March eleven, twentyfifteen
Cherry Tree, Late Winter
Brittle cold early light
bristles the frosted silver twigs.
The naked cherry tree glistens
like the skeleton of a woman, sculpted
—steel cables, twisted wire, glittering
threads of last year’s silk, crystals of new ice.
In her silent metal limbs, a wren
releases the molten fire of simple joy
over and over, all the fallen
melted snows.
From all the springs before, I know:
hosts of pale white cherry petals
are sleeping, folded tight inside the hard bright twigs.
Keep the last of winter out: waiting blind
they watch the golden clock-face of the sun.
While under shadowed ledges of stone
slowly, the cold serpent ropes uncoil….
Birds and trees, frozen soil, somehow
even the air knows the time—to open
and to thaw; to spin the straw
of woven nests and speckled eggs;
to spill the raw sweet almond scent
on the fertile cherry wind,
letting its petals blow…..
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–Quilla
Redemptive Personal Love: Like the Rose, Like the Mountain Spring
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Redemptive, Christlike Love is nothing less than the very presence of God himself stirring in me, a living breathing Spirit, giving me creative thoughts, words and acts of divine, selfless caring. Yes, Love is a personal gift of God’s Holy Spirit, but it is something I can not attain, muster up, or ‘make happen’. I do have within me the power to respond, and surrender to Love’s constructive and humbling ways, thus allowing the beauty of Christ’s Person to grow and blossom in me, and to flow from me to others. The power to respond is a wonderful gift in itself.
At its very roots, Love is a holy mystery that unfolds, like the fragrant many-layered petals of a rose, freely opening itself among thorns. I can feed and water the rose, tend to it, protect it from disease, pruning its dead parts and spent blossoms, but I can not make it bloom. I do what I can to cultivate it, but like Love, a rose opens and flourishes from a deeper source within, bringing free and careless beauty of form and color, fragrance and light.
Love is the same way: I can recognize and nourish the ineffable presence of God moving in my heart and mind. His Holy Spirit very personally desires to live His winsome and alluring Life within me and through me. By its very nature, Love is not self-centered or self-contained. It must and will seek out and find others, carefully listening, hearing and seeing their present level of need, and then responding as I can.
We each have varying levels of a nurturing, human love in our personalities, often varying with the erratic seasons of life, and the vicissitudes of our circumstances. In contrast, God’s Love transcends the daily ups and downs of human experience. Pure, selfless sacrificial Love flows from the LORD of Love Himself, the Risen One, and has no bitterness, blaming or criticism. As we deliberately follow the Person of Christ through our days, letting His Spirit and His Words forgive us and truly heal our brokenness, we become transformed beings, we grow to be like Him in the graces of mercy and humility, expanding in our capacity both to receive and to forgive with God’s perfect Love. This is a process of surrender, not of attainment. There is only one “Master”. We believe, and we follow Him, allowing His powerful Spirit to transform us.
The LORD of Love has no rival in all the universe. It is common today to refer to the highest power as ‘the universe’. We need to have our thinking clear on this. The universe is not God. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen.1:1) and “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being….” (John 1: 3). If you take even a cursive look at the other world religions, you do not find any one who even made the same claims as Christ Jesus—Creator, Deliverer, Forgiver of Sins, Redeemer, Friend of sinners, Lover of our souls, Savior of mankind. The power of Love flowing from His beautiful Person is not the same thing at all as the eastern ways of thought (Taoism, Buddhism, etc.). The focus of these religious systems is on the various forms and expressions of “energy”, and ‘harmony’ with the universe, but not personal relationship with a personal LORD, whose very life and name are exemplary, self-sacrificing LOVE.
I have read much eastern thought over the last several decades. I find it interesting (and somewhat disappointing) that “love” seldom appears in their writings or thought. (Love is not the same thing as ‘compassion’, although it includes compassion). The eastern mindset tries for detachment, obviously and persistently more concerned with developing personal ‘power’ and “harmony” with the universe.
But the power and various levels of energy attainable through ‘eastern’ disciplines do not have the power to forgive sin, or to change the dark and selfish bent of the human heart. This emphasis requires much effort, not the surrender and replacement of our egos with the enormous energy and power of God’s personal mercy and forgiving, restoring LOVE.
