowsy minds.

Seventy starlings swing,

Strung across telephone wires,

Softly sing suspense.

Three stars shimmer faintly,

Fade, wink out,

Obscured by deepening light.

Sunrise

Streams over horizon,

Gold fire resplendent.

Sparrows spiral, whirl,

Children laugh, skip,

City awake.

Fragility

I am the pond in the early morning sun

Slant of rays against ice.
Step on the borders
Where water meets grass
And the ice is thick.
This you know and trust
Because I am reliable
And I like to have you there.
But be careful of the center:
The water is deep beyond knowing,
And the ice grows thin.
The waters move,
The waters still.
You are welcome here:
Only please remember
The waters exist.
Calm, I am a pond
Glinting with ice in morning sun.

Handel's Harpsichord

Can music be specific to any one particular season? Perhaps and perhaps not.  Yet Vivaldi seemed to think so, and Handel's Harpsichord Suite No.2 in F major seemed to me to appropriately represent Winter's fragile finery.


In a rush of harpsichord joy
Are scales of flowing snowflakes,
Trills of brave morning birdsong.

Brief rests between movements
Are the pauses between puffs of white breath;
Chords the crunch of footfall.

Staccato notes are surely
Bare tree-tips reaching thin point
Perplexed in persistent effort
To pierce the low-hanging sky.

Stark brittle beauty
The cold stream singing notes
Of fumbling round ice and rough white-patched rocks.

Thin of ice and harpsichord sounds,
Gracing sweep of covered land:
Enamor
            open eyes and ears.

Snowstorm

Thick empty white sky hanging

   Blank like the face of a vacant stranger

Endless white ground stretching and soaring

  Mounting upward forward backward

     (Deceptively spotless seagull arcs)

Both dissolving, disintegrating

   Into a swirling middle

Shreds from above and below frantically

   Now triumphantly

       (like an eraser scrub the last

        bits of pencil or color scratch markings)

   Gaining inch by foot

Overcoming the space in between.

Whitewashed

O Winter,

when you bleached the color

out of every last inch of the world,

whitewashing walls and windows

to your windy heart's content,

could you not have left

a little more

within my soul?

Winter Psalm

Winter has unfolded
   in crisp, clean lines
Sharp like the telephone wires
   and bare branches against the sky,
Sharp like the cold stars
   before dawn.

And the world moves and lives on
   in all the bustling human ways,
And in flocks of birds and burning wind.

O sing, you people, and dance;
   hearken, and be still.

For the Lord our God
   who waits for us in stillness
Is a God of stillness but not static;
   He who created our bones to run and dance
Is in the movement as well as the quiet.

His wind burns our hearts like fire,
   with joy, like flocks of birds,
Enduring like the trees
   silent against the sky,
Like stars in the deep before dawn.

I am of Humanity: a Sketch

From the library I walk to one of the Quiet Places on campus; take off my backpack, and I am free.  I make the short climb upward and watch the world around me, the stars above.  I swing from the poles over my head, and sit atop one for a while.

It is cold.  My ears, cheeks, neck, hurt from it.  The cold air and colder metal cause my hands to ache, and I am glad.  I am glad to feel the sharp throb of my ears and ache of my hands; to feel the pain in my body, to remember it's there.  I have hands.  They hurt, and they are part of my body, and they are mine.

They are not just a tool for serving, not only an extension of my academic mind.  They are part of my physical body, which I feed and sleep and, of late, otherwise ignore.  But it is me, and I am alive.

And with the sensation, the reminder of my physical body, the imagination slowly starts to leak out from beneath the intellect.

I can swing on the metal rods and pretend I am a gymnast, or look up at the stars and imagine myself an astronomer of old, seeking the wisdom of God in the artwork of the stars.

The moon is the tiniest sliver: I try to write but it's too dark, and I cannot see the strokes of my pen.  So I clamber down, reclaim my backpack, rejoin inhabited civilization.

Inside, I feel my cheeks and ears burn.  In the bathroom mirror they are a blotchy red and white.  My hands also burn; they are bright red and ugly, with the veins and fingers starting to swell, un-shriveling in the warmth.  Once I can properly feel it again, my left hand aches from the day's writing.

