Category: Poetry

Who Is Talking to Whom

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This is actually Pathway Poem #22, but I decided to use a title instead. The poem today is by Paul Quenon, a Trappist monk whose novice master and spiritual director at the abbey of Gethsemani was Thomas Merton. The poem is found in Unquiet Vigil: New and Selected Poems published by Paraclete Press.

In the poem there is an italicized quote from Prayers of a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, published by Paraclete Press.

Now to the poem, that I hope you will read aloud and maybe twice.

Speculating Swallows

Swallows wheel below me
seated high on a window sill
as I read Rilke this rainy evening.
In chorus they sweep close to me,
curious and much amused at this aerial man
perched two stories up.

The make clipped remarks with swift wing beats
as the sail past my window.

Well–the delight is mutual.

I return to the page and read:
I am! You anxious One, don’t You hear me
with my soft senses surging toward You?
My feelings, which have found wings,
circle around Your face innocently.

How strange! How did they know? Am I God to these
swallows?
Or be they God wooing me?

They befriended me briefly in their god-like play,
then passed beyond to loftier freedom.

The reference to “god-like play” reminded me of the line in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins entitled As Kingfishers Catch Fire, i.e., “Christ plays in ten thousand places” which is also the title of a brilliant book by Eugene H. Peterson.

The poem also called to mind an older woman in the church where I grew up. She talked about going to a window in her kitchen every morning to hear what God might tell her through the two birds who regularly showed up. What she might have heard, I have no idea.

Just as there seem to be “thin places” where this world and another reality seem to meet, I think some beings bring this thinness to us. Birds did that for Paul Quenon that day and apparently did it often for the elderly church lady.

I hope you will return to the poem now and read it a second time. And I hope that you will take time to pay attention to life around you through which another life might shine through just for a moment.

Sunday morning
trinity of chickadees
feeder confab

If you like what you have read and are not already a follower, I hope you will click the follow button to receive my posts in your email. As always feel free to share this with others who might enjoy it.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #21

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Today’s poem is by John O’Donohue from Conamara Blues published in 2001 by HarperCollens Publishers, Inc. O’Donohue was an Irish priest much loved for his spiritual writings. I was attracted to this book of poetry because of the title. I have visited Ireland three times. I love every place I have been there. But my favorite is the west coast area of Galway and Conamara. The poem chosen for today illustrates a pathway into the Presence.

As always, I encourage you to read the poem slowly and to read it twice.

The Secret of Thereness

And the earth fled to the lowest place.
And the mystery of the breeze,
Arising from nowhere, could be
A return of unrequited memory
Awake at last to a sense of loss,

Stirring up the presences in these fields,
Clutches of thistle roll their purple eyes,
Grasses wave in a trembling whisper,
Profusions of leaf dance slowly

On the low spires of rowan trees;
In fields and walls the granite ones
Never waver from stillness, stones
Who know a life without desire,

Each dwells in its own distance
From night acclaimed by twilight
And day released through dawn.

Utterly focused in their stance,
Stones praise the silence of time.

If you have ever been to Conamara, you have seen those stones “focused in their stance” rising up out of the ground and in their places as part of a wall. They are everywhere. They “never waver in their stillness.” That is the image that calls me back to a spiritual truth that is so easily lost in the hectic pace of the modern world.

It is the “secret of thereness”. I cannot express how important it is to practice stillness, silence, simply being ‘there’. I cannot say that it is only in stillness that we can experience the presence of God, but I can affirm both personally and from the witness of other seekers over the centuries, that if we are still and attentive, the Presence might touch us.

alone not lonely—
solitary with God
by a mountain stream

The haiku was first published in frogpond, vol. 43:1 winter 2020, Haiku Society of America, Inc.

As always, please feel free to share this blog with your friends.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem # 20

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The following poem is by Gillian Clarke. I first found it in Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter by Malcolm Guite. It was originally published in Gillian Clarke: Collected Poems published by Carcanet in 1997.

Gillian was the national poet of Wales. The poem below reflects a reading she gave on St David’s Day in a mental hospital. St David is the national saint of Wales. He lived in the 6th century. This poem is a reminder of how impactful poetry can be. Please, remember that this poem was written over 25 years ago, so some of the language may no longer be used to talk about people with mental illness. Don’t let that keep you from missing the true power of this poem.

Miracle on St David’s Day

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
The Daffodils, William Wordsworth

An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed
with daffodils. The sun treads the path
among cedars and enormous oaks.
It might be a country house, guests strolling,
the rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.

I am reading poetry to the insane.
An old woman, interrupting, offers
as many buckets of coals as I need.
A beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens
entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic

on a good day, they tell me later.
In a cage of first March sun a woman
sits not listening, not seeing, not feeling.
In her neat clothes the woman is absent.
A big mild man is tenderly led

to his chair. He has never spoken.
His labourer’s hands on his knees,
he rocks gently to the rhythms of the poems.
I read to their presences, absences,
to the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.