By our conscious welcome, and deliberate bowing down, we are given to drink from the Father’s Love. It flows out to us, and to those around us like a pure mountain spring of living waters. He (the Living Water) gives Himself freely to all, quenching the parched thirst of love-starved humans. Love builds up with words of forgiveness, encouragement and hope, firmly based on what is real, and eternal—the enduring Love and tender mercy of God, living and stirring, by faith within us: Like lovely roses, like pure living waters.
Can it be possible?—-that same intense beauty of Christ’s Holy Spirit and nourishing wholeness could flow through me, through you? Yes. He waits for you—to forgive you, to restore you, to change you into His beautiful person. It is your part, and my part, to invite Him, to allow Him, to believe in Him, and to daily follow Him
Into His Deep Shalom!
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–Quilla
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“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Woman, give Me a drink’,
you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water”.
–Jesus, John 4: 10
“The only thing that counts is Faith, expressing itself through Love” —Galatians 5: 6
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“The Hungering Dark”
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“The Hungering Dark”
For Frederick Buechner
Your honest hungering spirit
nourished me through the long darkness—
a hundred winter nights.
Now the warm Spring dusk: a thin blue haze
lays across the greening hills—old farmers
burning the ancestral fields of stubble
and dead weeds again, as every year.
This day’s sun retreats into the stalks
of bare trees,
silent accolades of smoky gold.
Trilling from lowland creeks, Spring Peepers
(tiny frogs) ring out such wild celebrations:
amphibian throngs, like tocsin bells,
swell up from winter mud.
One Robin pours out lyrics of evening songs.
Gnarled black limbs glow with the snow
of wild plum blooms.The rising moon
shines white as a broken piece of shell, washed up
on a shore of black sand, reflecting
our tumbled human loneliness.
The moon, flickering pieces of light
through new leaves of the tall bamboo.
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–Quilla
Antares
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Antares
For a long time I stand in the sparkling darkness
of fireflies and late spring stars.
The night air is cool, as if wrapping
my bare shoulders with a thin shawl of snowflakes.
There is no moon.
Skeins of blue mist rise and move
across the far meadows.
Antares, the red heart of the ancient Scorpion,
twinkles scarlet through young birch leaves.
The glittering rose light
shining into my eyes tonight
left that great red star in the year 1689.
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—Quilla
May Thirteenth, Watercolors
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May Thirteenth, Watercolors
The door is open wide to the morning . . .
cool air breathes in from everywhere,
spangles of natural, holy light.
The gentle guitar and oboe
of Tingstad and Rumbel
weave threads of the spring morning breeze
with their selection, Watercolor.
The day’s sudden canvas, splashed with new leaves
glows wet and fresh as the first morning
must have been, stirring with easy wind,
chiming music of a hundred colors of birds.
In the kitchen, the dishwasher tumbles
and pours, rinsing last night’s dishes.
The worn walking stick leans in the corner.
My boots, still wet from yesterday
sit rumpled by the door.
Black mud of drying puddles
traces golden edges of flower dust
blown from the fluorescent forest
of a thousand blossoming trees.
His inspired strings, her gifted oboe notes
gently conspire with the spring wind
bringing us slow meditations:
how can those dark woods, the stubbled fields
of snow, suddenly burn with life,
with leaves of living green fire?
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–Quilla
Waking…..May 12
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Waking
For Diana
My wife wakes me, with gentle urgency
calls me to the bright window
to see—-a solitary deer, a large doe
stepping through last year’s dead and broken
stems, nibbling fresh clover
in the lower garden.
In perfect uncontrived elegance
she walks with more innocence and beauty
than anything humans have designed.
Feeding on cold sedges in the meadows
by the creek, and browse along the forest edge,
she thrived the long winter.
January’s thick grey fur is shed, and gone.
Radiant fingers of low, May morning sun
reach this far, sculpting her sleek, tawny shape
and shadows, her whole and delicate being.
Large dark eyes linger, and glisten.
Taut ears twitch and listen.
Sharp black hooves carefully step
with certain grace into each moment,
more presence than I have known.
Her wide sides bulge. Within, a fawn
lies curled and throbbing, in the warm darkness
of another world, waiting to emerge
into the light, to gently, furtively become.
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–Quilla
First of May, 2014…..Translucent……
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Translucent
Late-afternoon, the translucent
lacy green light of mid-spring,
old gray oaks again
filling gnarled limbs
with flutterings of new leaves
Soft breezes now, how slowly
the low sun moves down
with long tree shadows, like ghosts
across the greening slopes of land.