People talk to me.  The strangeness of my thoughts fades away and I notice that I am hungry, tired.  I recall that I have much yet to do.

My hands have returned to their normal coloring, calluses slightly enlarged from recent use.  I am no longer too warm or cold.

And as the acute consciousness of my humanity fades, I must go back to "real life" and the ordinary thoughts and tasks before me.

An Overture Untitled

The world is alive today in swelling fullness,
life upon life upon death.


The clouds were played and arranged
by a string quartet,
and the veiled winter sun
the woodwinds proudly array.


(In my Love, the King,
      is all magnificence--)


He opened the heavens,
opened his hands,
and what is invisible poured forth.


If our hearts were but right
      we might see!
If our hearts were but right
      we might hear!
Or perhaps it is not our lot,
and perhaps it is not our lot.


The symphony surges,
swirls above and throughout
      (we keep to our quiet lives).
The triumphal march soars,
sweeping loudly to proclaim
      (we keep to our busy lives).


The resonating cello
left its song within my soul.
It sings sweetly and strongly
of sorrow and lament
and a throbbing ache
of strange, unspeakable joy.


The world, my dear,
is alive today,
and the silent love of a King
(life upon life upon death).

January Sky

Vivid hues of sunset

Paint life across

Winter's muted tones.

Sing to me, January sky;

Soothe this wakened soul;

And pursuade a fearful heart

to trust

           and to let go.

Gifts of Life

Can you find the joy
     in sunshine after a week of rain?
     in a gentle snowfall?
     in a friend's embrace?
     in a sky adorned with stars?
     in the dance of a butterfly?
     in child's laughter?
     in music that touches the soul?
     in words of needed encouragement?
     in tears that bring quiet comfort?
     in a moment of beautiful silence?
     in the splendor of a fiery sunset?
     in words of encouragement for another?
     in the thrill at the peak of the mountain?
     in the lapping of waves on the shore?
     in an unspoken love in a moment of solitude with a friend?
     in the movement of long grass in the wind?
     in an unexpected smile?
     in perseverance through a hard time?
     in a summertime thunderstorm?
     in the promise of love that never ends?


These are the things of God.

Haiku, oddly enough, and mercy

I say "oddly enough" because I don't really write haikus. I've probably written one once before in my life when I learned about the form in school.  But the other night I had a poem in my head, and this is how it came out:

After time and rain

had defiled pure, clean white,

You sent us fresh snow.

At the time, I wrote it merely because that was precisely what was happening, and the image was in my head. A lot of poems start that way.

However, it dawned on me just now that perhaps this simple picture of new snow after the old stuff had all but melted away, and what was left muddy, trampled and altogether nasty, that He does the same in us. In me.  Of course, as a comparison this little sketch falls short on a multitude of levels, but truly He makes His mercies new in us "every morning" after we've soiled ourselves once more with the impurities and imperfections of sin.

I find this reassuring, especially as the past few days I've struggled with feeling acutely these same impurities and imperfections in myself in relation to God, and feeling like I must be so small in His sight. It is a battle: I yearn and thirst for Him, but see my own selfish unworthiness. And while I think it's good to recognize my sin and seek God's forgiveness, there's a point at which I can't let it get in the way anymore. Perhaps the enemy tries to use this healthy sense of sin to say, "See how dirty you are? He's so holy and pure--He can't possibly be near to you right now. You say you only think about yourself? Why, that isn't godly at all--God must be so distant from you!" Maybe.  At any rate, this heaviness has fueled my desperation to be filled by my Lord, and draw nearer to Him.  But until now, I haven't felt complete resolution.  Oh, I know God looks and sees Jesus' purity when He looks at me, because that is the basis of my faith.  But the past few days, it was something I only knew in my head.  I had forgotten it in my heart.

I am reminded of a song my dad used to sing to me at bedtime.  Here tonight I find my resolution, and the reminder of God's infinite love. The lyrics come directly from Lamentations 3.22-23:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning,

new every morning;

great is your faithfulness, O Lord,

great is your faithfulness.