I was honored to share a piece over at All Nine, the website of writer, poet and fellow artist-mystic, Kelly Belmonte. If you happen to come here, you can find us over there.
Come join us if you like!
Author: robertalanrife
I have spent the better part of my life as a professional musician. Primarily, that has meant the fun and challenging world of church music. Most recently, I have transitioned out of my role as worship and music director for Yakima Covenant Church, Yakima, Washington to global service in Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm a singer-songwriter, liturgist, poet, and writer. I love words. I love to read them. I love to write them. Most of all, I love the many intersections, like a sacramental tapestry, of life, liturgy, literature, the arts, and spiritual formation...oh, and I love haggis.
Two poems from a day at the Grunewald Guild
My family and I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for many years now. I maintain that it is readily the most beautiful part of the country, perhaps the world – well, the parts I’ve seen. The Grunewald Guild is a tiny oasis of assorted buildings, forest pathways, an old church converted to a library, and a whole lot of contemplative, liturgical artists. My peeps. After living in the Yakima Valley now for almost nine years, receiving their regular emails for that entire time, I finally decided that it was time for a visit. Of other poems to come, these are the first two.
Plain
The chuckachuck of sprinklers
slaking thirsty brown grass
drone me into an almost zombie-like peace –
a single note, unyielding, in its own
tonic harmony.
A thousand shades of green –
jade and emerald and pine –
line themselves up in the random scattershot
only found in perfection. Much too random
for the soldierish replants
of our brutish industry.
Even the highway wants a place
in this scene – wearing the yellow line
like a scarf around the neck
of its own movement and momentary digressions –
Like this.
The Smell of Grey
The smell of grey, old and musty
books holding ten thousand curious fingerprints.
The dog-eared tales of dog-eared folk,
standing together like square-jawed
colonels of mystery, harboring
citadel secrets.
For so silent a place, how loudly
they shout for my attention.
These Lutherans have it right.
There is no distance or
false pings of conscience that
“The Exorcist” shares a shelf with
“The History of Israel” and something else on liturgy.
Here, my dangerously haphazard
story fits. Suddenly, my impractical
arbitrariness feels intentional –
almost holy.
Thoughts in a driveway
It was about that time when
he knew it was about
the time.
Waves of heat wrapped
themselves around the throat
of a late morning.
He stretches out his arm to
catch some summer, letting the
hot breezes twist through his fingers.
Sometimes hearts rattle like
the car door that, offered
enough reprieve from the summer
heat, shuts itself outright in annoyance.
Distance, like an angry hornet,
intent on its aggressive intrusion
pushes against an unyielding window.
But, given the panic level, he relents
and opens up again to the outside
where it too was vulnerable,
like prey.
And once more
a day’s penumbral gifts,
restless like the dandelion fields
become like they were before –
and he starts the car.
A morning in Malibu
Day creeps in slowly
like a child, uncertain, demure.
The disheveled hillsides yawn
themselves back to thirst again
in the dry, January sun.
A nighthawk, warblers, and sparrows
choir themselves out of the quiet night –
a morning dissonance at war
with nothing but hunger.
Down the slow road into town
a woman pegs up laundry, old school,
to dry in the hot ocean winds.
Eucalyptus, snapdragons, and primrose compete
for what little water is left
after years of drought.
Shakes of uncommitted clouds
stoop to the margins of
warm sky. That’s where the colors are,
a shock of tapioca time in love
with the lilacs, blooming only
for themselves to be the judges.
The town at the bottom of the hill
smells of competing sea-salt
and cheap tourist breakfast.
Those ladies looked out of place
in their broqued jeans and high heels,
that push them up above the
flip-flop culture encroaching –
like the sea.
Runners, running, so many runners,
running apace and aloof as the uneven
shoreline. They are chased by
over-confident gulls and the sad
feeling they can’t outrun something.
