I was looking at my watch
while you were facing the altar,
craning your neck to catch
a glimpse past the bobbing heads
of the crowd, this one-day crowd
vying for a view,
while beside me a baby gurgled
and pointed as he bounced
on his mother’s shoulder.
I looked up and for a moment
through a gap between the bodies,
everything cleared,
and we were looking at the same thing,
you and I,
at the gifts carefully laid at the foot
of the marble manger
on which his body lay.

–December 25, 2008
Festival Eucharist, Washington National Cathedral

I came here to escape this.
But it’s been cloudy all week
and today the drizzle doesn’t fall,
but settles on my skin, gently,
seeming to materialize from the gray air
before it seeps into the earth,
greening the buds
and quenching this desert land’s thirst.

For this week’s Friday review, I’m going to try something different, and present an original poem. I had the idea for this one at Christmas (obviously), but never got around to writing it then, and I didn’t have time to write anything longer today. I don’t really write poetry very often, so this is a special treat. Enjoy (or critique).

The Annunciation

No, she was not unfaithful,
but she was surprised. No man
told her it would be like this.
He looked like one, though,
and you wonder if she thought
he was speaking in euphemisms:
the stuff about shadows and spirit
being the latest line. Who knows
how many doubts she conceived
before she said yes?
But the yes is what counts. A yes,
and a let it be,
and you throw your arms open to the wind,
who catches your fears, sweeps them away,
leaving only a song in the air.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
–Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike

Today was both my mother’s and father’s birthdays. I decided to do something different this year and wrote a poem for each of them. They’re not bad, I suppose–might as well include it as part of my writing collection online.

To My Father on His Birthday

You told me once when I failed–
when I was young and a fool for perfection–
that there was no disgrace in honest wrongs.
I need not hide under the blanket
and not fear the paper’s damning mark.
Your voice was steady, calm like the stillness
of the sea after a passing storm.

And you stood quietly and applauded
after the band finished blasting their beats
across the arena and the hall,
even though you didn’t know the words or the melodies
unless I had played it from a tape or changed the station
from whatever you were listening to before.

Maybe I tried your patience then. Sometimes it was too loud
and you told me to turn it down,
but you said nothing else, even admitting sometimes
you liked some of it.

And you picked me up faithfully
from school and from work, even now.
We would sit silently beside each other while NPR drones,
maybe talking about the news
or the latest world outrages
while the traffic lights turned from red to green
and our car inched along the road back home.

There are too many snapshots
scattered in our photos and memories
to capture here. They are snippets,
parts of our hearts frozen by time,
and yet not dead. These years are not too long
to keep on making more living memories together
with the sight, taste, touch, sound and smell
of love. Yes, Father,
let it be so. Amen.

To My Mother on Her Birthday

To see you smiling when you come in the door,
your eyes tinted by the shade of your sunglasses
is to know that this house will be filled
not with silence, but with busy footsteps,
the clanking pans in the kitchen,
and the sound of a familiar voice
talking about the love of Christ, for us and for all
who in the Church need prayer
and for the gospel-bearers that you serve.
It becomes a home where I am safe
to sigh about the trouble at the office
or to chatter about the last theological volume
sitting on the basement bookshelf
as we sit across from each other at dinner.
You say you are proud of me,
and I know that because you bore me
and yet bear with me,
worry when I leave too long,
smile when I smile and succeed.
Let’s stay together a while longer,
while the Lord lets us,
let’s be filled with love for life
in this one and the next.

I need to study for a midterm on Friday. So I won’t write a regular entry.

However, in light of the recent events, I have written a poem. Enjoy, and interpret it as you will. I intend no direct political statement, but offer only an interpretation of history and the future.

The Ides passed four days before.
But calendars are like floating compasses,
magnets trembling on time’s turbulent surface,
pointing to the future, wavering in the current of time.
The future obeys no timetables made by man,
though the circled date and the numbered designations
are close enough approximations,
and in the billion-year-aeons of this cosmos’s iteration,
four days is an acceptable margin of error
for beings less precise than the heavenly Clockmaker,
who alone knows where the quantum particles rest
at any given moment, unlike we
who must dart in space and never stand still.

What are deadlines, then, but also estimates,
bobbing buoys marking the boundary,
shifted back and forth by the waves?
A nineteenth may be as good as a fifteenth.
They look alike from history’s wide-angled lens.

On the fifteenth of March, Caesar knew firsthand
the treacherous effects of his conquests
as Brutus’s arm with the knife
was raised in salute to his beloved Republic.
Senatus Populus Que Romanus was more than a slogan for him,
because he thought he saw in Caesar’s sword
the gleam of glory, the shine of power,
the glitter of gold, tribute from the Gauls,
perhaps the Saxons. Perhaps he knew
that, one day, they would have their turn
on Caesar’s new-founded throne.
But when empires begin,
one is swept up by the passing parades,
the way armored troops march in lockstep
like ticking-tock clocks. So for a thousand years,
Rome counted time by regular conquering feet, time-steppings
in the absence of mechanical clocks.
Julius was but in the middle of his march when he fell.