Two crows fly up together, alight
upon a dead branch, as if they were
an ancient Japanese poem.
They are crafting a nest of dead sticks,
a new clutch of speckled eggs.
In the far meadow, brown horses
walk slowly down the emerald light
along the fence line, into the trees.
The quiet music of their movement
walking out of a long winter
is one clear wordless picture
of the mystery, of grace.
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–Quilla
March Twelfth
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Spring
These bright afternoon hours, brisk winds
sing the towering pines, shining furls
of bristling torn green silk.
Down worn dark hollows, the sparkling creek flows.
Old maples in new blossom, glow scarlet fires,
shimmering cold spring light.
Crow shadows cross windy spaces
—those harsh calls rasp
our wintered spirits like rusted files.
We fling wide the doors, raise windows,
welcome new finch songs, windy yellow light
fresh as cool sliced lemons
the brisk air stirs our cold ashes and dust:
old pages, and the must of old thoughts
scatters across the rooms.
–Quilla
Morning Shadows and March Visitors . . .(revisited)
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“Morning Shadows and March Visitors”
From my nature journal, March 7.14: The skift of early morning snow has already melted in the sun. Now, on the hillside behind our home, the horses’ shadows stretch out from their hooves across the slope. With the passing days, the shadows are growing shorter. Imperceptibly, moment by moment the northern half of the turning earth is tilting inward to the sun. In a couple of weeks, the Vernal Equinox occurs, as the sun starts walking north of the equator again. It gets taller each day, silently heralding another spring with banners of warmer, sharper light. Thankfully, the great cosmic clocks are not broken.
The horses nibble the long-frozen grass stubble. The pale fields still stand stark as a Wyeth landscape. But they are faintly greening, in the daily growing radiance. Across the face of the bare late-winter land, tree shadows scribble mysteries, turning like the reliable arms of an ancient timepiece, moving with the dial of minutes, the slowly spinning hours, the centuries.
A few feet from the door a few sooty Dark-Eyed Juncos scratch about beneath the maple. They’ve been with us since November, but never at the raised feeders, always feeding on the ground. This is the species often called “Snowbirds”, with charcoal head, back and wings, whitish underparts. Thoreau described them as emblematic of a winter day: dark storm clouds above, a snowy landscape beneath.
Juncos don’t migrate long distances like many birds. Instead, they summer in the higher elevations, flying back down the slopes to winter in the valleys. So we see these wild mountaintop birds pecking about our dooryards until late April or even May, depending on the weather. Often while hiking across the high meadows of summer, I see a dark blur of wings flit out from underneath a tussock of wild grass right at my feet, in the middle of the trail. It is the Junco, always nesting on the ground, in a little scooped out hollow lined with grass. They may raise three broods before late summer nights start chilling the highlands. You often hear the male bird chiming his musical one-note trill, tinkling like a tiny glass bell from the branch of a rhododendron or a spiny hawthorn twig. The singular quality of his song is delicate, quickly lost in the vastness of high thin air, the deep mountain sky.
The yard is littered with broken, winter-blown limbs, and scattered rags of dead leaves. Suddenly, an uncommon visitor comes hopping out of the woods into the edges of open light. His white speckled breast, size and color identify him immediately as a Hermit Thrush. This bird is well named. He loves his privacy, usually staying deep in the forest like his larger, more familiar cousin, the Wood Thrush. Many think the Hermit’s haunting flutelike music is the most beautiful of any bird native to North America. Certainly, it is recorded often on CD’s featuring the sounds of wild places. But this late winter day he is silent and cautious in the open, scratching about for insects waking in the thawed ground. I am given only two or three minutes to observe him just twenty feet away through the large den window, before he flies quickly back into the shadowy woods.
A flock of fifty or so Robins has flown down into the garden to feed on grubs, worms and insects in the muddy ground. Their plump ruddy breasts are the color of raw clay. Robins characteristically bounce about and stop, bending over and cocking their head to the side as if listening to the ground to hear the day’s menu. They wait motionless, quickly grab a bug, or tug an earthworm out of the ground, then hop to the next feeding spot.
