The First of Many Wednesday Poems

Ruminates, is required, and so pours forth.

Behold!

Tabula Rasa

As I sit in brief

Relief, through pictures yours

Invading mine, but yours

Is of a different kind.  You strain

And from your pocket take a shining key,

Your mark to render for the eyes of all

Profanity upon the wall.

Is this your breadcrumb, Hansel,

As you depart and lose

Yourself in the wilderness,

The universe against you

Sending birds with squeaky wheels

To scrub away your straining

Immortality?

Oh God!  I am you.

And all my life a scraping

Key to wall,

Elate at all the awkward conversations

My work evokes

Between father and son.

Desert Father Encounters The Rodeo With Grace And Peace

Now its PBJ and Jazz at Massey Hall, welcoming home my residents, and waiting for the beginning of another semester.  This brink is a peaceful lull.

Mark the Ascetic wrote, "If you want with a few words to benefit one who is eager to learn, speak to him about prayer, right faith, and the patient acceptance of what comes. For all else that is good is found in these."

I read these words, then partook of my daily, labyrinthine run-saunter around the airport.

As I past the currently ill-used rodeo stadium these words were much needed.

My runs often turn into pieces of solitude wherein my wandering mind and emotions work through muscles like lactic acid.  The steady rhythm, the sure direction, all is prayerful activity.  Today I felt alone.

"The patient acceptance of what comes."

I read Alphonse Guetteman's writing about the divine "yes," the peace that comes in recognizing God's presence in all movement, all things.  It seemed difficult.  It now comforts.

So it begins, as I began, with some Jazz and a small dinner, the promise of a good friend's company.

I stand, melodramatically speaking, shouting, "Yes!" into the all-enveloping darkness of my uncertainty.

Gravitas and Roman Blogging Encounter the Mother Bird

As a freshman, I thought everything I wrote was very important.  I encountered a blank page with gravitas, claiming it as the grounds upon which my intellect's kingdom would quickly expand.  I linked sentence upon sentence together with fervor, convinced that every page was something golden, important, worthwhile.

I've found that my trepidation has increased with time.  I now encounter a blank page with fear.  I do not fear its existence.  Think of all the marvelous possibilities presented to so fortunate a finder of the blank!  Rather, I fear the decimation of sacred choice.  Each word begins with a choice.  I intended, starting out, for this brief note to be one way, but now my choices have led it away from the original idea into the vast unknown of developing contemplation.

"Why take the time?" you ask.

Simple.  If I do not write, I will not write.  If I do not conquer this nervouse impulse toward an inordinate respect of the possible, I may never say another word again.

We learn by experience.  Each conversation is filled with, "And-I'll-never-do-that-again" moments, and every child learns to swim by sinking.  So, if you couldn't tell, this is me sinking...digitally.  I feel like a mother bird pushing the child of my inadequacy out the nest of introverted silence.  I'm sorry you have to watch.  Look away, if you want.  It's almost over.

My literary wings are weak.  I'm afraid of heights.  Is flying really the thing for me?

Surely there's an appropriate cut off for this metaphor.  Like is drawn to like, in a Dantean kind of way. 

I'd craft an envoi, but, in a way, I already have.  Isn't it amazing how many words it takes to say very little?

I'll try again later,