Until recently Linda and I had a teen girl from Ethiopia
living with us. We’d intended to adopt
her, but it didn’t work out. That’s been
painful, but back in June, when we were full of hope, I wrote this:
Morning Star
Shed your
tears on our shoulders
Take our
hands and together
Let us face the East
For a new sun
rises
A new day
dawns
Together let
us heal our broken bones
Together let
us join our beating hearts
That have never broken
Together let
us form a circle
Amidst the circles of our kin
Across the
mighty face of Earth
She who loves
us
And bears us
gently home
. . .
Beginning of last year I got interested in poetry therapy,
the use of literature as a means of personal healing. I took on a wounding that I suffered from my
father as a kid. He’d wanted to read me a
well known poem by John McCrae about world war I dead. It’s a lovely poem that I’m sure most of you
will recognize:
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
When I wasn’t able
to receive the poem in the way he’d wanted my father let me know how disgusted
he was with me. It was one of many shamings I got when I turned out not to be what he’d wanted. Last year, I wrote this:
In Flanders
Fields my father dreamed
Of noble thoughts,
high minded verse
As I walked
innocently by
He halted me
to hear those words
I might not
learn in school
He would be
pleased I knew
If I
attentive, grateful, heard
From him those
noble verses read.
I giggled.
Sternly, he
began again.
I really
tried. Despairingly
I tried to
hold at bay
My glee and
his contemptuous glare
And failing
as a literary don
He taught
disgust instead.
I took the
lesson in.
Oh I took up
my quarrel with the foe
That lurked
inside, recoiling from
The shame he
planted there
And fought
the futile battles till I know
That there
are places less remarked
Where blood
is shed, than Flanders Fields
. . .
McCrae’s famous poem takes a form called a rondeau, it’s one
of many medieval French forms to make it’s way into English. They’re fun to write and I’ve written
several. My favorite is this:
Between the
worlds and restless dreams
Where shadows
dance and moonlight streams
A spider
waits on stealthy web
And feels the
trembling in each thread
And coming is
and going seems
As moonlight
glints off swirling streams
Trees
whisper, sighing in their dreams
Expectancy,
or is it dread?
Between the
worlds
The breeze
demanding what it means
The spider
skitters soft unseen
Across the
taught and trembling web
Vibrations
dance as mass is shed
A shadow
slipstreams through the screen
Between the
worlds
. . .
When I began writing a year or so ago I’d expected to write poetry
in free verse; I had no reason to want to write end rhyme or metered lines; but
to my surprise I found that if I set myself to write in verse forms something
in me engaged the task with great pleasure and my imagination went places I
wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. A
playful exercise in verse writing lead to what is probably my wife’s favorite
of my recent compositions:
Two moonbeams
came bouncing and glistening
Off of the
shiny wood floor
They’d
slipped through the louvers
Then straight
on maneuvered
To the cat
near the foyer door
“What ho”
said the cat “are you stalking?”
“Then I will
go stalking too
For the sky
it is wide
And it’s my
cat’s pride
To go
prowling the night with the moon”
So the cat he
ascended a moonbeam
His little
feet silently crept
Round the shimmering
sky
He was ever
so sly
And he never
did falter a step
And he gazed
at the cities of angels
And he roamed
through the lands of the elves
And he spoke
to the dreams
Of the
silvery moon beams
And he had a
fine time for himself!
The morning
of course found him napping
All curled in
a tight little ball
For though
sunlight is fine
A cat’s sense
of time
Is a mystery
pondered by all
. . .
My friends
that’s my five minutes. I thank you for
your kind attention. May we all be
blessed.
