Sunday, November 22, 2009

Allegory of Autumn and Suffering


A breath upon the frozen pond,
An icicle of red
That shines within the torching sun
And shows his golden head.
This---looking out upon the green
That's turned to crimson shade:
This---gazing out upon the scene
That Grand Creation made.
A girl upon the rattling tracks
Whose eye would gladly see
The beauty of the setting sun
If down would bend the trees
And gone would be the turning mist
And lost, the settled fog---
If only rains left fewer stains
And whirlwinds, fewer flogs:
Then she could see the burning sun
Across the twisted log,
And great would be the epitaph
Of love, writ in the smog.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Humankind vs. Animals, Part 2


*Note: Please feel free to read Part 1, below, before continuing this post!
The object of debate in such study rises from the torment that we are merely a product, as well: one among many animals that will rise and fall, fade by the breeze, run the path, and then degenerate again. We may, truly, become heroes in our society or put concern upon some unaddressed issue--but why, if only to be scratched away by sands of time once more? We are left to the realization of starch, unlovely, unloved beings perhaps briefly considered by a length in the history of time, and destroyed entirely when our human counterparts have found no use in our entertainments or discoveries. We were conceived: we will die. We were flesh: we will become dust. We were someone: we will dance our way to the unknown grave, which no one wishes to follow us in to. Poor or rich, generous or lackluster in regard to poverty, virtuous or sinful: how does it matter how we live it?
From youth, these concepts of unintelligence barrage us with questioning all that seemed a hazy firmness in our minds. The leash of the cold, soon-to-fade existence is almost close to choking us with the faux reality that we are nothing more than a pack of animals---perhaps more numerous than some herds, but animals nonetheless---racing towards our own ends. There is some line that is still blurry in our scientific matters on the conscience and heart, though, and even the staunchest biologist cannot declare the reason for charity, or choice, in human's actions. Not only is the view of humans vs. animals very faulty in its ignorance of the complexity of humans, it is also a dismal prospect, as outlined in the depressing outlook of such reasoning. So why shall we live with such question marks of life, when all around us, Intelligence of a great God is visible in individuals---and more specifically, humans?

Humankind vs. Animals---Part 1

When I was searching through my filed archives, I found this descriptive argument for the intelligence of human beings vs. animals. I wrote this when I was about fourteen or fifteen, so forgive the mistakes when they come.
"From one man God made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."
A shiver of wonder, a feeling of being lost, crushes my spirit as I read these words---that we are individually placed and sanctioned: left to wither or root, blossom or fade as every flower that is planted. Careful making eased us into the ground---warm, compassionate hands left us within the earth and led us to where we are now. The hypocritical scoff at this---tell us it was no ultimate power but cold conception that breathed life upon meagerness, and a soul into the yet unread heartbeat. With the comfortable facts of pregnancy and birth, with the new methods of probing the unborn's mind and picking apart the little section of awaiting arrival; by scientific theory and method, the thought of Intelligence is weaned away, left to drift, lost and long gone, amongst the watered-down beauty of life. Many a man may explain away growth of the cell and the completed product, but what of the soul, the realization that dawns and the newness of a spirit that matures in a child? No fox pup, growing older, develops an idea of how to solve a complex crisis or rule over its fellow mammal. No rooster scratches together a rude crown of briers and exalts himself king in the hierarchy of the henhouse. Rather, the blood and throb of wisdom and journey, excitement and emotion, falls into the sterile confines of dull animal, a scientific no one. We are, certainly, a bunch of of test tube cells---indeed, we can be probed and killed, desecrated and defiled, forced from our clan of family as surely as our lower creature-kind; yet there remains conscience of mind: we may regret, or scorn and continue, and what animal has reason to love except for maternal or paternal reason?

Friday, November 20, 2009

Yesterdays and Todays

Yesterday was the bright green cloak,
Today is the copper veil,
Yesterday, cotton-colored smoke,
Today, the shivering pale.
Yesterday was the summer breeze
Today, the autumn wind,
Yesterday, the little bluebirds tease
Today, their farewells send.
Why is it Yesterday seems lost
In Today's creeping sheath?
The twigs, the trees, the breathing moss
Seem gone in season's wreath.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Train Hymn


Sweet train whistles
Blow in the frozen night
Crystal bits of filtered light
Shivering in the snowflakes
And the shimmering rains.
Sweet train whistles
As soft as the warm blankets
Chin-high on the hills
Autumn spinning rills
Of leaves across the mountain tops
And a buck, with risen head
Smelling the wind.
Sweet train whistles
As lonely as the season's change
As white as the sun
Notes of seeds,
Pods,
And brass-coated wheels
Breaking reels
Of twigs into the night.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Old Earth

When you and I are old, the earth
Will be that older still,
The leaf will be a withered piece
The frost will snap the rill,
The snow in sheets of crystal gray
Will mesmerize the eye
And everything, from brake to bray
Will be of silver dye.
The trees will be an aged head
Of hoary limbs and twigs,
The pasture and the meadow:
A humped and wrinkled wig,
The wind will move with slower gait
Then ever he'd before
And all the clouds in summer stay
A black and slated floor.
The birds will flutter through the air
With bent and powdered frill:
When you and I are old, the earth
Will be that older still.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

The World Was Still


The world was still--ah! Fragrant, still
A spice across the floating cloud
A horse, uprisen head against
The auger of the graceful hill,
And lips drawn back to catch the taste
Of fluttering pods and seeds
That like the stars, were scattered
In the field of blowing weeds;
And soon, the moon peeping behind
Summer curtains fresh-glittering in
The wind, that have grown red
Like maple's leaves
From Mama changing the laundry line.
Everything was different when
The world was still, and autumn's grin
Had pressed its savagery upon
The world.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Autumn Song


The cold is on the autumn post:
The ice is in the vale,
The silence, like a blanket's ghost
Upon the downy dale.
A bird of crystal light and sound
Sings through the rising dawn:
It rings across the broken ground
And blesses leaf and lawn.
The hymn takes note across the field,
The pasture and the lane
It echoes in the silver shield
Of sky, and crumpled grain,
The little breast heaves heaven's tune
Without assuming why
The angels gave its reverie room
To spread its wings, and fly.