There are those among us upon whose shoulders we stand when looking for ways out of the claws of darkness. Women and men who have peace and glory in equal measure tattooed upon their souls, waiting to help others across the finish line of pain to peace, chaos to glory. They are often unassuming and hard to spot in a crowd, their humility hiding their heroism. Bill W. (William Wilson (1895 – 1971), Dr. Bob (Robert Holbrook Smith 1879 – 1950), and Rev. Samuel Moor Shoemaker III (1893 – 1963), collectively, the architects of Alcoholics Anonymous. Says Bill of Rev. Shoemaker, “early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Group and directly from Sam Shoemaker.”*
I Stand at the Door
by Rev. Sam Shoemaker of The Oxford Group
I stand by the door.
I neither go to far in, nor stay to far out.
The door is the most important door in the world –
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There is no use my going way inside and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where the door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
With outstretched, groping hands,
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it.
So I stand by the door.
The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door – the door to God.
The most important thing that any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands
And put it on the latch – the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man’s own touch.
Men die outside the door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter.
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live on the other side of it – live because they have not found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him.
So I stand by the door.
Go in great saints; go all the way in –
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics.
It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in.
Sometimes venture in a little farther,
But my place seems closer to the opening.
So I stand by the door.
There is another reason why I stand there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;
For God is so very great and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia
And want to get out. ‘Let me out!’ they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled.
For the old life, they have seen too much:
One taste of God and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving – preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door
But would like to run away. So for them too,
I stand by the door.
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not yet even found the door.
Or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply and stay in too long
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear Him and know He is there,
But not so far from men as not to hear them,
And remember they are there too.
Where? Outside the door –
Thousands of them. Millions of them.
But – more important for me –
One of them, two of them, ten of them.
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
‘I had rather be a door-keeper
So I stand by the door.
So then, Mr. Wilson, Dr. Bob, and Rev. Sam, this recovering alcoholic thanks you.
See Wikipedia
Our Own Now
It is left to time and chance
this risk of memory and loss.
I doff my cap to my own history
while learning presence in present tense.
Swept along the brisk and roiling
river of time, we can watch ourselves
on the shores of our own lives
wishing we were on the other side
or maybe in the water,
going the other direction.
Maybe it’s just good to stand
and look for awhile.
This much I know,
at least I see the river if only this once
and listen to it move
while I laugh a little on
this still ground.
At this point, the title of this challenge is, for me, a misnomer. I haven’t even come close to posting a poem a day. However, in an act of profound self-abasement and self-care, I humbly submit to you that we’ve moved into a new flat. Phew, monum explicandum out of the way, let’s just get on with it, shall we?
Day 22 –
Moving
The fragrance of a flower remains,
regardless of the address of her rootedness;
beauty intact, bees to groom her, admirers to
love her still attract. Her voluptuous shape
and symphonious aperture, from the mouths
of old and young alike, still yield a
satisfying, “aaaahhh.”
Day 11 –
My simple, but genuine, thank you to our life in Edinburgh…
A protrusion of gratitude
Cloaked in landscapes of light, remunerations
of remembrance brought clear in the rehearsing.
That literature of land partnered with time
makes for fragrant mornings in settings
of coal-kissed stone, unsullied
by lesser things.
No more exile here –
just a protrusion of gratitude.
Grey ash, dead-branch-dim
d
e
s
c
e
n
d
s
into corpses, exhumed-verse to still worse fate –
apathy.
Words, once ample-ripe, now winter-sparse,
hunt, cock-ear’d, lungs-flatten’d, for somewhere
to land, to inhale.
Dust-grey soundings lay coiled, like the end of a painter’s day,
wrestling out colours, lines, faces –
not bothered anymore with looking beyond what is seen.
Just the clamouring fool’s last-call for the quick and easy.
These
lazy
letters, unfinished sen
Like changing tires on rusted farm trucks mired in tired dirt,
we muck about in quicksand of distraction, disappointment, deadlock,
the oppressive weight of art.
As needful distraction, we gather up the prosaic, pretentious, polemical,
in fits of laughing stems knit to notes, clinging tight to daylight’s end.
Throats worn from croaking long-forgotten songs of drunken men and laughing children.
Why not dare, instead, to probe the unentered caves where live
the furies, the forbidden, the fortuitous?
