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Against the powder sky, the spindles and limbs
Of gray speckled Aspens
Stand as voiceless reminders
That life has its bounds
Beyond which there are no rejoinders.

Under leather boots
Flakes of snow joined in a common lot
Creak, telling me each
Their own vision of Greatness
Unbound by this while ball.

In the quiet of my soul a voice
Mirrors both the vast hush and the minute whisper.
There, what I see: What I hear
Becomes a carol and a vision.
My voice gazes out with calmness
From my eyes, and a little wonder forms,
Like rims of frost, as does a prayer.

A prayer for some sweet peace for all
As the flakes slip down and the aspens fade.

Treasures

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
II Cor 4.7

The withered hand

There are moments in this pale life
That stare thorough fog unlifting.

Moments that shroud from us
The joy we thought we'd feel.

Moments that claim more stores of hope
Than we have left to give.

Moments of caughtness. Caught between
the dark and the beyond--also very dark.

Which may be light,
And yet...

Has wrong been done to now walk here?
Have we strayed in finding now the center of the pearl?

Has our weak movement placed us here
To feel actutness of shared pain?

Has blundering foot and stolid hand
Voice inept and thought unkepmt brough this?

I would,
If I could,
Think That.

Yet in my
Soul a chamber
Opens to reveal.

A trust,
unfounded
but in
Grace

Grace, they say, forms nought but
Gentle props of airy meanless.

This I choose to pass.
To listen is to think.

And think, though I cannot,
I may find quite enough to show

That Grace, once found amidst the ruins
Is all suffieicnt mortar, brick and trowel.

It but remains. Ah yes, remains.
To weild it well, those tools those gifts.

My hands yet tremble. My skills, ah what...
They are not skills. And if...

And if they were they still were but the gifts.
Gentle gifts. Extended quite in Mercy, Love and, Grace.

...

Lord, stretch, stretch my withered hand
And cause
It to recieve

Out, out...spark

"...Blow on the dying lamp and then let it go out..."

Turgenev, Fathers and Sons (1862)

Threads

We were given
Threads of wonder.

We were given
Lines of joy.

We were given
Hope and wonder.

We were given
Life with toys.

Dashing, wondering, finding life
O, so very like a knife.

In the light we wondered truly
If the dark ere unruly,

Should upon us crash and
Shatter, leave us with a bang or clatter.

Then benighted, friendly we
Found that life collected fee.

Now beneath the crimson waves
My soul, my heart, with stones is paved.

Absence

"If we cannot "practice the presence of God," it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like men who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep..."
C. S. Lewis ~ The Four Loves

he saw

"It was a moment that would live with Wheeler for the rest of his life, for he saw his father then as he had at last grown old enough to see him, not only as he declared himself, but as he was.
Wendel Berry ~ "Thicker Than Liquor" (1930)

Gifts

had i envisioned
the wonder;

had i dreamed
all the dreams,

i might have thought,
and rightly,
that time's sweet
shadow had
wrongly taken
what it cannot
give.

But, i have not.

and so, I see
what I do have
and rejoice.

life has done
queer things.

No Matter.

God's Grace is Sufficient.

To forget is a gift not given

There is, I think,
A cavity within
the soul of me.

Its size, its shape
Are undefined, and yet,
would I were free.

I'd take my
Little wee small hole
And banish it to sea

If only, ah, if only
this soul of mine
were free.

Sorrow's sodden gifts

Very well, Moscow may not believe in tears, I do.