Sound weighs more in
the centre of the night –
every tick,
each tock
of clock now
a clang. And
the shutting of a
door becomes a
slam: no argument
needed to rid the
air of peace.
But my eyes
strain in this time;
and when I
squint, what
was fuzzy does
not clear, but only
disappears.
And You, God, in night
whisper invisibly –
to great effect.
I drove into a William Kurelek
painting the other day – the sky
an orb, seeing me
travelling in God’s eye. I
stopped at a roadside
coffee spot, and saw
two wizened souls
she in spotted frock
and
he with hat crooked just so,
both leaning into the wind and
wearing both weariness and joy.
I travelled past wounded windmills,
from another time, and felt my soul
caressed by granaries old
enough to be my Omma and Oppa –
they called out:
“Do not forget your whence
and
Do not forget that your whither
cannot be divined.”
Each leaf lingers like
note hanging to staff,
stemmed to branch,
performing a polyphony of praise
as the tree lauds its
earthy inspiration:
terra firma
feeding
cantus firmus.
For those with ears to hear,
the tree – like all spirited
songs – hosts a community of joy:
cardinals in canticle
rhythmic robins
and squirrels ad-verse to gravity,
as delight bursts forth with blossoms of hope.
Do you see the tree –
now this book in
your hand? Can
you hear echoes of
its whispering through
the wind? Do you
know that it once
breathed out its
life as it inhaled
your death?
This book in your hand
is your relation.
Its pages are leaves for
the healing of the nations.
You can divine in its spine
trunk and branches and roots –
given for you, given for me.
It bears the ink it bleeds
nobly. This book
reminds us that
we do not read
without cost.
This book in your hand
is a living wood, and
it will not remain
silent.
I ran through a wood;
silva bathed in silver.
And in the lesser light
with shades crossing my path,
my laboured breath could not
but gasp at upended
trees. Prostrate trunks
and exposed roots
reminded me
that these giants
too cross over, in
the bosom of their
kin, in the ken that they
are never alone.
On Good Friday last,
on the forest floor,
I discovered that when
trees fall, they
sing, whether I am
there to hear them,
or not.
The blessed sleep of the just
again evades me, and so I now
sit at the hearth, holy
in its own way: a kind
of graced sanctuary.
Shadows dance lauds on walls,
while tongues of fire preach
a sound sermon:
“You are standing on holy ground!”
In this chapel, no offering is taken,
but it offers opportunity
to sing praise, if not
with raised hands then
at least with razed
certainties,
knowing that knowing
is like a flame:
illumining and dangerous
both, and then gone,
so quickly
gone…
My body summons me,
serving notice of the
need to return to
ancient ways still at play
in little ones – before
we take them
out of themselves
and clothe them
in agendas. It is no
wonder that we ache for wonder,
that our calloused hands
reach for heavenly cheeks.
Our flesh seeks flesh
that still knows and so we
touch, yearning for Mother’s milk,
for water crisp off glaciers of joy.