That prodigious, crowing dark –
where poets learn to see.
We press the world between pointed palms,
where the weary stretch for heaven’s notice.
Our best vision, through closed eyes – steps
weightless
on scabbed knees, waiting.
Wine-soaked, bread-fed words squeeze
themselves through parched lips to
arrange with dancing in mind. But first,
they must learn the art of walking naked, blindfolded
through haunted alleys,
danger-gripped, clammy with doubt.
We stretch out long necks, seeking only glimpses, emancipation.
But, the lecherous bully of shame spends all his time
butchering the still,
small voices of light that sneak
in through backdoors where hope still keeps
windows open.
Tragic, is it not, how shades pull tight against wayward shards
of sun, the down-payment for our breath?
Like running in snow, our legs just get heavier –
too much weight tossed about over time.
A leering fatigue replaces what’s left of inadequate strength –
thickness filling muscles too weak to move past their own demise.
Still, hope is what came, long after our tight-
cinched belt of faith lost its grip
and hungry shame gave way to
garden surrender.
Only then does our Amen make sense.
Composed on a train somewhere between Paris and Montpellier, October, 2019
Sometimes, it is easier to find the whimsy
when there is no memory of a place.
Sharp jagged edges can polish themselves
out in conversations with fellow travellers.
Their questions are better than
my unqualified answers.
Laughter jumbles out, jostling about in
the accidental chaos of shared days –
days made strong in the looking
away from the timekeepers and toward
their owners. Remember,
we must all live our lives on our heels
sometimes. Then, we unburden our-
selves in the company of strangers.
I don’t assume the elbow room was mine.
This kicking straight of cramping
knees was not an action reserved for
my taxable legs.
I don’t pretend to know the steps to a dance
composed without my song, by other tribes.
Their rainbow isn’t signed by my god.
Nor is the stretching road built with
me in mind.
I don’t expect my expectations to equal
the readiness of others to serve them.
I don’t believe, even for a minute, the whisperings
of my inserted presence, that my voice
gets top billing, priority, and loudest.
My tongue is not the first or strongest, the purest,
or even necessary.
It is only,
mine.
I’ve been feeling like a suburban home,
family-bound, dog-eared, cat-haired, dust-bunnied.
The floor sprawls, covered in lines of loosely connected
bits of string and tape, shoes without mates,
things without name or purpose or place,
shoved in too many drawers, beside stray Tupperware lids
unsure where home is.
I’ve been thatching a wayward garden,
long since surrendered her virginity to the fate of
time and neglect. Her gnarled roots now
the bed of fools – those with nothing to do
but wait for another dry Spring and
long, parching Summer to follow.
I’ve lost the memory of how to cultivate in her
whatever tempts or teases a solitary bud.
I’ve lost my place in the song,
where happy, drooling drunks drop their lines
of sprawling melody, disconnected from time or tune
or taste, but dripping, soaked in the solicitude of friends.
Old lyrics lie waiting for my attention,
faithful old soldiers of forgotten wars,
older still, fought on fields among the family
of tables and tumbling talk, well-practiced lies
in well-memoried songs.
I’ve been acting like a poem in progress –
a toss-about of lost words, tongue-tombs tied
together by accident in a free-falling frenzy.
Outdoor syntax lost in the mall,
painted-on ivory-tower lips for her rent-a-friend parties.
The ironies, playground of op-eds and writers of no
fixed address, wasted in wordless
sentences no one can read.
But the best poems are never really
finished
What’s so different,
now that one bundle of thirty,
arbitrary and detached, passes,
barely noticed, from one to another?
We have a time.
What’s so different,
as we look out from inside the same
rooms with their corners, known but
unobserved, safe but stultifying?
We have a place.
What’s so different,
the streamers fallen, wine now flat
in decanters of promise, jokes all told,
recognized, congratulated?
We have another.
What’s so different,
these moments of grey ineptitude
encased in more moments, equally
lacking in certitude?
We have ourselves.
What’s so different,
promises made, unkept from the year before,
through wine-stained teeth, and
blurry, careless shrug?
We have a hope.
What’s so different –
she still can’t remember your good things;
he still doesn’t recognize your worth;
they still haven’t apologized
from last year’s infraction?
We have more time.
What’s so different?
We’re alive to ask the question.
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
