dancing in the restless trees,
your raven tresses gleam,
flow free and mystically,
your eyes, tender and shy,
splash in bright sunshine.
You, Lady, innocent and seductive
as first love, shimmer dreamily
in a nearby chanting stream;
your parting lips, silk petals,
echo a soft, etherial music
from a long forgotten Eden.
“Come,” in music tones you say,
“let me unveil God in me, his haven.”
You draw me so close to you,
that my body weakens, my mind
reels at your rose-scented breath
and I am lost and breathless
at your winsome gaze. Your soft
sunlit hands grasp mine and,
smiling, you open up to my spirit--
as if from your very body--
a vision no human eye can see:
dream-like hills that softly rise
(mountains of the Almighty?)
where saving fountains gush and
splash in a light of ravenous love,
fed from the pierced side
of our lovesick God on Calvary;
fountains that regale
the cheering banks of heaven,
that revitalize all who drink,
that scour my dark, craven heart
of all desire but for God’s majesty,
for the rolling pastures of his presence
calling, “Come! Forever wander
my ever fresh fields of perfectjoy!”
‘Are you real or only a dream?”
a sunlit sparrow sings,
his song blissfully echoing
in my haunted, hidden depths.
“More than both!” you say,
your every syllable a kiss.
“I am your longed-for
haven, your paradise,
your dreamed-of heaven,
your place of perfect rest.”
“Yes!” I blurt, my legs
struggling to uphold me.
‘And mine, I pray, forever?”
2
The cautious strokes of a sage
tremble and traverse
the rustling pages of
my dreams--a sage
of a distant, darker world
of faded, past todays.
“Shall your pen,” I say,
“encase her beauty that seems
to glow with divinity,
that sends my heart racing
as she unveils such beauty?
No. I think not. Hers
is beauty you’ve never dreamed.”
3
“O Lady!” I softly whisper.
“Lover! Siren! Mother!
Your embrace is so tender
it makes me start;
your spirit eagerly
enters mine--and now,
now I am fully alive!
“Yes, and truly dead, I think.”
chanting sunbeams say.
“A faint flickering form
in a fading world,
a phantom of past glory.”
The winds of night
softly sail the timeless scene,
and sigh, “In day’s fading face,
lights grow dim and voices fail.”
“Yes, but you and I, dear Lady, here,
are wrapped as one in forever’s wind.”
“O purely feminine,
purely innocent,
purely passionate apparition!”
I pant. “I cannot breathe!
Your breasts heave, swell
“I was sleeping but my heart kept vigil; /
I heard my lover knocking. /
Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove.”
Song of Songs 5: 2
“[...]my heart trembled within me, / and I grew
faint when he spoke. I rose to open to my lover,
with my hands dripping myrrh[...]: “ /my
fingers dripping choice myrrh upon the fittings of
the lock.”
Song of Songs 5: 4, 5
With godly love
I try to speak, but words
will not come.
Only my heart
faintly whispers,
“Oh, may this be forever.”
“It is,” you softly answer,
Your words cascading over me
like refreshing waves,
“as will our oneness--ever!”
Your words firmly grip my heart,
then rise and echo
through the rustling trees,
among the darkening ways
of this lush, hallowed garden.
And I, who have never felt
so full of love, “Finally!” exclaim.
4
From some far place, oh--so--far,
I hear sounds of former years:
“Bark! Bark!” “You kids come in!”
Oh, how fitting:
a darkening world retires
behind a slamming door,
ends its restless seeking,
it’s gaze much too brazen
to eye this wonder,
this vision bred of dreaming.
And ‘though time-drugged
sluggards cannot comprehend,
here the rose-lined garden
weeps tears of joy and marvels.
5
O Lady! You whisk me away!
I who once touched earth!
“No more!” the blown leaves say,
as you embrace me tighter.
I am lost--and now we,
a universe apart--farther
than any enchanted eve
of earth-bred lovers--
in the blazing, setting sun fade.
“Oh, yes!” an old gray scholar,
divining the miracle
outside his open window, says,
“Days will flow, flourishing,
self-assured, mere dreams
that light earth’s passing streams,
march aimlessly as flaming west
beckons you, Lady, and your love,
with children of every time preening
for forever sing their Maker’s praise
as openingheavens loudly thunder,
“Finally life is forever!’ “
Our love, I see, is a secret
only we two can know;
not the brazen spectacle
of a crass picture show.
You cannot chomp popcorn,
and see this scene.
You cannot open a window
to look upon this ritual,
for only we can see, and sail,
pure spirits, never setting,
brighter than eye has seen.
6
“Lady, let us wed.” I boldly
say. (The stars, all gather about,
like children and tremble.)
“I know you are my Mother--
and, I dare say, my Savior’s Mother--
yet you bid me come closer,
for your eyes speak of more:
of hearts that beat as lovers
of God and of each other,
of hearts that shall never
beat alone nor become
mere listless watchers--
/> for all I have ever sought,
I now embrace in you. In you.
Yes, and in Jesus whom you mirror,
for to love you is to love him, too,
for he is the bloom you flower.
7
In Arkansas, in Tennessee,
in city or monastery,
you open wide for me
Love’s timeless treasure:
life with Jesus forever.
“And, oh, how I love you!”I whisper,
as light more brightly glimmers.
“And I, you.” you softly answer.
