A Midsummer's Night

Oh the moon is in love with the sun and his rays,
Reflecting the beauty and passage of days,
Returning the light to the dark, torrid land,
And plying the wheat with a silver-toned hand.
The partridge lies, soft-chested, warm, in the brush
And the world is asleep with the bed of the thrush;
The only brief movement, a dot on the meadow:
A doe and her fawn part of silence and shadow.
The scent of the hay from a broken-down barn
Sweeps, hushed in the wind, through the forests forlorn,
And the stars cast a sheen on the brook's sandy bay
While the golden-etched herons play water ballet.
The fiddles of insects are lost in the breeze,
The imprint of wolves press the ground to a frieze,
And the moon, like a novel, seems bound with the word
Of the almighty sun and its shimmering cord.

Love of the Earth

My heart is in the meadowlands,
My heart is in the sea,
My heart is in the blowing wind,
My heart is in the wheat.
Like branches borne with thickest fruit,
Or skies split raw with rain,
So is my heart the bough, the root,
The fuel and the flame.
My heart is in the meadowlands,
My heart is in the sea,
And now my heart is in the sands,
On the banks of the Seine and Spree.
Yes, my heart is the world,
And my heart is the sun,
And my heart is the stretching sky,
And when I am old and my life is done,
My heart is in heaven's eye.

Immortality

Immortality: here I lie
Seeking the purity of your tranquil eye,
Drowned in the tendrils of your kiss,
Wistfully pardoned by beauty and bliss.
The fair, emerald hills with their crescents on fire
With summer white wind and stolen desire,
And the memory of God when he came in creation,
Leaving the gnarls of land to the nation.
If I, merely human, found heaven on earth,
I would pass by the pleasures of happiness' hearth,
And wander forever on immortal plains,
Brushed by the amethyst lights of the rains.

I Am

I have a friend on the wide, wide bree
His song is the song that is part of me,
A little wren with a throat of gold
And tales that the trees themselves have told.
I have a friend on the vast, vast sea
His life is the life only known to me,
A broad, blue wave with bright hands of blue
And secrets of foam that the seashell knew.
I have a friend in the soft, soft trees
His words are the words that devolve to me
A sweet, warm beam of the purest sun,
A place and a presence where dark does run.
The leaves still fall softly, but nobody knows
I am part of the summer and part of the snows
A portion of birds and a sliver of sea,
And a whisper of wind passing over the bree.

Listless Season

I retired in the morning,
It was half a day too soon
And the larks called out a warning
By the soft, enshrouded moon.
On the terrace in the garden
I was yet inclined to be
Half a human, half a creature
Of the sweet and silent sea.
In the mist that broke the twilight
Leaves danced out across the lawn,
Amber-chested, golden-threaded,
Smattered with the strokes of dawn.
In the august of the morning,
Should I seek a distant shore,
Frost, like diamonds, are adorning
Every slick and seaward door.
Season, with your signs of coming,
Leave me now a shard of warmth,
And perhaps, when you are older
You will know my listless heart.

Singing Lark

Merry, merry life,
Little singing lark,
Filling spring with life,
"Listen! Whisper! Hark!"
Whisper of the summer,
Budding in the green,
And the hope of winter,
With her crystal sheen.
Autumn, summer, winter,
Life within the spring
Seasons---"Hear the seasons!"
Sung within the green.

Nature's Comfort; Love's Deceit

My heart was loosed in silence,
My hands were bound by time,
The fetters of my ignorance
Seemed stagnant, yet sublime;
I caught them in my breathing
I etched them in the air
And somehow, in the silence
I saw my lovers there.
My innocence became my shame,
They knew my foolish mind,
But I, a creature of the earth
Was part of nature's kind,
A creature one with sky and sod,
Not used to lover's games,
A creature in the hand of God
With only brooks to blame.
Perhaps the wind deceived my heart
With whispers no one knew,
Perhaps it granted freedom's gains,
And dared to speak the truth,
Perhaps the only constant life
Was bright lights on the sea---
But I, made foolish by the world,
Should wise and broken be.

At the End of the Age

Tomorrow, all wonders and glories
Will fade with the dawn of the time;
Today, let us cherish the stories
Of sweetness and sacred sublime.
Consider the roe in the silence,
Consider the cod in the stream...
Perhaps, in the lovely dense twilight
We'll catch in our spirits a dream.

Dreams

My wandering heart kept beating,
I thought I heard the sound
Of places in that choir's note
Which waken and astound.
An isle in the distance,
A shimmering stone in mist,
And brush, and bales of flowers
Lined up on heaven's wrist.
An angel may have warned me
Of things I should not know,
But yearning, yielding, searching,
I breathe scents cherubs blow,
And in the bright tomorrow,
With pictures wet with paint,
I bend, and break, and borrow,
The dreams that heaven sent.

