I missed a day. So, our beautiful offering from Christina Rossetti will make for two days in one. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and still do.
Don’t forget to pop over and visit Real Poets Daily. They’re a wealth of inspiring poetry!
Adventia, day 3
Yesterday was a busier day than I’d expected. I missed my daily Advent Poetry posting. Today brings this gem from Rowan Williams. Tomorrow, we’ll skip day 4 and post two for day 5. You’re welcome!
Adventia – day 2
In my first post in this series, I explained the origins of my strange, made up word. Adventia, as I see it, is our foray into the headwaters of Advent – waiting, hoping, and preparing, together with Fragmentia, those literary illuminations of God’s in-breaking into our world to which we may unite the former.
For most of these we’re taking our cue from a favourite Instagram site of mine – #realpoetsdaily Today, we’re blessed by this gem by T. S. Eliot, from “East Coker.”
Adventia – Day 1
No, the above is not meant as some cheap attempt at a New Joizy accent with the word adventure. I see it more as the amalgamation of Advent and Fragmentia: a place where the illumination of God’s in-breaking into our world found in the Advent narratives unites with the fragments of literature and faith and life seeking to bring us to deeper understanding of it all.
Advent is upon us once more. With it comes a barrage of books and practices all aimed at helping us get the most from the experience. My choice this year is to ride someone else’s coattails. Am I just too lazy to think of anything original? Maybe. To be honest, I just like the approach taken by someone I follow on Instagram – #realpoetsdaily
So then, that is what I am doing for Advent…what they’re doing. I’ll post here but redirect you always back to their site. I give you, Advent, day 1.
“It’s the first Sunday in Advent, and like last year I plan on posting a poem for every day of Advent, and then for ever day of Christmas. Here is “First Sunday” by Sally Thomas (@sallytnnc).
Adding Sails
It could be said that
our journeys
are nothing less than
the accumulation
of barnacled hulls and salted prows,
of decks swabbed, well-waxed.
Our crew, composed of those
most impressive, help our slow, steady progress
on the coursing waves of coarser seas.
They sing the old songs.
It could be said that
our wayfaring breezes,
blushed in day-fat skies,
signal us to find their end,
pathways noble, chosen, fearless.
Our guide-stars, poised in Spring-fair heavens,
simplify our white-ribbon’d way
through cushioning waves.
It could be said that
this blue-borne sprawl before us
like weedless gardens,
paths without walls,
is a wordless song of melodies, uninterrupted
and well-key’d, meant for voices
of children and saints.
It could be said that
whatever shanties once joined
throats in the shared songs of adventure
were nothing more than the nursery
rhymes of spoil’d children,
sung by swaying lunar choirs
of the misshapen but hopeful.
Of all the things that could be said,
I will say but one:
of this or any journey,
in the outward way before us –
we are not the Captain of our ships,
we are only
adding sails.
Building Our Poem
Posted this recently to my Innerwoven blog. But, it’s just as timely and appropriate here. I hope you enjoy. Peace, friends…
“…in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart…”*
I love poetry. I love its exactitude, its wide-eyed innocence wed to unflinching honesty. The unforced rhythms of perfection, like Grandma’s gaze over well-worn glasses. It is the art of lovers, the science of thinkers, the wisdom of doers.
Poetry gives up her secrets cautiously, altruistically, slowly. Every word, like every note of a great symphony, is fully intended, placed unequivocally in its place with an eye, and ear, to building something remarkable out of simple things, something well beyond the sum of its parts.
In a thousand ways, we are the amalgam of our carefully written words; each one added to the emerging poem of our lives. In this process, there are no real mistakes. There is only the discernment asked of us in the changing turn of phrase that will ultimately become…
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Found
Another good one by fellow poet and all round great human being, Kelly Belmonte. Check out everything on her page (https://allninemuses.wordpress.com). Well worth your time.
Are not all poems found poems?
Are not all poets failed poets
failing in a form fated to fail?
Poetry is not truth, but the last
gasp of revelation after hearing
the truest word. The poet
speaks in tongues to a world
that cannot bear truth, whose words
are woodpeckers at the rotting beam,
wind rattling against the eaves.
The poet is found a poet
as a poem is found in the ruins
of a dying language, the last breath
of truth in a truth-famished land.
Find me in these ruins.
*****
Photo by Jiannis Tsiliakis on Unsplash
Prayer
We press the world between pointed palms,
where the weary stretch for heaven’s notice.
Our best vision, through closed eyes – steps
weightless
on scabbed knees, waiting.
Wine-soaked, bread-fed words squeeze
themselves through parched lips to
arrange with dancing in mind. But first,
they must learn the art of walking naked, blindfolded
through haunted alleys,
danger-gripped, clammy with doubt.
We stretch out long necks, seeking only glimpses, emancipation.
But, the lecherous bully of shame spends all his time
butchering the still,
small voices of light that sneak
in through backdoors where hope still keeps
windows open.
Tragic, is it not, how shades pull tight against wayward shards
of sun, the down-payment for our breath?
Like running in snow, our legs just get heavier –
too much weight tossed about over time.
A leering fatigue replaces what’s left of inadequate strength –
thickness filling muscles too weak to move past their own demise.
Still, hope is what came, long after our tight-
cinched belt of faith lost its grip
and hungry shame gave way to
garden surrender.
Only then does our Amen make sense.
Lines from a French Train
Composed on a train somewhere between Paris and Montpellier, October, 2019
Sometimes, it is easier to find the whimsy
when there is no memory of a place.
Sharp jagged edges can polish themselves
out in conversations with fellow travellers.
Their questions are better than
my unqualified answers.
Laughter jumbles out, jostling about in
the accidental chaos of shared days –
days made strong in the looking
away from the timekeepers and toward
their owners. Remember,
we must all live our lives on our heels
sometimes. Then, we unburden our-
selves in the company of strangers.
I don’t assume the elbow room was mine.
This kicking straight of cramping
knees was not an action reserved for
my taxable legs.
I don’t pretend to know the steps to a dance
composed without my song, by other tribes.
Their rainbow isn’t signed by my god.
Nor is the stretching road built with
me in mind.
I don’t expect my expectations to equal
the readiness of others to serve them.
I don’t believe, even for a minute, the whisperings
of my inserted presence, that my voice
gets top billing, priority, and loudest.
My tongue is not the first or strongest, the purest,
or even necessary.
It is only,
mine.
one saturday
so now it comes to this
a day, laid out to flay and scandalize
night reserved for a more macabre affair
some spikes, some wood,
some dereliction of hope, one cosmic corpse
and in these longest of hours
lay light itself
without so much as a yawn
Rob's Lit-Bits 