Not Quite Blind

This little poem was written in the midst of mourning. My family has just endured / is enduring a tragedy, and different friends are also enduring different difficult times. This blog isn’t a diary; I am not going to give (too many) details. But it would be strange to begin posting what are manifestly…downcast, perhaps…pieces with no or little comment. And it would be strange for me to write or share otherwise than such for the time being.

Some minimal details may become necessary if I should share some of the other verses I have written over the past few days, verses which necessarily reveal what it is we suffered. But I will leave such things for then, and stay here for now:

Not Quite Blind (pdf)

Faith, I need your sight today.
Come and play, come back – come back!
Play where sun his happy ray
should away have burned the wrack
clouding native sight.

Outside the Walls

Well, I am simply not writing any Isaiah sonnets right now. I had been hoping to proceed one-by-one, filling in the gap that now stands between completed chapters the 13th and the 27th. But I must realistically concede that too much else is going on right now. So I will skip ahead, insofar as this blog is concerned.

I did 27-39 first, before running back to the beginning, so (1) they are not quite as good, and (2) I hadn’t really decided what I was doing yet (how I was meaning to represent the text in verse). However, they are going to stand until I make it through the whole 66 and try to decide what I have as a whole (thence making revisions or replacements as necessary).

So, here, from Isaiah 27 –

Outside the Walls (pdf)

When God’s fierce breath swept clean the ancient hill,
some stalks uprooting (others laid to waste),
He sent them east before the spear with haste
to purify the land…

As an example of what I was hinting toward above, this entry turns into a meditation on the relationship between the purgation of the sin of the Land on a temporary? relative? basis during the Exile and the Once-for-all suffering of Christ in the fullness of time.

Having Been Edificient

It has been awhile since I posted any pictures, of buildings or otherwise. I feel a little bit compelled to, because of the byline of the blog. But this isn’t supposed to be any kind of record of family adventures or anything like that; I just post pictures I find interesting or cute (cute, mostly in the case of my daughter).

So, here’s one – the Saint Donatus Catholic Church (which, from my perspective, is nice on the eyes, but here I do not in the same stroke approve of Rome’s cult of saints, or, really, popery in general).

 

 

Psalm 5: Give Unto My Words

Pleased finally to share a new psalm (#5), lately roughed off into meter:

Psalm 5: Give Unto My Words (pdf)

…that those who Your Name love dear should sustain
Your praise, Your shelter yet deploy.

First new one of these completed in awhile. I was getting bogged down working on Psalm 119. I think I’m almost half-done!

Unaccounted Men

Here’s a sonnet from two-and-a-half years ago, about ordinary folk like you and me, or perhaps even more common and unknown (taken for granted? or maligned?) than we are:

Unaccounted Men (pdf)

When unaccounted men rise up and smite
the ear so happy once to entertain
the dull and too-degrading mass refrain
of generalizations erudite,
mark them.

I really like this one; it turned out pretty well. Perhaps that blinds me to its faults. (I’m sure it has them.) Nevertheless I hope you like it, and desire to be one for whom the Lord builds the world to come – for the meek (those who humble themselves under the good Word of God) shall inherit the land.

Anchors My Heart

I’ve written “Falters My Heart” and “An Anchored Imagination”, so I suppose after this I shall have to write “Falters My Imagination”. Wait…

Anchors My Heart (pdf)

Anchors my heart on a firm and fairer height
my Lord’s delight. Is past change, past strong,
sigh-erupting sin yet sign rather that night
anchors my heart? On a firm and fairer height
I’d see, I’d know – yet I am not so light.
Christ-in-me is there, and with the sainted throng
anchors my heart on a firm and fairer height.
My Lord’s delight is past change, past strong.

Firework Bugs

My wife calls them lightning bugs, and I, fireflies. We kid each other about our different and very important stances on this issue. Our daughter, as is perhaps typical, found a compromise position, and added some flair of her own. She calls them firework bugs, and they absolutely delight her (as they do so many children). This little piece, spun off this morning, then, is for her.

Firework Bugs (pdf)

…the firework bugs aglow
render smooth the aged aches
of a day reclined for rest

Also, “tip-town” is just “tip-toe” turned into a past participle. It rhymes with “flown” or “shown”.

On Grasping the Wind

A new sonnet. I originally called it “Property”, and thought about the subtitle of “or, What’s Mine’s Mine”. But, no, I will call it

On Grasping the Wind (pdf)

Time takes what men build, heights fall, houses trust
in time will, beams below, betray.

It’s not a very complicated argument, but in case I buried it too far in the rubble of my words, it is that on things like charity or taxes (potentially!) or hospitality the only variable that needs changing to turn “the other” from a greedy moocher or idle layabout into something more just is our own attitude towards giving up what is ours. In my neck of the woods, it is common to think of taxes beyond a certain point as high-handed thievery. Sure – unless we give them up freely. Then they aren’t. See?

This is a high standard, and I don’t expect everyone to be persuaded, but please note I am trying to persuade, and not tell you what you ought to think. In case that wasn’t obvious.

O God, What Sinful Fears

I wrote this for a friend thee-and-a-half years ago. I can’t remember what I was thinking, but here it is:

O God, What Sinful Fears

O God, what sinful fears
yet wrack my heart!
What deadly shears
would dash faint love apart!
What love is it that fails
so easily?

The Holy Aesthete

Here is another old sonnet, from January of 2010:

The Holy Aesthete (pdf)

For I defy
what lies beyond the pane to suffer this:
with cracked, with desert-drawn dry lips a kiss
on stain-sick glass – it breaks, yet brings me nigh.

How to appreciate beauty in a world of lust? How to defiantly enjoy the good creation of God and confess its goodness without being seduced (for we are twisted, and it is cursed)? Just some explorations, like neurons firing in the night.