Desert Morning

Sun is enthroned on airy castle of clouds,
Light cascading in brilliant columns to earth.

Drops of rain splash down;
The low, shrub-like trees
Raise up leafy arms.

I, whose existence is not contingent
On these brief scattered raindrops,
Raise my arms, too,
As though my life depended on it.

Return: an Update

It's been almost a year since I posted anything.

I have lots of excuses: busyness with a new job, illness, not having internet at home, etc.

However, here, I think, is the truest reason.  When I write, it's usually about how I see evidence of God's work and glimpses of the eternal in the transient moments of temporal life.

Fifteen months ago, I was swept from the great green Midwest to the strange land of the Sonoran Desert.  Everything was terribly new: marriage, church, schedule, job, landscape.  Even the plants and wildlife seemed strange and unfamiliar.  I felt like I'd landed in a Dr. Seuss book with all the improbable shapes of cacti, agave plants, and so many others.  I missed rain, and green things, and I read a lot of Hildegard von Bingen and Mary Oliver.  For someone who connects with God through nature, this was rather an adjustment.

I love my job, and am thrilled to have found a place where my whole person is stretched and able to serve.  While I never expected to be teaching (and I'm still not sure I will want to do so long-term), for now it is a blessing.

God has been unbelievably faithful through all the changes.  But I could not easily glimpse eternal moments in the temporal when everything about my temporal life was new and different.

That said, the past year has been one of adaptation, of just being.  This is a good and beautiful thing, and, if you know me, one that has been a long time coming.

I can make no promises about a return to regular posts--I still don't have internet at home, and that's a moderate obstacle.  However, I may start writing poetry again, and God has begun to show me how he worked through periods of doubt and darkness, and such things often lead to writing.  Thus, I feel slightly optimistic that you will begin hearing from me again through the months to come.

In Christ,

Allison

Phoenix by Moonlight: On the Last of August

Desert night--

   moon alights on still palms;

City lights

   cannot reach the depths

   of the expanse but yet

   pale stars.

The monsoons have come and gone;

   there is no poetry of rain

   and the air is still--

Still, but devoid of silence.

   Men sit on their porches

   sweating and smoking,

   complacent and cursing.

The road roars

    of constant traffic.

The smoke has fouled the air;

   the city has drowned the night.

No birds, no wildlife--

    only somewhere a cicada drones.

Phoenix, I have seen thee burn,

   flames into ash

in glory of red skies

   and streaming faces.

Can I hope for thee to rise,

   to take flight?

Dare I hope to see

   emerging

Life?

Haze

Summer light sharpens lines,
Intensifies colors to dazzle aching eyes,
Dispel illusions of nuance.

Mornings of sun, blinding afternoons
Blur into gentle monotony of days
While the park swings remain
Suspended motionless.

Invariably, you and I,
Hiding from afternoon,
Clothe poverty in rich existence--
From rice, beans, white pasta
We find refreshment
In ice cream and cheap beer;
Usurp the smells of sweat and chlorine
With fresh-brewed coffee.

Let us build days for ourselves
Out of old books, rich music,
And the world that is too hot to touch
Will infuse us with its life.

When July is gracious
We will delight
In the heavy-sweet rain smell;
When it is cruel
There will be a world for us still.

Eucharist

O for child-joy,
  solemnly taking the Mysteries of grace
in both hands
to eat and drink carefully of God's provision--
     abstracts she can't understand like
     holiness and redemption--
then to skip away, jubilant
  fluttering
like some small bird
  that knows its freedom and
     dependence.

In the Cleft of the Rock: Of Mystics and Mountains

My second hike since moving to Arizona:

My asthmatic Midwest lungs aren’t used to the mountain-desert air.  So I wheeze along in the elation of the climb and the frustration of breathing.  I find hiding places off the path to catch my breath, read a little; and my mind is full of phrases and lines from poetry and Scripture which contain imagery matching the scenery around me.

Humankind should ponder God…

recognize God’s wonders and signs.

Let these signs and wonders be

the firmament on which to build,

            so as not to be shaken by fear,

            or distracted from the love of God.

                                                            Hildegard of Bingen

Dillard couldn’t understand why mystics sought God on mountaintops, knowing He is fearsome and powerful.  She declared she would hide in a cave into which only slivers of God could shine in as light through the cracks.  I think I understand the mystics’ approach more than hers.

Gravity

Truly we speak of the Curse
  As the Fall;
Man has been bound and grasped
  By gravity ever since.

The body grows in shape and mass;
  Each passing year gravity gains force.
The accumulation of years
  Bends the shoulders to the earth.

The human heart finds sorrow
  And trouble in time perennial
Till it fills over-full and ever-heavy
  Weighing the soul ever lower.

Time and age are merely formality—
  We are forever pressed into the earth's embrace.

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.