Symbol of Spring's End

A springtime bluebird spoke to me
The other day, the other day:
His coat was flecked with snowflakes cold,
In every way, the other day---
And in his eye was summer's light,
And constellations in the night,
And in his heaving breast he bore
A star born many days before.
The other day, the other day,
He trilled a Purist's song to me,
But on his crooked wing the flakes
Had glued themselves like torrid leaves---
The waves, the sails he'd seen on seas,
And all the forests' golden trees,
They sparkled in his fervid song,
And in his sweetened note belonged.
I left him there upon the bank,
Spring's last hymnal in the heather,
The other day, the other day
Perhaps he's faded to a feather.

Frozen Sea

Blue sea, blue sea, speak to the image of long-gone spring,
Hear all the memories of God's goodbyes
In the coming of winter that hearkens a sigh.
Heave just a little, and life goes away,
Lift both your hands to the saltwater spray,
Clutching its goodness, its paleness, its pain
Feeling the scorn of December's chilled rain.
Here comes the future, with banks ripe with snow,
The thick, floating chunks of the ice that you tow,
And the sense that the summer has left you in shame,
With only your blue baltic beauty to blame.

Sycamore Tree

I think of my love in the robes of September,
A thing lost in beauty, a place I remember,
My love, oh my love, was the sycamore tree
That bent in the swaying blue lights of the sea.
There, tangled with tumult, impassioned by prayer,
I sat on a stone with the wind in my hair
As it whispered sweet nothings of summers long gone
In the prestige of night and the promise of dawn.
The winter blows bleakly, but nobody sees
The tears that I shed for my sycamore tree
The leaves that I held in the palm of my hand
And the song of the sea in the frost of the land.

The Promise of A New Age

The pen has run as dry as dust,
The ink is pale and gray,
The wealthy man, the upper crust
Seem wan, and walk away.
A silent clock clicks on and on
The dusk has passed to light;
An age has turned in to the dawn
And banished failing night.

Sleep, Songsters

Goodnight, fair weather flyers,
Gentle-hearted friends of earth and sky,
Sparrow, housewren, bluebird,
Let your hymnals die.
Wing your last tomorrow,
Winter is arriving---
Goodnight, vale and fallow,
Goodnight, cease your striving.
In the folds of moonbeams
And the floods of sleeping,
Lay away, you songsters,
Hear the starlight weeping.
Put your wings in shadow,
Sun will wait for morning,
Dream of life's tomorrow,
In the night's adorning.

Doxology

The world is growing dim with age,
But You are growing fair,
A blossom breaking through the page
Of stories in the air,
A Man, a Spirit, and a God,
Creator, Father, King,
As ancient as the oldest sod,
And Lord of everything.

Amen.

Presence of Divinity

There is a marine silence in all that I do,
A waiting, a watching, a stillness of thought,
A presence, unmitigated by them or by you
By what the earth gave, or what time forgot.
It lies in my spirit, it rests in my chest
It flutters, unheard of, in thick vales of stars
It seems to be speaking in low caves of rest
And floats on the crest, like a balancing card.
Its cord is the swordfish, a fierce black and blue,
Its softness the velveteen wing of a bee,
Its entity lies in the wake of what's new
And sleeps in the buds of a shimmering tree.
I own it, I keep it, its presence is mine,
I clutch it with hands etched in heresy's mud,
A sinful equation in light of Divine,
Its snowdrop the sparkle in feral and flood.

Lost Stars

Where have you been, fair weather, bright stars?
With your pale, crystal thrones like a hundred gold czars?
Where have you been? On the mount? In the reef?
Why do you fill every valley with grief?
Mourning and moaning, and weeping for you,
Holding their hands toward the veritas blue,
There, perhaps there, they can seek for your truth...
There, like a courtier, aplomb and aloof.
Where have you gone in the vast, still unknown?
Where have you built up your palisade home?
Sweet, errant birds seem to pause in the dark
Searching for you, dear fair weather, bright star.

The Month Before Autumn

Summer was here many days before,
A silent stranger at the willow's front door,
A creature with eyes full of skies, thick with rain
An island of heat in a field raw with grain.
Thoughtless with desire, dry with wind
Wandering, faithless, in the glance of a friend
Footsteps in dust, memory's shame
Memory of memory in summer's flame.

A Contributing Blogger

Thanks to Rachel Devin at her blogspot: www.racheldevin.blogspot.com for her poem contribution. She also included one of my own poems recently on her blog. Check it out, and enjoy the poem below by Rachel.

AT THE FUNERAL OF MRS. SCHIMP.
February 15, 2011.

