Thoughts on vox faucibus haesit

In recording his encounter with the specter of his dead wife, Aeneas recounts vox fucibus haesit (Aeneid ii. 774). In translation this would be something like "my voice stuck in throat." Passing down to us, the phrase possesses the meaning of being speechless with horror/wonder. Perhaps "dumbfounded" would be equivalent.

Having creatively, productively, and happily consumed a post-less years is an achievement in aphony that I shall always cherish. For now it is over, even if only breifly, and I post myself thus. It is for you now to be vox faucibus haesit.

1.0

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.