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.