I strolled a pace up the country lane,
Till to the graveyard plot I came;
There I found a hushed assembly,
Gathered to honour the burial of the body
Of her whose spirit had fled
To the arms of Heaven and the eternal Godhead.
There was the box in which she lay,
There those that mourned her going away
Yet rejoiced with her that she had found
Such peace as they on earth cannot know.
The trees in the yard moved like breaths i' the wind;
The plain folks' skirts made the only din;
The warmth of the sun made the winter's day
Seem like summer had come, and was here to stay.
And the high hill, that stood over the yard
And the valley, stood like a sentinel to guard
The people whose vulnerable hearts were torn
Betwixt songs and tears--which with her grave to adorn?
My mind fell upon the pine box once again:
Verily, I thought, did she lie therein,
With her hands perhaps folded upon her breast,
And her eyelids sealed in everlasting rest.
Never before, Death had I encountered,
Yet I quailed not, neither feared, neither faltered.
It seemed to me sweet, it seemed to me real,
It seemed to me to make life more simple,
And to make life more precious and brief.
And although I was touched by a feeling of grief,
Yet my soul was uplifted by a newfound belief
That to die as she had I would as lief--
Nay, rather--than to live without thought of dying,
An existence somehow false, somehow putrefying.
The service then began, and there were prayers
And there were songs full of promise borne on the air;
And the widower spoke of his wife's constant faith
In her Lord, Yeshua, who her soul did save,
And to whom she had gone but yesterday.
And the widower smiled, even as he did say,
That in her final hours her hands she'd held raised
Aloft to her Creator, in wholehearted praise.
Then the casket in the waiting ground was laid,
And the children and husband tossed into the grave
Each a pink rose that was their farewell
To the body of her whom they loved oh! so well.
Songs were bidden sung, one Amazing Grace,
As the men began to shovel earth into her grave.
It was then that I nigh sickened, my heart nigh gave way;
Then it was that for the sorrowing I most earnestly did pray.
One man came forth in order to shovel,
A man whose frame was taxed by the same ill
That had taken the mortal life of the woman in the grave.
For but a moment he worked, and then must relinquish the spade.
And throughout all, the woman at my elbow
Was praying without ceasing, her voice teary and low.
'T was a sight to soften a stony heart, indeed.
Oh! Would that everyone could witness such a scene!
For it makes such order of the rest of reality
That afterward one could not confuse priorities.
When the service had done,
And mulling about was everyone,
For a spell I stood alone,
Pondering all that had gone on.
I realised that this was the life I had been looking for
For quite some time, that which holds so much more
Than the fragile life I had been once accustomed to:
That of existing to be entertained, in lieu
Of the laws of Survival and Death and Love.
My heart sought Him who rides on the heavens above,
And He told me, "Yes, child, this is truth."
I have embraced Survival; that day I embraced Death;
And doing so made seem all the greater, the greatest of these: that is Love.

*More writings by Rachel, including some excellent book reviews, are available today for reading at her blog: www.racheldevin.blogspot.com!*

The 100th Post

A hundred years the world may turn,

A hundred years exist,
But God alone will amply burn
Through time's ephemeral mists.
The mountains may dissolve to dust,
The seas resolve to snow,
But God remains in rock and rust,
And storms' recurring blows.
The gull may breathe his final breath,
The buck end all his days,
But God lives on, in life or death,
And shows his blessed ways.

To all of my readers:

Thank you for the opportunity to explore the world of poetry through How Faint the Whisper---100 posts later, I'm so grateful for the chance to share with you a tidbit of the journey I have had with God and His wonderful creation. I will definitely be continuing!

Blessings,

August

Shameful Heat

Feathers drift through summer skies,
Amber sidewalks, comfrey's dyes,
Splash the corners of the wall
In the shadow's cooling call.
Panting streams and fluttering trees,
Lazy toads and drifting bees
Seem like static in the space
Of a June's anemic trace.
Bending head and trembling foot
Thirsty leaves and famished root,
Straining eyes to see ahead
In soft twilight's algid bed.
Parted lips taste bits of rain
Left by spring's unhindered fame,
One slow drop before the flame
Brings its sunlight and its shame.

The Door of Time and Vines

I will say goodbye; goodbye to all I once knew,
To the frost, to the sea, to the dew,
To the sequential path amongst the willow roots,
To the person I once was, the things I used to do.
In the loose leaf of this unusual place,
In the ending I have begun to chase,
I will find a someone I never could before,
The sky past the bars of this entangled door.
I will tear past the vines that bar me in,
Past goodness, frankness, even sin:
And perhaps, when I have dug beneath the dirt,
I will find a separate time, and a different earth.

Summer Breeze

The summer breeze, the summer breeze;
Oh how I love the summer breeze:
A gentle smile, a quiet song,
A brook which brings my heart along.
The thrill of light, the flow of trees
I long to taste the summer breeze
Like ice cream in the brassy heat,
Or popsicles that children eat.
I toss the leaves across the clouds,
They join the silver twilight's shrouds,
Before the moon begins to rise,
I catch the summer breeze's dyes.