He is suddenly standing, silently,
huge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow
movement of spring water or the first bird
of the year in the breaking darkness,
the labourer’s voice recites The Daffodils.

The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients
seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.
Outside the daffodils are still as wax,
a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables
unspoken, their creams and yellows still.

Forty years ago, in a Valleys school,
the class recited poetry by rote.
Since the dumbness of misery fell
he has remembered there was a music
of speech and that once he had something to say.

When he’s done, before the applause, we observe
the flowers’ silence. A thrush sings
and the daffodils are aflame.

As always feel free to share this blog with friends and encourage them to follow.

Peace,
LaMon

Learning from Issa

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Issa is one of the masters of Japanese haiku, along with Basho and Buson. Here are some of my favorite Issa haiku. They are translated by Sam Hamill and found in The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku: Kobayashi Issa.

A little shady
spot of grass in summertime–
sanctuary

At the very edge
of the contaminated well
a plum tree blossoms

Entering the gate,
he is simply oblivious,
the wandering frog

If you are kindly
they will shit all over you,
happy young sparrows

O summer snail,
you climb but slowly, slowly
to Fuji’s summit

Pouncing, the kitten
tackles and holds down the leaf–
for the moment

Perhaps his most famous haiku is the one composed after he watched his little daughter die horribly of small pox:

This world of dew
is only the world of dew–
and yet…oh and yet…

Later this month, I will be leading a workshop on haiku at beautiful St. Mary’s Sewanee. Whether you are a novice or an expert write of haiku, I think this workshop will be valuable. The first half we will think in more general terms about haiku, with plenty of time to write some. The second half we will learn how to write like Issa. The source for that second half is taken from Issa scholar, David G. Lanoue’s book, Write Like Issa: a haiku how-to. Below is a link to the program by which you may sign up.

As always, feel free to share this blog with anyone you think might enjoy it.

Peace,
LaMon

https://www.stmaryssewanee.org/events/the-value-of-haiku-learning-to-pay-attention-and-make-connections-3/


Pathway Poem #19

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I lead a contemplative class on Sunday mornings. This week, one reading we had was from Mary Oliver’s Thirst.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones, just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak

One of the most impressive prayers I have ever heard was voiced in 1971 when I was leading a youth group in El Sobrante, California. A teenager had joined our group (and church) a few weeks before. One night after church the young people met in a member’s home. At one point, I had invited the young people to voice their own prayers to God. Several did. Then toward this end, I heard the soft voice of this young man pray. He simply said, “Thank You.” I have never forgotten that beautiful two word prayer.

Mary Oliver asks us to do three things. First, pay attention to life. Second, voice thanks to the creator of life. Third, sit in silence to perhaps hear another voice respond. This is a good pattern for a contemplative life.

croaking frogs
chittering birds
Creator listens

May wisdom fill your mind and peace overflow in your heart,
LaMon

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A Lesson from “The Prophet” and a Preacher

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And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of
riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud,
outstretching His arms in lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving
His hands in trees. Kahlil Gibran, Collected Works, 149.

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, not hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
R. S. Thomas, “The Bright Field” in Selected Poems, 114

Both Gibran and Thomas, from very different backgrounds, remind us of the same truth. If you would know the divine reality that permeates creation, paying attention helps! Those of you who live in a “modern” nation like I do, know how easy it is to rush from one thing to the next.

My advice is to walk slowly and to sit for a while. Allow creation to permeate your senses. You may come away refreshed and a bit wiser.


a gentle zephyr
dances among the trees:
breath of the Spirit

Peace to you all. And as always, feel free to share this with others. LaMon

Pathway Poem #16

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Today’s poem is by Gwyneth Lewis. She is a Welsh poet who writes in both Welsh and English. I discovered her in Malcolm Guite’s The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter where he shared her wonderful poem “Homecoming”. But I will save that one for a later blog.

For today, her poem “Midwinter Marriage” seems appropriate. It is found in her book Parables & Faxes published by Bloodaxe Books. I hope you will read it slowly, twice.

Midwinter Marriage

After autumn’s fever and its vivid trees,
infected with colour as the light died back,
we’ve settled into greyness: fields behind gauze,

hedges feint in tracing-paper mists,
the sun diminished to a midday moon
and daylight degraded to the monochrome

of puritan weather. This healing cold
holds us to pared-down simplicities.
Now is the worse-case solstice time,

acutest angle of the shortest day,
a time to condemn the frippery of leaves
and know that trees stand deltas to the sky

producing nothing. A time to take your ease
in not knowing, in blankness, in vacuity.
This is the season that has married me.

You may find in the poem some wonderful metaphors worthy of your meditation. If so, don’t allow my meandering to cause you to forget to take time with those images that have attracted you.

However, what attracted me were the last three lines. “[Winter is] a time to take your ease / in not knowing, in blankness, in vacuity. / This is the season that has married me.” One of the most influential books of Christian mysticism or spirituality is a little anonymous book from the 14th century entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. The author stresses that our understanding can never penetrate the cloud of unknowing that separates us from God who is incomprehensible. Only love alone can reach God.