This is likely just a stopping over place for these birds, who will continue further north to their home nesting grounds. I’ve yet to hear the quintessential sign of spring—the Robin’s evening song—chirruping boldly in the twilight from a high limb in the Ash, telling us it’s time to plant lettuce and peas. The Robins who arrive later, remain and sing are announcing their territory. They stay and nest, near the place where they were fledged. Sometimes in later spring I climb carefully up into the branches of the apple tree and peek into a Robin’s sturdy nest, woven layers of mud and grass. There lies cradled a clutch of several eggs, painted the shade of a bright spring sky.
–Quilla
Wood Thrush Music and the ‘Flower Moon’
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Wood Thrush Music and the Flower Moon
From my nature journal: Wakened by bright moonlight, I go outside to watch the full moon of May, called the Flower Moon by the native Americans. The tribal nations named each full moon after recurring events in the natural year. This moon is also known as the Corn Planting Moon, when danger of frost has passed. Across the radiant white disc, two small bats go dipping and weaving, catching insects throughout the night. The first fireflies of summer are lifting from the warming land.
Late this afternoon, we enjoyed some of the purest music in the turning of the whole natural year: the crystal warblings of the reclusive Wood Thrush deep in the forest, immediately following a thunderstorm of warm spring rain. His silver watery tunes are most liquid when the air is clear and still, the wet trees dripping, sparkling fresh sunlight, the dark mountains rumbling with departing thunder.
In these lower mountain elevations we can reliably expect to hear the thrush’s first exquisite melodies early one morning the last week or two of April, about the time of Dogwood blooming. The Wood Thrush sings most vibrantly early in the day, later resounding into the paling light of dusk, after the sun has fallen behind silent blue mountains. When nesting is completed and fledglings have flown, thrushes sing much less frequently from midsummer into fall. The young birds use the warmer months to grow strong and fatten for their long migration south. They fly away from winter to the tropical forests of central America.
The thrush’s song has been celebrated for centuries by poets and naturalists, exulting in the exuberant flute-like music of this rust-colored hermit-recluse of the forest. These are the tunes of an imaginary elf, playing a tiny glass piccolo among mushrooms and mists. He is seldom seen out in the open. His secretive ways only enhance the mystique of richly varied music lilting from his darkly speckled throat. Listening to his recurrent lays among tender green leaves we may momentarily forget about terror in the world. In the perfectly wild and hope-filled music trilling from this small shy bird we can believe in wondrous realms where there is no guilt or shame, no anger, pride nor fear.
The northern half of the earth has spun and tilted back again, leaning toward the nearest star we call the Sun, its warm rays giving us another spring. As they have for many thousands of springtimes, Wood Thrushes have returned to haunt these deciduous forests for the summer, sweet mysteries of birdsong ringing through the shadowy woods.
–Quilla
April 14.13
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Passing Through…..
All afternoon, long east wind sighs heavily
through the old pines.
More rain blows in from the ocean,
scenting the cool spring dusk.
Doves are moaning softly in the trees.
Already, plum blossoms are falling like snow.
The sadness of the passing spring is sharper,
cutting our tender hearts, deeper than all
the dying blood-red leaves of Fall.
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“As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the LORD’s love is with those who fear Him,
and His righteousness with their
children’s children”
–Psalm 103: verses 15-17
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–Quilla
April 11.13….Cherry Blossoms
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Radiance:
Early morning light
breaking through
thick night mist
cherry blossoms
sparkling dew
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–Quilla
The Ides of March . . . (from 3.15.13)
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The Ides of March
Here, on our wooded shelf of hardwoods
and dark groves of pine, I hear it
nights, and days: the mountain river
rushing over shoals of rock shelves
a quarter mile away, rolling full
of highland snowmelt, cold latewinter rains.
But the timeless roar of waters, vanishes
with soft dry wind-songs rising in the pines.
Far above the warming land, scream and scream
two Red Shouldered Hawks, spiraling
upward, soars their sharp desire:
six brown-splotched eggs, nestled high
in an old tree crotch, a nest of sticks.
The shadow of curved wings, honed beak,
the terror of fast talons carries on. . .
West winds wash the thawing land,
the sound of tides, rushing in to wash the shore.
Our shut-in minds open old doors of doubt
to let in brightness, new joys, the scent
of fresh earth, rising wings of restless air.
And we let go, once again—everything
we think went wrong within us and without
—our personal winters of discontent.
