Hagar In The Wikderness, Tychimba Jess

Hagar in the Wilderness

by Tyehimba Jess 

 

 

Carved Marble. Edmonia Lewis, 1875

My God is the living God,
God of the impertinent exile.
An outcast who carved me
into an outcast carved
by sheer and stony will
to wander the desert
in search of deliverance
the way a mother hunts
for her wayward child.
God of each eye fixed to heaven,
God of the fallen water jug,
of all the hope a vessel holds
before spilling to barren sand.
God of flesh hewn from earth
and hammered beneath a will
immaculate with the power
to bear life from the lifeless
like a well in a wasteland.
I'm made in the image of a God
that knows flight but stays me
rock still to tell a story ancient as
slavery, old as the first time
hands clasped together for mercy
and parted to find only their own
salty blessing of sweat.
I have been touched by my God
in my creation, I've known her caress
of anointing callus across my face. 
I know the lyric of her pulse
across these lips...  and yes,
I've kissed the fingertips
of my dark and mortal God.
She has shown me the truth
behind each chiseled blow
that's carved me into this life,
the weight any woman might bear 
to stretch her mouth toward her
one true God, her own
beaten, marble song.


Edmonia Lewis (1845-1907) was an African/Native American expatriate sculptor who was phenomenally successful in Rome.

W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden "For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio"

(The Second Wise Man)

My faith that in time's constant

Flow lay real assurance

Broke down on this analysis -

At any given instant

All solids dissolve, no wheels revolve,

And facts have no endurance -

And who knows if it is by design or pure inadvertence 

That the Present destroys it's inherited self-importance?

With envy, terror, rage, regret,

We anticipate or remember but never are.

To discover how to be living now

Is the reason I follow this star.

Meaning, Carl Dennis

Meaning

by Carl Dennis

 

 

If a life needn't be useful to be meaningful, 

Then maybe a life of sunbathing on a beach 

Can be thought of as meaningful for at least a few, 

The few, say, who view the sun as a god 

And consider basking a form of worship. 

 

As for those devoted to partnership with a surfboard 

Or a pair of ice skates or a bag of golf clubs, 

Though I can't argue their lives are useful, 

I'd be reluctant to claim they have no meaning 

Even if no one observes their display of mastery. 

 

No one is listening to the librarian 

I can call to mind as she practices, after work, 

In her flat on Hoover Street, the viola da gamba 

In the one hour of day that for her is golden. 

So what if she'll never be good enough 

To give a concert people will pay to hear? 

 

When I need to think of her with an audience, 

I can imagine the ghosts of composers dead for centuries,

Pleased to hear her doing her best with their music. 

 

And isn't it pleasing, as we walk at dusk to our cars 

Parked on Hoover Street, after a meeting 

On saving a shuttered hotel from the wrecking ball, 

To catch the sound of someone filling a room 

We won't be visiting with a haunting solo? 

 

And then the gifts we receive by imagining 

How down at the beach today surfers made sure 

The big waves we weren't there to appreciate 

Didn't go begging for attention. 

And think of the sunlight we failed to welcome, 

How others stepped forward to take it in.

Guerillas of Grace, Ted Loder

Gentle me, Holy One, into an unclenched moment,
a deep breath,
a letting go of heavy expectancies,
of shriveling anxieties,
of dead certainties,
that, softened by the silence,
surrounded by the light,
and opened to the mystery,
I may be found by wholeness,
upheld by the unfathomable,
entranced by the simple,
and filled with joy
that is you.
--Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace

There is Something

Ted Loder

.

Holy One,

there is something I wanted to tell you,
but there have been errands to run,
bills to pay,
arrangements to make,
meetings to attend,
friends to entertain,
washing to do...
and I forget what it is I wanted to say to you,
and mostly I forget what I'm about
or why.
O God,
don't forget me, please,
for the sake of Jesus Christ....

O Father in Heaven,
perhaps you've already heard what I wanted to tell you,
What I wanted to ask is,
forgive me,
heal me,
increase my courage, please.
Renew in me a little of love and faith,
and a sense of confidence,
and a vision of what it might mean
to live as though you were real,
and I mattered,
and everyone was sister and brother.

What I wanted to ask in my blundering way is
don't give up on me, don't become too sad about me,
but laugh with me,
and try again with me,
and I will with you, too.

from Guerrillas of Grace

Be Melting a Snow, Rumi

Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
Be Melting Snow

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The moon. The full moon is inside your house.
My friends and I go running out into the street.
I'm in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren't listening.
We're looking up at the sky.
My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden.
Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where.
It's midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out
in the street thinking, The cat burglar has come back.
The actual thief is there too, saying out loud,
Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd.
No one pays attention.
Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you
There's no need to go outside.
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
A white flower grows in quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.