Winter time is appropriate as a time to remember how little we can fathom of God’s nature–though what we can fathom is beautiful, full of spring time life and glory. Each season carries within it metaphor and symbol to draw us toward the divine. Even dark winter.

It is easy for me to be married to winter, as Lewis imagines herself to be. Perhaps it is my melancholy nature. Whatever the case, winter can help me experience God. It is is a pathway, perhaps dark, but a true pathway, none the less.

When I read this poem last year, it inspired the following haiku:

mid-winter darkness
monochrome unknowing time
emptiness resounds

As always you may share this blog with others and encourage them to follow. And I would love to hear your thoughts on winter!

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #15

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It is Advent in the Christian tradition. It is a time of waiting before the coming of Christ. The primary emphasis is on his birth. Today’s poem is by Luci Shaw and entitled “Kenosis”. It is found in Harvesting Fog, p.53.

KENOSIS

In sleep his infant mouth works in and out.
He is so new, his silk skin has not yet
been roughed by plane and wooden beam
nor, so far, has he had to deal with human doubt.

He is in a dream of nipple found,
of blue-while milk, of curving skin
and, pulsing in his ear, the inner throb
of a warm heart’s repeated sound.

His only memories float from fluid space.
So new he has not pounded nails, hung a door,
broken bread, felt rebuff, bent to the lash,
wept for the sad heart of the human race.

The world ‘kenosis’ is a Greek word that is usually means “to empty”. It is famously found in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Of Christ, he wrote that “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” 2:6-7. It is that self-emptying birth of the Son of God that Christians celebrate this time of year.

While this poem and the scripture text are in the Christian tradition, the emphasis on humility is found in many spiritual traditions.

“Humble living does not diminish. It fills.” Rumi

“If the sage would guide the people, he must serve with humility.” Tao Te Ching

Humility was little regarded in the Greek and Roman world of Jesus’ day. And it is little regarded in America today–or so it seems. It can be different. We can choose to walk the low road of kindness, gentleness, and generosity. Walk the humble pathway. In it you are more likely to experience the presence of God.

the humble person
is like a blooming cactus
in the dry desert

As always, feel free to share this blog with anyone you think might enjoy it. Remind them that they can opt to follow it and receive it in their inbox. Peace, LaMon

Poem Pathway #14

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the psalmist believed
appearances be damned–
God is just

The above haiku was inspired by reading Psalm 94. In this blog, I am repeating a theme which I mentioned earlier, but it is so important in the religious life of the Psalm writers, that I thought it worth mentioning again. One way to experience the smiling presence of the divine is to care for that for which God cares. In the case of Psalm 94, it includes the widow, the stranger, the orphan.

However, it was a poem by Michael Guite reflecting on Psalm 94 that crystalized my thoughts in this area again. The poem is found in David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms (London: Canterbury Press, 2021), p. 94.

Psalm 94: XCIV Deus ultionum

My saviour stands and keeps my soul serene
But also sends me back into the world
To speak his word and challenge the obscene

Injustices we take for granted, sold
As we are on systems that preserve
Our privileges and barter truth for gold,

Putting our souls to silence. We reserve
Our judgement, but the psalmist makes it clear
Justice is coming for God’s poor. We serve

Him best if we can also serve them here,
Rise up and take their part against the proud
Deliver them from harassment and fear.

We have been pietistic, quiet, cowed
But we must come out publicly and cry
For equal rights and justice, cry out loud.

May the presence of God be real in our lives as we love what God loves.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #13

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“Requiem for the Homeless Man” by Philip C. Kolin, Reading God’s Handwriting: Poems, Kaufmann Publishing, 2012.

He died of an overdose
of neglect; who cares
that he was one of the hidden
people exiled from smiles.

His sores were so heavy he had to lean them
against a wall, a bench, or a gate,
or let them fall
into the gutter where he belonged
who cares?

What’s left in his pockets is scarce
a few dollops of lint,
two or three mustard seeds,
a browning lily folded in two
like his life

His obituary made the evening winds
flying his soul to the bosom of God
who cares.

If you’ve read it only once, you might want to return to the beginning and read it again, aloud, slowly. Let the images sink into you heart and mind.

It is possible that Kolin was inspired by a parable that Jesus told in Luke 16:19-31 usually entitled “The Rich Man and Lazarus”. However, the genesis of the poem could just as easily have been in any American city from New York to San Francisco.

How can we be united with God. It sounds simple, i.e., care about what God cares about. Unfortunately, God’s name is used far too often, to justify what we and others care about. I find great help in the life of Jesus, where over and over again, it is the poor, the outcast, the suffering who attract his attention and care.

Kolin’s poem can remind us that caring for the homeless, is God-like care. We touch the divine when we care for the poor.

A haiku from several years ago:

remember this truth
voiceless poor are dear to God…
seek their wellbeing

Peace,
LaMon

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