Breaking Spring Open

Nicaragua;
I thank you for those six days in March when

Your light hit us just right,

Your sand opened up for my toes,

Your flowers spilled over edges,

Your dusk broke through that tiny mountain town,

And for one sweet week

You gave me back this one sweet friend.

Child Eyes

When I was a little girl
my eyes held all knowing in their sockets.
If a thing too overwhelming came to be,
I could simply close my tiny eyes
and un-see the unmanageable.

More than once
I lost control of my bicycle on a certain steep, steep hill.
So squeezing shut my eyes,
that hill would come to not exist for one
tiny
instant.

More than once
I was alone
in the Buick's big backseat,
and we were again pulling into that terrifying car wash.
Unfamiliar sounds and movements invaded my senses.
Pulling back my mother's hand,
back to where I sat,
It was my shield from the strange.
Placed and held firmly
from temple to temple,
arching up over my nose.
Familiar skin on mother hands hid me from my nightmare.

And now,
though with longer limbs,
I still struggle between denial and truth
in the daily opening and closing of these eyes.

When what I fear the most enters my vision,
with head ducked under covers,
it becomes the monster that I will always dread.

But
When what I fear the most enters my vision,
and with willing eyes I take it in,
in all of its terrifying possibilities,
it releases from all of my grasping intentions,
and transforms into an offering to the God of the Poor in Spirit.
I am now open to receive His heart.
And certainly, He does not fail to hear the voices of his hurting children.

Do you trust Me? What have you to fear?

In Celebration of Light: Sunday morning.

Excerpts by: Wallace Stevens


1
...The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine...


2
...What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
...Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.


4
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"...


5
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires.
...The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness
She makes the willow shiver in the sun...


7
...Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

8

She hears, upon that water without sound,

A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine

Is not the porch of spirits lingering.

It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."

We live in an old chaos of the sun,

Or old dependency of day and night,

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,

Of that wide water, inescapable...

And, in the isolation of the sky,

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Decision

cred.