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–Quilla
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“Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars
spreading his wings to the south?” –Job 39: 26
“. . .this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind
and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on
toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God
in Christ Jesus….” –Philippians 3: 13
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March 16.13
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A Soft Spring Evening in Latewinter
Hundreds of Robins settle, stepping about,
clucking, pulling earthworms from dead grass
among the tombstone shadows.
A thousand silk flowers rustle
warm March wind scented with smoke:
As always in early Spring, since before memory
farmers are burning the winter land again.
Time to put to smoke last year’s dead stems.
Grey ashes blow to the wind, fall to earth.
Now, new seeds will sprout, and grow.
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–Quilla
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April Fifth. ‘Wakened from Dreams’
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Wakened from dreams, vanishing
like fireflies, a few words flicker
by the bedside lamp:
Windows open, Spring night air
breathes into the room.
I hear the distant river, sighing
as it leaves, full of recent rains.
Dark moths, eyes on fire
bump against the screen.
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–Quilla
Praise, at the end of Winter
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Praise, at the end of Winter
Do you hear it—the winter hawks are screaming, soaring
again, over greening meadows in bright Spring wind?
Do you see them—a few high wisps of cirrus, drifting away
beyond the long blue mountains?
Can you smell it—the living brown earth thawing, and raw
moist with melted snow and winter rain?
Feeling these wonders—turning earth, wing and sky
waking the withered human heart to fly, we can believe
a resurrecting Love longer than all time, deeper than hell,
stronger than the bonds of ice, and death.
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–Quilla
Crows and a Rainbow
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Warm mist blows through the winter trees.
Sensing Spring in the distance, sparrows
and finches start their trilling.
Flocks of crows approach far off,
tossed like torn black scarves of sorrow.
Late-morning sun breaks through,
a moment of silver opens the heavy clouds.
A rainbow to the darkened north
shimmers, a luminous promise
(or is it just a myth?)
the colors of God, glowing
in the winter mist.
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January Eighteenth
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The Nuthatch in Winter
Moist wind rustles the ragged curls
of loose bark, the river birch.
Up and down the shreds, a Nuthatch
scritches for winter insects
and their eggs, protein sleeping
in deep crevices, keeping the colder months.
Leafless branches rattle empty fingers.
Somehow things will find their way to spring.
A used tea bag I threw out before Christmas
still dangles from a limb.
Thick clouds are lowering from the southwest.
Blue-gray shadows cover the faded land.
We watch the slow approach,
another day of winter rain.
Somehow Spring will find its way to everything.
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–Quilla
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“Rejoice in the LORD always! Again I will say rejoice!”
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Easter afternoon
Warm spring winds blow through the heavy twisted limbs of oaks, greening them
with April lace again: soft young leaves, a late spring afternoon.
Indigo Buntings trill those bright and wistful lyrics our summer minds recall across the blue distances.
Grey doves moan some deeper well in us the passing clouds, even the ancient oaks have never known.
Horses are frolicking with delight on the bright water-colored hills, like rocking horses they dapple
the deep green fields, grey winter hooves kicking mud into the golden sun.
These days and nights of Passiontide the swollen river rolls unceasing
through our waking hours and nightly dreams, unfurling musical pages of pathos and wild joy
down and through the greening hills. It sings some distant sea, long slow rhythms in the shoals
forever breaking stones to sand.
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A fine restaurant today. Through the west window, a crimson azalea blazes in the spring sun,
casting rosy shadows into the crowded room. Beyond them, cross-starred blooms of dogwoods
were dancing ghosts of snow in the warm April wind.
An elderly woman with thin blue-veined hands played old show tunes on the yellowed keys of the upright Steinway.
I ate thick slices of sweet spring lamb, savoring our joyful talk, the bitter salad leaves, the bread and oil,
the old piano music, dear family members once gathered here, now gone—
this very room, wooden floors sounding the dear old tunes, the air thick and redolent with the human family, the fragrant broken Lamb.
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April Haiku, etc.
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4.21
Dogwood blossoms
dancing with the windy rain
a soft piano tune
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4.20
I turn out the lamp.
The dark room—suddenly full
of bright spring moon!
