Category Archives: Poetry

the day after

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Hollow.
The womb… empty.
What did his dear mother feel on the day after?

Let’s go back a few days I beg.
Start the month over.
Let’s again
anticipate the coming.
Let’s again
recount the carols.

—–

But my eyes see dried pine needles.
Deflated.
Popcorn kernels.
An ache.

“Remember” I hear someone whisper…
Remember the candles,
the continual lighting,
the light.

The star,
yes, the blazing burning star.
The hay.
The thirteen year old girl.

Flesh.
Emmanuel.
Alive.

—–

I sit.  I remember.
And I hold the great story.
I hold…

The broken perfume bottle.
The human tears he shed.
The torn curtain.
The missing boulder.

I feel…I touch it.
I take hold of it and breathe it in.
I welcome in the womb these pieces.
These ‘already’ and these ‘not yet’.

I try to welcome in the day after.
The weeks after.
Journeying with the wise men.
Sleepy lids fighting,
waiting for the brilliant dawn to finally come.

-MCS

on the mystery of the incarnation

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It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form.
But to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.

-Denise Levertov

 

light of lights

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Light of lights!
All gloom dispelling
Thou didst come to make thy dwelling
Here within our world of sight.
Lord, in pity and in power,
Thou didst in our darkest hour
Rend the clouds and show thy light.

Praise to thee in earth and heaven
Now and ever more be given
Christ, who art our sun and shield.
Lord, for us thy life thou gavest,
Those who trust in thee thou savest,
All thy mercy stands revealed.

-St. Thomas Aquinas

 

mary’s song

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Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest …
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

-Luci Shaw

home at last

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To an open house in the evening,
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden,
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering
star,
To the things that cannot be and that
are,
To the place where God was homeless,
And all men are at home.

-G.K. Chesterton

prayer (I)

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Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
         God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
         The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
         Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
         The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
         Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
         Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
         Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
         The land of spices; something understood.
 -George Herbert

prayer

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Master, they say that when I seem
To be in speech with you,
Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream
– One talker aping two.

They are half right, but not as they
Imagine; rather, I
Seek in myself the things I meant to say,
And lo! the wells are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The Listener’s role, and through
My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew.

And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus, while we seem
Two talking, thou art One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream.

– C.S. Lewis

love (III)

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Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

-George Herbert

crossing

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My right hand—
when I cross myself—
patterns me with Presence
—Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost—
here in my head, my heart
(where I need it most),
my left side and my right.
Thus crossed before the cross,
I am signed both with
death and life,
the intersection of
darkness with light.

But with that crossing
in whatever holy place,
my dexterous right hallows
its sinister fellow.
Through Grace
rather than competing,
the agile blesses
the awkward part,
the strong (the one
that feeds me when I’m eating)
exalts the weak.

At Eucharist, or at table
for any sustaining meal,
the food I manage with
my right hands also feeds
the part less able
on its own to spoon, or speak
for its own needs.
So, here I kneel,
left hand cupped under right,
taking for both enough bread
for the journey,
for each, enough strength
for the week.

-Luci Shaw