And now

The Angel of Death
screams from the heavens and sidewinds the air.
He is pointing down with his phallic finger
and with trumpet he will declare,
“Fallen, fallen
is Babylon the Great
Her fate was sealed
four days late.”
For the Angel does know
the difference a day can make.
It means whichever man falls today
is not quite Caesar, but only a fake.

Wheels spin on axles
Rolling until they rust,
Turning over and over, like a sleepless man
Tantalized by the thought of death.

And if seasons are like wheels
Toiling through revolutionary axes,
Then must change retread the same path
Through the same cycles as before?

The more things change
The more they stay the same
N’est-ce pas?

My lips part for you. They are dry,
a chapped red sea of breaking skin
opening to whisper words
first heard in the heart.
Chanted confessions
declare, my love, that your body
is sufficient for me, our mingled blood
shall conceive anew the creation
for out of nothing love is born,
for out of two comes one.

When I lie down, you lie beside.
When I cling, your finger’s vines
wrap slowly round my soul.
Your shadow hangs over me as you stare down
and I avert my gaze; the fire too bright
from your eyes burning burning burning
but as I drink and partake
staring at darkness all around
your breath tickles, and floating
on heavenly air, it says
“I am with you always
now
and until the end of the world.”

Movement I: Awakening

Glorious adventure of the day, fades sleepily away,
Hollow sky breathes blackened night, darkness’ in its might
Triumphs on the sun’s bright light,
Destroys the last beam of life.
But in the midst of the miracle, in the valley of shadow and light
The sleepers awaken to their yawning existence, aware of the night
And as the haunters arise to heed the call of the darkness’ tide
The fear of the day seems so far away, time is on their side.

And alone on the wave of night they ride . . .

Movement II: Darkness in Bloom

The new moon rises into the twilight world
Darkened visages show nothing revealed, nothing hidden
In the depth of day’s finality
Where a silent pause stops reality.

And in the valley, the quiet valley,
The sleepers rise tonight . . .

Floating all alone, in their endless passage of flight
The spirits soar into the velvet blanket of night,
Yonder lies the village, to where darkness is in bloom
The season of shadows approaches, quietly, terribly too soon.
And the sleepers – they laugh their haunting madness away,
Kindred spirits gather relative consciousness, sighing the day
Away, to spur the lightening to their side,
Away, to kindle the stars hanging in the sky,
Away, to prance and play
Before the dawn assassin takes them away.

Now is the time to sleep . . . rest . . .
Dream long, dream life phantasm,
Spin the web . . .

Movement III: The Web of Dreams

Forgotten memories spill like wine overhead
As a sleeper invades a hapless dreamer’s bed
Spinning spider webs for the sake of remembrance
Linking the shreds of the past reconnaissance

(“I see the sun rising on the awakening day,
Dawn mist glowing in the midst of the night haze,
And the river . . . flowing deep, flowing wide,
The water rushes over me like the highest tide,
And a songbird rises to sing her song –
‘In the valley of light I belong’ . . .”)

The dreamer and the sleeper in communion
Entwined with the mind and soul’s union
The gathering of thoughts and the display
Of nightly experience, always there to stay.
The caress of the unreal and comfort of fantasy
Makes the dreamer sigh in wistful ecstasy,
Unheard and yet alive, the sleeper proceeds
Still spinning the web of the dreamer’s dreams.
Until the threat of eastern day will rise again,
The sleeper will remain, to weave to no end
The web of dreams.

Movement IV: Dawn

The ruler of the day makes no pretense to hide
From its rightful heavenly throne in the sky
And when the earth has been freed from the claws of night
Once again the dawn will herald the coming of new light.

The sleepers begin the flee the rising star
The morning light will banish them far
From the lives and hopes of the dreamers
Now awakening from the webs of the sleepers,
Back to their valley, hidden from the eyes
Of any unsuspecting wanderer’s curious eyes.
Waiting in silence, in their expectant slumber
For another day to pass, for the sun sink under
The horizon, behind the mountain’s peak
But until then, the sleepers will . . . sleep.

Floodgates are unlocked, and the hand of heaven removed
as keys rattle and the combination clicks. Then
new transfigurations and mysteries rain
a deluge upon waiting, dry faces. I had my raincoat on
and my umbrella, buttoned up and folded in its proper places.
(I had been warned about it before.)
Now bright water floods the streets,
and people are drowning. They laugh and cry their last joys
before surrendering. And I think,
“So bright and so dark, these lights of Heaven
Pouring down like blessing and judgment.” All the lamps
had flickered out, but the sky is brighter than day;
they stagger in dazzled blindness, hands outstretched
and waiting for salvation, while I huddle within relative darkness,
breathing in wet air and breathing out dry fog.