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4.9
the old barber:
his young spinach, his new peas
another winter past
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4.10
Warm April morning
cherry trees in bloom
the sweet almond wind
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4.10
withered apple tree—
grey bark peeling off
petals drifting down
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4.4
hard rain drums the roof:
the booming spring darkness
flashes like fast hooves
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4.1.11
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Bach’s morning flutes—
sun rays pierce the dark snowclouds
willows bring new leaves
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Words
Our words are just breath:
like the spring mist, cloud shadows
plum blossoms fluttered down
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Our words last forever:
like boulders. Only a long river
licks their edges smooth
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4.2
Hard cold winds blow
and blow the petals down, like snow.
Rooster screams and screams.
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Dark basement
the dead grandmother’s peaches
unopened, on the shelf
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Not agreeing, I walk out—
how white and free
the high spring clouds
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Bringing wood indoors
the cold spring night
pear trees glowing white
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Her newborn calf
is dead. the mother cow
moans the cold spring wind
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Valley floors, pastel
with flowers, bright new grass.
Mountains rimed with ice
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4.3.
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1800’s oak:
a wide net of shadows cast
down the April hill
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A Gift of Birds
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A Gift of Birds
Saturday morning early Spring, cloudy
windy warm and cool (January and June
trying to blend, we call it March)
Sitting on the patio reading, sipping hot tea,
listening to the little choruses wake,
smelling the rich thawed female land, pungent
cool rain-fragrant wind sighing the pines, when
suddenly gusty waves of wings–Robins–
a hundred or more of them flying, blowing in
they settle one at a time separately, all together
chirping silhouettes of Robins on bare limbs
filling the empty trees with songs.
Several long minutes I watch, listen
cacophonies, fountains of wild sweet Robin music
stored up all winter: can you imagine—
a hundred Robins and more? yes! —lilting, warbling, trilling
laughing, chuckling the way Robins do, all at once?
It happened.
Spring has officially begun!
And just as suddenly, as from a cryptic signal
waves of thrumming grey wings lifted fluttering
from the leafless trees, morning air rushing through
thousands of feathers, hundreds of trilling birds
just up and left together, pulled away
some unseen tide, ebbed and gone
as quickly as they’d come, undulating across
the bare forests, wide fields, the open sky.
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For some odd reason I can not help feeling
even knowing: this large flock of Robins singing
all around above me happened, like unwrapping
a personal gift, just for me.
In fact, I’m quite sure of it.
And just as it was given me
I share with you.
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After Cold March Rains
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After Cold March Rains
Saffron flames, wild Forsythia
breaking out everywhere, south-facing slopes.
Those tongues of yellow fire lick the long thorns
of blue ice, lingering like splinters
lodged in our hearts. Why else Spring?
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Pale winter people carry their musty bags
of February books in and out
the stone library’s dark mouth.
Somehow, words carry light and flowers,
bread and night, secret fires live in them.
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That old dogwood by the north door
knows. Her gnarled grey arms
hold a thousand invisible blooms—
little fists of snowy blood-stained flowers
wanting to open, unfold a bright mist,
give us soft crossed petals of healing light.
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The First Day of March
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The First Day of March
In memory of Jane Kenyon
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Yet another Spring has risen, faithfully
into the old Red Maple limbs.
Its branches burst ten thousand crimson blooms
humming with honey-making bees.
The burgeoning trees, glowing scarlet mist–
oh, if they could know: how their beauty
lifts and carries us toward Radiance,
out of the darkness of our hearts, and the winter land!
The fecund earth is fragrant again, thawed
with growing throngs of verdant light.
The air itself awakes, vibrates bird songs by day
and toad nocturnes, tremoloing from the night pond.
Higher, higher they soar, circling on thermals
rising together in thin blue haze.
In the far meadow, a neighbor standing
by himself, burns a pyre of last year’s leaves.
He stands a long while near the fire, watching smoke
rise into haze and the high, circling hawks.
His frail wife of many years endures her third cancer.
Today she is out walking in the warming light.
Her thin shadow faithfully follows her solitary steps
slowly up the steep and patient hill.
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–Quilla
Note: It’s often quite rewarding to receive various artistic mediums simultaneously, e.g., written (or spoken) words and/or paintings with music, drumbeats and dance. Our marvelous, created bodies and brains can thus receive and intensify and clarify one theme, or the descant harmonies of themes. “ah, but we are fearfully and wonderfully made” (from Psalm 139)–both to express, and to receive.
