Alive, Alive O

Alive, Alive, O

To look around the corner of a time, a hovering,
and know that there is more, a gathered mist
of portent stealing comfort, roiling waters
calmed amid the dust trails of a heritage
that didn't want to be disturbed—
there's incentive for another breath,
another setback for the march of death
along the pathway of a life
that only stopped to wonder
just a while ago.

It is Molly Malone who calls us
past the curtain of the years, imploring
with a voice heard only as an echo,
as a haunting fantasy, perhaps
encrusted sentiment that moment
in the Dublin fog where we thought
we saw her there again.
How curious the parallel
that we would long to bring her back,

for it is history in all its darkness
that congeals into a strange nostalgia,
speaks in distant cries that it is we
who vivify the murky ghosts—
who see ourselves alive in Molly's shade!

It is the gentle earth that feeds us.
Consuming and consumed we share
an immortality we do not understand;
we are gifted, rising from the sea
no more confined, and still we hear
across the ages, Molly's cry
assuring us we do not die,
her voice across the square we know,
"Cockles...and mussels alive, alive O..."
~

And what is this?

(Two companion poems based on an inquiry into the meaning of love)

And what is this?

I

Right away I saw the power of it,
knowing that the loan I made
would never be repaid;
that made me smile—
that secret, quite delicious irony
was mine to keep within my heart.
My sacrifice had just become a gift of love
I didn't even understand.

No loving person would return
remembering, or able to requite;
she acted out of need alone,
a pure divestment of her pride,
and out of need I gave—
not from a love inside,
nor from a hope of heaven,
that pain embraced. It simply
was replaced by mirth.

There is a spring
within the desert's bleak array
that flows with power
to beautify that mendicant
from whom I readily recoil,
and how I thirst!

Love is a sorcerer,
a charmer quite devoid of intellect.
Emotions may be far away,
the strings within a heart untuned
and every day the wind blows cold
across the stony ground—
yet still I smile, a lesser man complete,
beguiled that such a thing as love
has twisted sensibility, and from a tiny throne
far off in space has brought about
a new and wondrous world.

II

I spoke to you of pleasant irony,
of desert springs that burble forth surprises
past refreshment, past all hope of change.
They lurk there, just as patience would,
a gift inside an unexpected dawn.
It just won't do to try to cultivate it;
gifts are like that,
bursting from the flower of love,
and teaching us as water splashes
laughingly upon our faces,
then retreating underneath the sand
as if it never were.

I like that subtle self-removal,
finally to preach without a voice
of all the pure delight when I
am taken from my own
mysterious pathway, cleared
from crevices of latent will
without a struggle from my childish id.
Nothing virtuous in that!

The sand grows dry again,
but still exuberance is there—
a reservoir beneath my feet,
unearned, and like a geyser
driven from creation's power
and its own joyous will.
And we?
We shall not chase it down.
We may not toil
to write it on our hearts.

This thing called love
is but to feast upon
as honored guests, properly oblvious
to any shroud of night.
~

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Of Good and Evil

Of good and evil

Life is a fabric, isn't it?
a crazy-quilt melange
repelling and attracting
fantasy and myth.

So pain and pleasure claim reality,
never sure of which ascends.
But evil is the foil for understanding good,
and may become the soil of happiness,
nourishing by virtue of its dark
and close embrace.

Now you and I may look...examine pointedly
this new perspective, leaping up
to spark creation...set apart the gladness
into islands bursting with the fruit of joy.

We want to see what makes us.
We want to tap that urging far within the center
that invites us to the feast,
that speaks in tongues of revelry unheard before.
We want to dance through that thick mystery
into a radiance unseen.

It is that diverse unity that drives a mind
into the swirl of consciousness,
of just and unjust brotherhood,
that common blood of greed and graciousness
on a continuum without an end.

It's where magnificence prevails,
where light comes rushing in upon a shadowed stage;
the denouement, the prize song, all the roses
waken sense and sight,
the night outside an introit
to the splendor of the day.
~

A Christian Odyssey

A Christian Odyssey

The waters of the earth are rising,
capturing the little boats we left upon the shore,
capturing the islands where we took our hopes
of paradise, the trees that sank their roots
to freshness deeper than th'invading sea.

Most of us forget the rarity of England days,
the girl whose hair falls to her knees,
the secret lips upon the cheek.
Prisoners of time no more, the lust of green,
the falconer, the joust recede;
time is what we say it is...and it is ours
to press into us as we will.

For we are lost, would press unto us
all the praise of lesser visonaries
England left behind, the ones bequeathed
to forest lands, to forest farms,
possessing only dreams to feed their lust,
the call of sacrifice, a brother's blood
avenged to codify the law

...would press into our hearts, the ones
of powdered hair who saw us faithful
to a sacred honor that we never understood,
for there before us something
in the mist and clay took form,
bequeathed us enemies
that neither land nor forest had revealed—
only ocean waters brought them home
to love and to destroy.
~

We are

We are

We are the sweep of majesty
that all the stars impart
to the responding earth;
no greenmade glory shines
beyond the music that a mind
creates upon a page,
liberates the sons of art
and marches to the tomb,
embracing the unborn.

We carry history upon our backs,
create pellucid legend
when our heroes fall behind,
and with the fire
of mighty men beyond the clouds,
assemble freshly-martyred saints
to bear our cause.

We are the fallen ones
with tears enough
to cleanse that counterpoint
of victory and loss,
for there are fears enough
to purify our altars
with the censors of regret.

We are the engineers of greed and glory
and the wind, indeed blows colder
'round the corner where the children
may not play again...

It was the mystery of things we cannot see,
the evanescence of a breath, the Hebrew lord
chose first, empowering his friends
to change the world,

chose us, survivors
blessed of spirit wind
that dies like candle flame
within a moment we may not control.

We are the Godtouch
breathing sacrament upon the land
and properly along the path
choose every step with awe.
~

Scenic View Ahead

Scenic View Ahead

I stopped my life a moment,
knowng that, unmarked by an event,
there was a curious wedge,
a watershed of history,
a crest without connection,
meaningless and rare.
I saw it as a precious time
that never could return.

Then there it was,
a precipice no man could see;
its hazard was itself, unmarked in time,
unsafe, no single quest defined.
There would be consequence,
a changed reality, a breath upon a butterfly
to set the courses of the stars.

Of such, to speed the heart and whirl the mind.
Of such, an agony unchronicled—
It is of choice like this from which a soul
may race away in fear.
Beware. It is too much.
Don't stop to understand.
~