Within your eyes lived starry constellations
And depths as when the sparkling night sky clears,
But when you heard, they blurred with clouds’ creations,
And every light was lost in falling tears.
This short poem is about the impact of saying a single careless word or phrase. Essentially, it's a reminder to be careful with our words, and to realize that others may be affected by what we say - potentially, affected in ways that are different from what we might anticipate.
By the rivers of Babylon,
Where harps were hung upon the willows,
We sat and wept for Zion.
No melodies moved through water or wood,
For all was gone that once was good.
But the rivers of Babylon,
Their banks the bounds of where we stood
Like lambs before a lion,
Held mysteries, moonlight filling their flow
With dreams of Zion, new like snow.
By the rivers of Babylon,
The dawn found the bark of the willows bare.
The harps had gone, but melodies filled the air.
Earlier this week, I was finishing a read-through of the Psalms, and Psalm 137 stood out to me, because it began quite differently from most of the other psalms around it. Its first two verses were quite evocative, and they inspired me to start writing this poem. As I worked on it, though, I slowly realized that the poem also had parallels to the Easter story - items hanging on a tree, accompanied by despair, but with the promise of something new slowly forming as the items disappear from where they were hanging. I hadn't intended for the poem to become something related to Easter, but it happened anyway, perhaps by some mixture of subconscious thought and a little stroke of providence.
Psalm 137:1-2 (King James Version): "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof."
My brain is racing,
Swirling like a hurricane at sea,
And ships that sail upon the waves
Are battered by the winds that buffet me.
But hidden in the chaos
Cascading round the bounds I thought I knew,
A calming breeze is blowing, tracing
Space that fills the eye, deep breaths of you.
Things have been pretty hectic recently. I've been traveling a lot for work, and even without that, we've been very busy. It sometimes feels like all these different tasks and responsibilities swirl around like a whirlwind. The trick - which is difficult to achieve, of course - seems to be to find some peace within oneself, and to use that to keep everything in perspective.
When the daylight starts its fading,
And the partly cloudy sky, from blue to gray
Is changing and anticipating
The ending of the time in which we stay,
Through the air a ball is flying,
Spinning white with blurring threads of red
Like pinkish wisps of cloud defying
Darkness where the night begins to spread.
Two figures stand apart but not alone,
Connected by the ball between them passing.
Remembered disagreements both have known
Dissolve in evening’s summer air amassing.
Such moments missed throughout the years are fleeting
Save when fields of dreams enchant a meeting.
I watched the movie Field of Dreams recently, and the very last scene always gets to me, with the father and son playing catch. There's such a buildup throughout the movie, with the son talking about remembered grievances and missed opportunities with his father. It all fades away in that final, simple act, when they get to meet again, and he says, "Hey, Dad, you want to have a catch?" I started writing this poem the same evening.
Some pebbles have two faces
With one side rough and ragged,
The other smoothed with every jagged
Edge worn down by fortune’s paces
Over time.
But still they climb
The tides as one
With two perspectives always spun
On everything the world brings,
Whether coal or diamond rings.
The two see different sides of spaces.
One looks above, the other under,
Yet both still see some wonder,
If only gleaned in traces.
This is my last post about the new book. Its fourth and final section is called Where They Cross. "They" refers back to life and loss, the focal areas of the first two sections, and the theme of this final section concerns how wonder can be found in both our happy and our heartbreaking experiences. I think this poem, which appears early in the section, may be the one that makes this point most directly.
Each pebble cast upon the endless shore
Is etched with traces of the ancient tides.
Beneath its tiny surface shell is more
Than what is shown.
Each stone a deeper story hides.
Last week, I shared something about the second section of my new book. The third of the four sections is called And Pebbles on the Shoreline. This section is less about a specific theme, and more about trying to convey an idea as concisely as possible. So, all of the poems in this section are quite short. The poem above is the first one in the section, and it introduces what I think is an essential idea for all the poems that follow - each one suggests a deeper (and longer) story hidden beneath the surface.
There is an island
Forever just beyond horizon’s ledge
Where all that’s violent
Surrenders to the peace at water’s edge,
And when you pass away
You’ll walk the bridge that leads you to its shores
Though no one here can say
What dreams and futures wait within its stores,
But when I listen to the sparkling sea,
Sweet symphonies of you will come to me.
Last week, I shared something on the first section of my new book. The second section is called And Loss. It concentrates on multiple forms of loss, focusing most on transitions from life to death but also considering other types of loss such as environmental destruction and degradation. This poem imagines that transition from life to death as a journey across the sea, to an island where all is peaceful, and where memories drift back to those still living.