But still the water dances with sun
and dreams and there is time.
modern poetry
Every new generation of poets seeks to build on that which was before and push boundaries of language, metaphor and meaning. As a lover of more “classic” poets to whom we all look for guidance and inspiration, but who struggles to say things in new and fresh ways, I’ve had a love-hate affair with the beautiful pretentions of contemporary verse. Perhaps there is just too much genius for me to capture. Perhaps I am destined to speak in an older voice with newer words? Perhaps I need greater patience to see what is ever before me? I ask here some questions in verse.
a medicine cabinet
stuffed with placebo
a closet full of clever
a basket of plastic apples
half-eaten, half-observed
spit back out where they too
become poetry
Hermes has a message
but his feet are raw
from too much slogging
in circles through the plumage
of the self-engrossed
t.s. eliot squints from
the writing chair
he’s but the worn-out scrivener
too tired to interrupt
from his tidy perch
hidden beneath our dust
and pretention
dickinson donne blake and hopkins sprawl
themselves out prominently
under the african violet
on some coffee table
but with coffee-stained faces
that sag bored from hearing
glorified journal entries
too minute for verse
was it williams’ red wheelbarrow
or mary’s kingfisher
or a d. h. lawrence butterfly
or even the silence of e. e.
that first whispered
‘folly’?
was it too many commas
and too little rhyme
to make something live?
did the truth live among the
dreaming gemstones
where words give birth
to flight?
or maybe those words
were bled from the same
shaky pens
leaching the heart
of day-starved paper still
straining to see?
Stand still and come what may
Stand still and
come what may, they tell me.
Perhaps then I will stand still,
with feet propped against
this little flock of earthen stones
and let the wind jig in my toes.
Here I will wither happily,
like the gathering ducks,
pooled and waiting.
I’ll whistle for the twisting
roots of soil
where hide promises of cradle and tomb.
I will vie for the sweeter attentions of
womb-sung songs with words,
cramped, waiting, unborn.
I think I’ll wait for their release
from promises
made for two
and let spring’s last push
seduce summer’s agenda.
The coughing day-brown hillside
counsels me
to be more than I was,
but less quick to
be more than what could be.
Leave that to the rest of us, they tell me.
I think I’ll just wait here.
The un-ruined life
The time was still too young for my feet,
but overripe for my mischievous mind.
So, where time plays hooky from our plans
I wrestled my angels.
And, in my dream, I looked out over the rocky embankments
still holding my thoughts and, over the tomb where
recently someone left not long after arriving, a placard read:
“Beware, those still trapped in a life safe, and un-ruined.
You won’t get to enjoy the looks of incredulity from those
who’d prefer you stay here.”
As John would say
My constant muse both in poetry and life in general is the late John O’Donohue. A Celtic poet, philosopher-mystic…what’s not to love?
The following is an excerpt on poetry and presence from “Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong (1999):”
“All the great art forms strive to create living icons of presence…I am always amazed that poems are willing to lie down and sleep inside the flat, closed pages of books. If poems behaved according to their essence, they would be out dancing on the seashore or flying to the heavens or trying to rinse out secrets of the mountains…A poem can travel far into your depths to retrieve your neglected longing.”
Yes. What he said.
Losing inhibition
Just about the time the afternoon had worn off its edges enough to let the daylight leave, there came to mind a certain wave of thought. Lovers made love. Haters made hate. The rest of us huddled in between where incoherence meets yearning and found each other’s company. It was first names only but, cheek to cheek meant mouth to ear, and tales got told before long. So, about the time the afternoon had frayed its fringes enough to wink at us in passing, we found ourselves left-foot dancing to right-foot music. It had a good beat but lost itself in too much s p a c e between notes. That’s where we met each other. Bump and shuffle. Step and slide. Groove and grunt. We moved in moments like hands looking for each other to clap along. Things only got weird once the music stopped and we were left with nowhere to hide our inhibitions. Funny how musical awkward silences can be. Maybe that’s when we really got to see something other than feet and our eyes told the better stories.
Image found here
A life in daydreams
Maybe just for today, you’ll rest here –
a kind of momentary thought
when the piercing buds of light
no longer feel so angry on your
porcelain skin.
There, you can sprawl out
your supine body fiercely breathing in
all hint of light, hiding behind shadows
of forbidden secrets.
There’s a kind of morning when
even the lusting sky
feels just a little sad.
Not the way one feels after
the visit is over. But sad
like exhausted clouds, having spent
their strength in tears.
Have you ever seen a sun
like that? A passing daydream,
a life without shame or conscience?
The faceless orb, living in hopes
projected out to made up days,
crouched and intimidated?
Wait until the light passes
and scurries beneath the sheets
of another darkness. Maybe there
you’ll discover what’s been looking
for you.
Rob's Lit-Bits 