I missed a day. So, our beautiful offering from Christina Rossetti will make for two days in one. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and still do.
Don’t forget to pop over and visit Real Poets Daily. They’re a wealth of inspiring poetry!
Category: Words…always words
Adventia, day 3
Yesterday was a busier day than I’d expected. I missed my daily Advent Poetry posting. Today brings this gem from Rowan Williams. Tomorrow, we’ll skip day 4 and post two for day 5. You’re welcome!
Adventia – day 2
In my first post in this series, I explained the origins of my strange, made up word. Adventia, as I see it, is our foray into the headwaters of Advent – waiting, hoping, and preparing, together with Fragmentia, those literary illuminations of God’s in-breaking into our world to which we may unite the former.
For most of these we’re taking our cue from a favourite Instagram site of mine – #realpoetsdaily Today, we’re blessed by this gem by T. S. Eliot, from “East Coker.”
Adding Sails
It could be said that
our journeys
are nothing less than
the accumulation
of barnacled hulls and salted prows,
of decks swabbed, well-waxed.
Our crew, composed of those
most impressive, help our slow, steady progress
on the coursing waves of coarser seas.
They sing the old songs.
It could be said that
our wayfaring breezes,
blushed in day-fat skies,
signal us to find their end,
pathways noble, chosen, fearless.
Our guide-stars, poised in Spring-fair heavens,
simplify our white-ribbon’d way
through cushioning waves.
It could be said that
this blue-borne sprawl before us
like weedless gardens,
paths without walls,
is a wordless song of melodies, uninterrupted
and well-key’d, meant for voices
of children and saints.
It could be said that
whatever shanties once joined
throats in the shared songs of adventure
were nothing more than the nursery
rhymes of spoil’d children,
sung by swaying lunar choirs
of the misshapen but hopeful.
Of all the things that could be said,
I will say but one:
of this or any journey,
in the outward way before us –
we are not the Captain of our ships,
we are only
adding sails.
Building Our Poem
Posted this recently to my Innerwoven blog. But, it’s just as timely and appropriate here. I hope you enjoy. Peace, friends…
“…in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart…”*
I love poetry. I love its exactitude, its wide-eyed innocence wed to unflinching honesty. The unforced rhythms of perfection, like Grandma’s gaze over well-worn glasses. It is the art of lovers, the science of thinkers, the wisdom of doers.
Poetry gives up her secrets cautiously, altruistically, slowly. Every word, like every note of a great symphony, is fully intended, placed unequivocally in its place with an eye, and ear, to building something remarkable out of simple things, something well beyond the sum of its parts.
In a thousand ways, we are the amalgam of our carefully written words; each one added to the emerging poem of our lives. In this process, there are no real mistakes. There is only the discernment asked of us in the changing turn of phrase that will ultimately become…
View original post 1,068 more words
Found
Another good one by fellow poet and all round great human being, Kelly Belmonte. Check out everything on her page (https://allninemuses.wordpress.com). Well worth your time.
Are not all poems found poems?
Are not all poets failed poets
failing in a form fated to fail?
Poetry is not truth, but the last
gasp of revelation after hearing
the truest word. The poet
speaks in tongues to a world
that cannot bear truth, whose words
are woodpeckers at the rotting beam,
wind rattling against the eaves.
The poet is found a poet
as a poem is found in the ruins
of a dying language, the last breath
of truth in a truth-famished land.
Find me in these ruins.
*****
Photo by Jiannis Tsiliakis on Unsplash
8
Some of my favourite poetry is that which wrestles, dances with the rich imagery at work in the Bible. It doesn’t preach. It simply tells a story. It helps us picture what the original authors might have been aiming for. This is a poem written as part of a homework assignment for a theology course I’m taking.
It plays around a bit with Psalm 8. Let’s dance. It’s always God’s idea.
8
God, you have scattered your way
among stars, heaped about in the easy
wonders of your winking eye.
Our small and stuttered stance, hands
perched on brows, we squint against
the brilliance and tuck our ignorance
inside curiosity, piqu’d at your
grand and noble gesture.
We shine bright inside your shadow.
From there, at your behest, we are noblesse oblige.
It is in the suppler clay of faces you
do your best work –
the weary eyes of fawning mothers,
the stretching yawns of nipple-fed wains,
tossed high by fathers and friends,
and high school herds, stalwart tribes
trumpeting tales of borrowed conquest.
Foe, fallow-field, and fission –
all made from the same stuff.
What careless shrug dares dismiss so noble a kiss?
Who would think it wise to cork this wine
so ably poured from heaven’s fire?
God, you have scattered
my way among stars.
February 14, 2021 ©Robert A. Rife
I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes to the Hills…
A favourite Psalm of mine proclaims the following, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” The simple act of looking to the hills does not, of itself, bring promise. It is an act of desperation, the longing for salvation wrought of shared hopeful faith. In the end, our help doesn’t come from looking to the hills, but from the hand of God whose hills they are.
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and Vice President Kamala Harris will have their work cut out for them. We are in times of unprecedented division, delusion, decrepitude, and chaos. But, in all the good and hopeful things coming out of the Inauguration yesterday, none was so moving than this from young poet laureate, Amanda Gorman.
Normally I post poetry on my LitBits site. I felt it required…
View original post 742 more words
As you tell me
As you tell me
the woes of the world,
of all that is wrong and out of place,
the injustices, the unfair dues of your space
carved out of a world you help build;
as you tell me
how the air is now
too thin
to breathe,
the ground,
too heavy
to dig,
the people,
too deaf
to hear your valid cries,
too blind
to support
your team’s placards, your tribe’s war-paint,
those with the correct branding on your
well-vetted t-shirts;
as you tell me
of apocalypse and my need to
wake up, and see Jesus in your message
of #allthismatters and #allthatmatters and
#fuckyourmatters because #onlyImatter;
as you tell me
about all we’re losing
if that guys wins, or this guy wins,
or some guy wins, or we all win
if my guy wins; so, get on board
the happy train your bunch
is driving, with the right conductor
on the right track, going the right way,
for the right reasons, to make things right,
again, the way they were;
as you tell me
the world is going to hell-in-a-handbasket,
my neighbour hasn’t heard your news,
she cradles a dying child.
Corona-daze: just breathe
Viral Dailies, Day 23. Today…a prayer.
When the walls of fury and dystopia threaten our made up worlds,
just breathe.
When coughing madness spews upon us its pointless fury,
just breathe.
When those bent on denying as “fake” anything “those ones” have said,
just breathe.
When “those ones” spend all their time trumpeting the correction as the end,
just breathe.
When hints of community are abandoned for mutual blaming,
just breathe.
When neighbours and friends respond to us as foreigners and enemies,
just breathe.
When social distance becomes an excuse to deepen selfishness,
just breathe.
When social distance deepens our loneliness, broadens our fears,
just breathe.
When time and brilliance and humanity once again find their way,
just breathe.
When the disparate voices of the many find semblance of singularity,
just breathe.
When the despair from our losses kisses the tears of our gratitude,
just breathe.
When the detritus of our streets, our homes, our…
View original post 91 more words
innerwoven 