One of very many musical possibilities when reading the poem above: “The Lass of Glenshee” by Daniel Kobialka on his CD, Celtic Quilt. It has been one of my favorites lately, and has in some ways woven its elegant chords into my being. If only the poem could evoke a few of the emotions living in this piece of music. Thank you, Daniel.
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Cacophony in Spring . . . (rewritten)
I realize it’s a bit early yet for Springtime poems–vernal equinox still several weeks away–and yet, in late February perhaps our spirits can stand some color, warmth, different themes, fresh word-songs. Although our lower darker selves are persistently craving familiarity, comfort, the musty dusty same-old, same-old–(very sadly and paradoxically, this is especially true in religious matters)–but doesn’t our higher self, the Holy One living within us hunger for emergence?
Christmas usually gets reduced to a wearisome sort of fun.
Resurrection!— is glorious, transcendent, far beyond our memorized little catechisms.
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I recently re-discovered this piece written a couple of years ago, and reworked it on a number of points. Strange and wonderful—how our perspectives evolve, given distance and time. I hope you find something here to enjoy.
-Quilla
(as with most poems, written to be read aloud)
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Cacophony in Spring
The wide Spring fields are shimmering again
those wild fresh yellows: wind from the sun’s face
flashing the Field Lark’s breast and song,
warm swaths of buttercup and mustard bloom.
Plum blossoms have already blown.
The last wet flowers of snow are gone.
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Just yesterday a grey wind groaned the trees,
clattering naked limbs, blowing gusts of spray.
Today, the weathered wooden wind-chimes chatter
and play, chanting an ancient mantra with worn out teeth
the way the old Zen priests mutter truth.
Neither do they say or know : the haunted ways of wind,
of seasons and faces—how they turn,
return, and turn again to go.
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A flock of Grackles gathers, screeching in the branches
of the gnarled Ash tree. The cacophony of birds recalls:
a creekside grain-mill waterwheel, squealing
and squeaking its axle, falling water, coughing
into a mossy wooden trough that never fills
but flows back to the creek;
or a childhood Ferris wheel turning round and very tall
in the happy music of its calliope—gone from us
so far away, that now its sound is like
“the little lone balloon-man, whistling far and wee”.
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Suddenly frightened, the Grackles fly away as one
into the green and yellow wind. They will be back.
Always, everywhere it seems things bend and sing,
turning rusting waterwheels, Ferris wheels
and clocks. Leaving on fast wings
like a frightened flock of birds
our endless childhood is suddenly gone.
Cloud shadows race across a windy field.
But all these things we’ve lost keep turning up,
circling back to us on long white wings of mind—
deep-buried things and faces, missing places
—a searching sea-gone Albatross.
The sounds come back to play, and grieve with us,
turning the axis of a vanishing galaxy, spinning, falling
further away, rusting the warm salt wind of years.
Tall grasses keep whispering secrets to the listening shore.
A zig-zag sand dune fence leans among the rustling oats,
the latch on its slatted gate is broken, always swinging
open, shutting closed.
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Kaleidoscopes of the dark and bright pieces,
harsh and soft remembered and forgotten words
still screech and sing to us like nesting birds,
like the children we still are—wandered far, yet always
turning back, yearning for our home.
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Ginkgo Leaves
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Ginkgo Leaves
As we were leaving church late that Sunday morning
I saw a tall young Ginkgo tree by the warm brick wall,
the old building. Just unfolding pale new leaves–
scalloped and fluttering, dainty Chinese fans.
Like aspen leaves, rustling the mountain winds
of Sangre de Cristo, the mystic groves near Shao Lin.
Such tender, joyful energy, danced with children’s hands
the playful breeze, whispered lively words of praise.
I broke a sprig of the new leaves and placed them
on my tongue like a wafer, gently crushing them
between my teeth, the pungent essence: sweet
and bitter at once. The taste was Spring itself–
more ancient than stone, younger than rain, and light.
I like to think that such a tree was standing by the opened tomb
that first morning, quaking silver-green, shuddering joy.
If I grow old, I’ll still be reading the ancient Words, tasting them
yet again, listening to the mystery song of wisdom and love
whispering, like soft Spring leaves.
One morning, I’ll be wakened by a warm breeze from the far,
shining mountains of the King.
Walking slowly, joyfully into His light perhaps I’ll even dance
like Ginkgo leaves and children, a playful Spring south-wind.
I will be forever young.
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 