77 Spirituality poems

No coward soul is mine No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere I see Heaven's glories shine And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear O God within my breast Almighty ever-present Deity Life, that in me hast rest, As I Undying Life, have power in Thee Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts, unutterably vain, Worthless as withered weeds Or idlest froth amid the boundless main To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by thy infinity, So surely anchored on The steadfast rock of Immortality. With wide-embracing love Thy spirit animates eternal years Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears Though earth and moon were gone And suns and universes ceased to be And Thou wert left alone Every Existence would exist in thee There is not room for Death Nor atom that his might could render void Since thou art Being and Breath And what thou art may never be destroyed.

the blood-smear across the knuckles: painless, inexplicable. once you discover it pain will begin, in miniature. never will you learn what caused it. you forget it. the telephone answered on the twelfth ring: silence without breath, cunning, stark. and then he hangs up. and you stand there, alone. then you forget. and your father's inexplicable visit: two days' notice, a ten-hour reckless drive. rains, 80 mph winds, bad luck all the way, traffic backed up, a broken windshield wiper, and no stopping him. clumsy handshakes. How are—? You seem—! How good to —! How long will—? he must leave in the morning, must get back. a gas station two blocks away repairs the wiper. did he sense death, and so he raced to us? did he already guess at his death behind those nervous fond smiles, the tumult of memories he had to bear? nothing we know can explain his visit, or the new, strange way he moved among us— touching us, squeezing our arms, smiling. the visit was an excuse. the words that surrounded our touching were an excuse. inexplicable, that the language we invent may be a means to get us closer, to allow us to touch one another, and then to back away.

Oh could I raise the darken’d veil, Which hides my future life from me, Could unborn ages slowly sail, Before my view—and could I see My every action painted there, To cast one look I would not dare. There poverty and grief might stand, And dark Despair’s corroding hand, Would make me seek the lonely tomb To slumber in its endless gloom. Then let me never cast a look, Within Fate’s fix’d mysterious book.

Even if you love the racket of ascension, you must know how the power leaves you. And at this pitch who has time for meditation? the sea walled in by buildings. I do miss the quiet, don't you? When I said, "Fuck the deer antlered and hithered in fur," it was because I had seen the faces of presidents balled into a fist. If I were in charge, I would know how to fix the world: free health care or free physicals, at least, and an abiding love for the abstract. When I said, "All of history is saved for us," it was because I scorned the emancipated sky. Does the anthem choke you up? When I asked God if anyone born to slaves would die a slave, He said: "Sure as a rock descending a hillside." That's why I'm not a Christian.

for Desiray Kierra Chee In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for those who would climb through the hole in the sky. My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens. For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet. The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit. In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it. Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace. Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our children while we sleep. Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born there of nuclear anger. Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to disappear. We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to them by their personal names. Once we knew everything in this lush promise. What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav- ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood. An imperfect map will have to do, little one. The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s small death as he longs to know himself in another. There is no exit. The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a spiral on the road of knowledge. You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way. They have never left us; we abandoned them for science. And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry. You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song she is singing. Fresh courage glimmers from planets. And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns. When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us. You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder. A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the destruction. Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our tribal grounds. We were never perfect. Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was once a star and made the same mistakes as humans. We might make them again, she said. Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end. You must make your own map.

What I envy in the open eyes of the dead deer hanging down from the rafters, its eyes still wet and glassy, but locked now into a vision of another life, is the way it seems to be staring at the moment when it died. The blue light falling through the window into this smoke-filled room is the same color as the mist coming down off the mountain that morning: the deer sees men with guns but also sees, beyond them, the endless mountains.

the templar halls of museums, for example, or the chambers of churches, and admire no more than the beauty there, or remember the graveness of stone, or whatever. You don’t have to do any better. You don’t have to understand the liturgy or know history to feel holy in a gallery or presbytery. It is enough to have come just so far. You need not be opened any more than does a door, standing ajar.

That sound Arvo Pärt does with one piano note stars split, fade, wander in cosmic expansion— First responder’s genesis and torch of metadatacrunch tumbling in a burnt and weedy churchyard equal parts Lethe and lithe— Grass, is it hollow, hallow to wake no longer among mortals? The woman her dress flowered from a blown ceiling silver-rosed— Flat plasm’s archangel coming clear out of sheetrock and screen shield and spear in hand let us do all the cooking if she will lead the pack, remember the route, read the waters— After the great fire we tread river’s late cream and flare. We woke in a city. Where who slew us into portions on a block out of earth gathered our limbs and we were allowed to continue unhunted. If “if” is the one word one is given with God to explain how one survived. Oh.  Ah.  Siren, white cockatoo meets deep blue. Fog.  Pour ammonia on coyote scat.

Go your seeking, soul. Mine the proven path of time’s foretelling. Yours accordance with some mysteried whole. I am but your passion-haunted dwelling. Bring what news you can, Stranger, loved of body’s humbled heart. Say one whispered word to mortal man From that peace whereof he claims you part. Hither-hence, my guest, Blood and bone befriend, where you abide Till withdrawn to share some timeless quest. I am but the brain that dreamed and died.

How confident I am it is there. Don’t I bring it, As if it were enclosed in a fine leather case, To particular places solely for its own sake? Haven’t I set it down before the variegated canyon And the undeviating bald salt dome? Don’t I feed it on ivory calcium and ruffled Shell bellies, shore boulders, on the sight Of the petrel motionless over the sea, its splayed Feet hanging? Don’t I make sure it apprehends The invisibly fine spray more than once? I have seen that it takes in every detail I can manage concerning the garden wall and its borders. I have listed for it the comings and goings Of one hundred species of insects explicitly described. I have named the chartreuse stripe And the fimbriated antenna, the bulbed thorax And the multiple eye. I have sketched The brilliant wings of the trumpet vine and invented New vocabularies describing the interchanges between rocks And their crevices, between the holly lip And its concept of itself. And if not for its sake, why would I go Out into the night alone and stare deliberately Straight up into 15 billion years ago and more? I have cherished it. I have named it. By my own solicitations I have proof of its presence.