“Come now, my beloved,”
your words blithely beckon,
“let us rest forever and burst free
of time’s flailing captors
and traverse, arm-in-arm,
the haven of eternal pastures!”
“The winter at last has gone!”
the budding roses say.
“And blindness, too!”
the shy stars answer.
In the distance
a train moans softly as
in the garden we vanish
in sun’s ultimate quiver.
O heart, stop beating so!
“Yes.” you answer,
“Don’t wake the world
from its lethal slumber.
O pure, virginal Lover,
now at last I know you,
my savior, my spouse--God.
“What is a face? What really? Is it our photo?...That
which is in front? Inside? And the rest? Deformations
simply do not exist.”
Pablo Picasso
8.
You, who sing in distant lands
in every passing century
to hearts of restless pilgrims,
It’s “you and I” forever!
“This vision the world would mimic,
With brazen noise,” you say.
“how dismally its efforts falter.
“Drunken myriads! Blind revelers!
Why won’t you hear me calling?
How can you be mere disinterested
observers of life’s spectacle?”
“I guess your word’s the last!”
I add, sad with certainty
“But look, love, how I ever
slyly peek ‘round every corner
to entice my children.
I tempt with flashing eye,
with siren song, but, see,
I can only seize the heart that seeks.
And how sad, for look:
I have decked my bridal chamber!”
9.
“Yes!” the clowns gaily cry
in days that forever die,
their revelry in full vigor,
“Come to the wedding
in the joyful halls of ever!
“Let us pack our circus!
Our festival here is over!
Here only love shall linger
in this well-worn field,
as dogs bark in the night,
and moon, with eager eye
lights this deserted site
for yet another lover.”
“Wisdom is found by those who eagerly seek her.”
Wisdom 6: 12
WOMAN, DO YOU NOT HOLD THE WORLD IN YOUR HANDS?
Woman, do you not hold
the world in your hands?
Is not your beauty
poets’ and painters’ ideal?
Does not your beauty break
the spell of a man gazing
from a lofty precipice at sun
sparkling on a wooded vista--
as you come within his view,
making it a mere distraction?
But what is your beauty
but an adjective for a season
to share God’s creative love,
and with him create another
in his likeness? But if instead,
as is so often done,
you stop too long to admire
your beauty in a mirror,
only use it to parade your pride
and not his, do you not see
yourself a siren beckoning
souls to eternal destruction?
But so are the ways we take
in this fading world of the blind.
And when sunlight bedazzles
with a last sunrise and weeping
alone haunts the gathering dark
where houselights dim and dogs bark,
laughter shall rise in dazzling light
above the stars that, smiling, marvel
as eternity extends her loving arms.
“A thousand years in your sight
are like a yesterday come and gone.”
Psalm 90: 4
VIII
EVENING APPROACHES
“My days are like a lengthening shadow.
I wither like the grass.”
Psalm 102: 12
“The sum of our years is seventy,
and eighty if we are strong...
for they quickly pass and we vanish
Psalm 90: 10
“[...]peoplego to their everlasting home,
and mourners go about the streets[...].
and the dust returns to the earth it once was,
and the life breath returns to God who gave it.”
Ecclesiastes 12: 5, 7
EVENING APPROACHES
Evening approaches
with silver glow
into the garden,
across the grey stone wall,
up the shaded flower path
to lights your face
at the open window--
then opens her book to
a page that is finished
but for one line
last.
This, the evening
the lamp grows dim,
of cold,of indifferent lights,
of lassitude;
the chilling path to the morning
of fading voices, a closed gate,
a lone cross in the cemetery
on the hill,
when this frail world
it’s last leave takes
and, clank!
the last old crony firms the lock;
the day that, under a white full moon,
departs over hills as
the oak boughs
knock.
“You are important, so I shall love you.”
Poem: “You Are Important”
YOU ARE IMPORTANT
You are important, so I
shall love you
and share with you
this evening and, oh,
it shall enshrine
matchless meaning!
Nor should we think less
of one sole page
of time’s story:
it’s every word
brims breathless glory.
When time first woke,
and, yawning, stretched,
dripping dew and stars through night,
over the widening depths
she sighed, sprawling
her shimmering pride,
that here in a quiet grove
twin lights would shape
the luster in her eyes.
Down a dark and hidden path
far from the brazen glare
of dealers and divisio
n,
far from the lifeless grin
of flagrant delusion
that Light-bearer spawned
and, darkening, cried--
I set my gaze
on the sacred river
that makes love her moon
and casts us silver,
who, in this quiet, hallowed grove
sit and chat in love’s still haze,
sipping the crystal waters
of her dream in magic cups
drawn from the stream
shimmering with her pale,
panting light
that snuffs out transience,
inquiry, strife.
Up in a tree a bird chirps.
From some distant yard,
a dog barks.
“O honey, come in!
It’s getting dark!”
You are my son and...and I am your father.
Psalm 2: 7
“For by grace you have been saved, through faith,
[...] not from works, lest anyone should boast.”
Ephesians 2: 8, 9
YOUR WORK CANNOT DEFINE YOUR WORTH
Your work cannot define your worth;
Your laugh, your smile are clearer:
for heaven bled for who you are,
for weakness held you dearer.
Tears foretold when you were born
how futile is merely trying,
that you can rise to your true height
only in the act of dying.
Let kings build worlds for wondering eyes,
I, one troubled April,
perceived your worth when Jesus died
and shared with you God’s nature.
A God Desperate To Be Loved Page 7
