“Internal Conflict, Eternal Enemy” by Candace Fong
right brain left brain
crease to crease contest
intuition takes on logic
faith is the referee
From my book Bullets from Bones
Faith
All posts tagged Faith
“The Touch” by Elizabeth Chapman
motion in motion
swirled turns of the air
bend straight lines
corrupt stillness
destination is
movement alive
with geometry
place but a placename
location a notion
no here and no there
inertia the illusion of
standing one’s ground
against progress when
progress is constant
every man all alone
in his mind on a path
every path a distortion
of spatial intelligence
measured by wishes
a traveler’s enigma
compelled by a force
not in need of consent
the momentum of
angular mechanics
a world whose inhabitants
ever observers inside
a perpetual motion
can never know joy
of a physically
fixed sense of place
and yet find themselves
cast as explorers
intent to gaze inwardly
eyes full of solitude
deep with discovery
learning their way
to the every last spot
of creation
the gifts of existence
that sprang from a touch
by the fingers of God
****************************
“Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.” – Thomas Merton
“Yellow House in Winter Woods” by Bob Richey
heaven exists near to home
in this season of silence
a snow settled wood
holy ground
hushed and greenless
my open air chapel
white altarcloth
laid for communion of creatures
crisp air charged with prayer
hoof and paw
fur and feather
my congregant fellowship
take benediction of snowflakes
unseen aspergillum
dispensing white whispers
each whisper
containing an answer
each answer
containing a blessing
each blessing
containing a chance
to experience grace
all it takes is a heart
humble willing and open
inspired to a reverence for life
here and now near to home
From my book Ephemera
“Lamb of God” by Raul Berzosa
The season now nears
When grief begets joys
And faithful men’s ears
Tune out secular noise
To reflect on His gifts
Of passion and glory
On His mercy that lifts
The sin from our story
The Lamb of God died
To anchor our creed
Then rose up to guide
The life we should lead
From my book Two-Cornered Rooms
Whirling Dervish Drawing by Nader Shernouda
desert the black cloak
profane worldly garb
for terrestrial graves
hear the mystical lyric
step outside existence
find the infinitesimal axis
from camelhair tombstone
to flaring white shroud
ego flown to the hem
of its circling proximity
sense of self altered a
body transformed into
essence of movement
keep faith with the
turning the turning the
turning toward rapture
From my book Ephemera
Carina Nebula as Captured by the Hubble Telescope
Secrets of creation hide deep in conflation
Of science with faith, of corpus with wraith,
Discrete bits of essence, immune from senescence,
That mark each warm creature, or cold lifeless feature,
Of all the known world, plus those unknown, thus hurled
Through vastness of space, push-pulled in their chase
By grave forces, unseen, save by eyes utmost keen
As detectors of naught, who find nothingness caught
By the physics of sleight, in mathematical light,
Racing outward, away from a focal array,
From a radiant heart that outburst apart
With the first stroke of time, Divine in its prime.
Before that release, all was soundless still peace,
When all matter, all dust, was consigned to the trust
Of that heart, then mere speck, the one salient check
Against stark eternity, charged with modernity,
Then, slowly it swelled, its inertia unquelled,
Now a tumescent part that grew into that heart
Whose eruption destroyed the limitless void,
And sent forth material, mixed with ethereal
Substance that surged, until order emerged
That conformed to base laws, posed by God as first cause,
And the cosmos took form in a most perfect storm
Whose primordial strife gave way to first life.
From my book Range of Motion
“Shattered by Earthquake” by Roy Erickson
we dance among earthquakes
unsure in our falter of faith
trembling graveyard our unsteady
stage roughly heaves our pale
audience come to their judgment
with lack of ghostly applause
they stone us with their eyes
From my book Pieces of Wine
“Suspension of Disbelief” by Rick Ladd
we fellowship of fools
asleep in blind faith
born of lazy beliefs
a pernicious affliction
predisposing we headless
we heedless enablers
abetting the surrogate
customs of turpitude
it takes work to believe
what minds will not grasp
conscientious commitment
legs rooted like treetrunks
in rich moral soils
those are the stalwarts
the clear title heirs
to creeds of the poets
a muscular reading
without preconceptions
discovers the secrets
of verses arcane
intellectual liturgies
mapping the methods
of minds who create
different paths to the truth
___________________________________
“That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment,
which constitutes poetic faith.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
From my book Ephemera
“O Little Town of Bethlehem” by Carol Sheli Cantrell
bright Bethlehem star
who pierced the longest dark night
hopeful newborn light
showed the path to redemption
for those souls brave in their faith
“Heart Wave” by Adam Brett
abandon what cannot be kept
of the valuable fraction
for two thousand years
land’s end a conceptual
folly for land never ends
it just dives on its whim
beneath oceans the real end
is water incessantly slapping
intending to renovate faith
formed of bedrock and truth
left unmarred by philosophy
leavings of sand and stone
steadfast sufficient with gravity
footfalls for passage of men
who believe in the unanswered
answers that consternate
unwilling skeptical hearts
here at water’s edge froth
oversimple convictions
cool improvisations by
affable atheists fluid of
reason in wave after wave
of procession recession
progressing regressing
yet ever so fluent of doubt
in the ebb and flow language
of moonrise and tides
foaming arguments surge
then collapse under weight
of their very creation
for two thousand years
of the valuable fraction
abandon what cannot be kept
(From my book Pieces of Wine)
Poesy plus Polemics 