It's time, at the hinge of winter, for the Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival. My contribution this year is "Things" by Jane Kenyon from The Boat of Quiet Hours:
Things
The hen flings a single pebble aside
with her yellow reptilian foot.
Never in eternity the same sound --
a small stone falling on a red leaf.
The juncture of twig and branch,
scarred with lichen, is a gate
we might enter, singing.
The mouse pulls batting
from a hundred-year-old quilt.
She chewed a hole in a blue star
to get it, and now she thrives....
Now is her time to thrive.
Things: simply lasting, then
failing to last: water, a blue heron's
eye, and the light passing
between them: into light all things
must fall, glad at last to have fallen.
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Bearing Water for Brigid
ReplyDeleteSketches for a water vessel --
bottle and message elide on waves.
Voice of Brigid calls.
All who hear: Imagine.
Exposed to wind, to grit, to rain
and hail,
rock faces erode.
Vessel
Designated fixed space
Sacrosanct container
Conveyor through fluid
separates
Fluidity
Creates place, surface to paint.
Amusement;
diffusement of emotion,
beatitude, foment of dueling farce.
Harsh edges polished,
pure colors
blend in the dark.
Brief infusion
of giddy illusion
glows
just enough to guilefully entice.
Sparkling Neural net
smiles,
a secret
clue revealing
purpose, meaning,
engages
wild eternal child,
ages' flamboyant fool,
Glorious
Muse
(Voice rains from within)
A wound is a sacred vessel.
Pain carves into flesh
sense memory;
carries the seed
of its own demise.
Sentience
engulfed in life
learns anew to be whole.
Wounded with the potential for wisdom
when eyes are are pried
from seeping, sucking, suffering
aching to censure what future we admire.
Redefine the schizm.
This wound is our project.
To heal, discover the vision;
realign the seam to fit
self-framed landscape.
Let loose that genie of desire.
Ride rushing blood streams.
Build a roaring pyre of grief,
insane belief in wrathfilled deities.
Revile that old refrain: "life is pain" or a game
to be lost.
No Faustian bargain.
Just a
rambling adventure
daring
to explore
essence of ecstasy.
Don't wait for the rest to see
and demur.
Stretch your sail.
Take sight of your guiding star.
The only failure is self-denial
in favor of the vile lie
that pain is destiny
instead of faithful friend
lending energy
for change.
Slice vivid memories.
Exult in the tastes, the textures.
Enliven your way.
In the end
the vessel breaks.
There the Goddess stirs
2011 Aquarius