Conquering Chaos With a Sestina

 Yesterday, I was trying to read - Sunday afternoon reading Words of Delight by Leland Ryken. It's a great book, but my tumultuous thoughts couldn't settle down to calm receptivity after returning from the one social event of my week - going to church. Perhaps if I were less confined to home as a mother of littles, or less sensitive and shabby in health, church wouldn't seem like such a grand shaking up, but it is. 

 

Trying to read Ryken on artistry and organization in biblical poetry, all I could think was "I don't want to read about this right now - I need to actually do this - compose my own thoughts into poetry And I need to follow a close artistic structure, to contrast with and control the chaos of my own feelings. I'm going to write a sestina." 

 

 

So I looked up the rules for a sestina, grabbed a notebook and pencil and began. A child came into see me and brought me a requested eraser. Children did artwork at the dining table until I emerged a surprised hour and a half later (gazing proudly at my scribbled, crossed up, numbered lines) and made the hungry ones some popcorn, with a few tears dried on my cheeks. The poetry had done its work and I had spoken to my own heart what it needed to hear. Perhaps the Sunday morning lesson on the Pharisee and the tax collector and true religion came through a little in the circling lines.

 

 

Here is the typed-up version.

 

 

Sestina: Going to Church on the First Day of Spring

I go forth smiling, with my well-wrapped heart

Sweet sunshine flashes gold upon the breeze to meet me.

Today I shall be good, and I shall be a blessing -

Oh! blessed be those daffodils! that budding bush – be blessed!

Too long has been the winter and my loneliness!

We leave our drive, content to see the roadside trees go past.

How swift these roads, how soon the budding trees go past.

I muse upon arrival, friends, with well-wrapped heart.

The rolled-up miles accentuate and break my loneliness.

We tumble from the parking lot expecting faces glad to meet us

Oh blessed be old friends and new – I hope I may be blessed

As well, to be with them. And shall I be a blessing?

A conversation made, another greeted – I doubt I’ve been a blessing

Words fly so quickly, faces smile, turn onward and go past

Oh people who have listened to my tumbling words, be blessed!

I gather in the tatters of my once-wrapped heart

As other friends pass by and kindly meet me

Warm smiles, rare hugs – to melt the remnants of my loneliness.

A pause before the service makes me wistful for my loneliness

How can these hasty conversations be a blessing?
The service comes with sweet and weighty truths to meet me -

Hold every line, attend, lest needful words go past.

Present to God the ruins of your well-wrapped heart.

Oh that I might, despite absurdities and vice be blessed!

How shallow is my love today – shall I be blessed?
The God I praise felt closer to me in my loneliness

Than now, when others bear the crumbles of my unwrapped heart

Not gold, but clay – I wished to be a blessing.

Oh to have held the words that did go past

My tongue - and listened, loving, when they came to meet me.

My Lord, this is the place where you have pledged to meet me.

I come with tumbled mind and heart – oh to be blessed!

Despise me not for weakness or with grace go past

Me – needy, feeling now among my friends my loneliness.

If I have blessed or not – grant me at least this blessing -

Receive and mend the tatters of my unwrapped heart.

My friends - who smile, go past, or speak or come to meet me -

Receive my unwrapped heart, I wished you to be blessed

Despite taint of my loneliness, for you have been a blessing.

 

 

Prayer/Housewife

 In Malcolm Guite's Word in the Wilderness, he ends a series of poems following George Herbert's "Prayer" by suggesting that readers might be encouraged to write their own poem imaging prayer. Guite wrote "Prayer/Walk". This is my "Prayer/Housewife"

A whispered conversation in the dark;
remembering when it's easier to forget; 

the calm within a crowd of clatt'ring noise
(My children make requests - they do not whisper, or forget) 

a holding when I feel I'm letting go,
and letting go of things long held too dear; 

the bread found in the pantry at the front,
and at the back, the hoped-for, hidden chocolate; 

short walk to see the sun set by the pond,
regardless of the kitchen's dirty pans; 

hot shower after hours of grimy toil,
hastening to repose, tranquility snatched in bits,

need, want, and ought all bundled into one;
act of duty, spring of sudden joy.

 

Orange With a Stem

     "This one has a stem!"

    He held an orange

    from the grocery store bag,

    swaying, pendulous,

    on its slender bit of tree,

    come stowaway from California 

    on the fruit truck.

    "It's so thin! 

    How does it hold the orange?"

    As so often,

    a response,

    served out at my 

    inconvenience

    to feed a child's 

    insistent mind-hunger,

    answered hunger I'd forgotten

    was mine too -

    "When the orange was small

    the stem held it,

    every day the stem grew strong

    with the orange."

    I answered from the kitchen sink,

    rinsing knives free of soap,

    hands dripping,

    mind kindling,

    Have I grown strong?

    Children are heavy fruit.

 

    When the ripe days come,

    Will I be strong enough to let go? 

 

Virginie Demont-Breton - Mother and Child in an Orange Grove

To Saint Nicholas

I received an invitation to write this poem when Heidi White on The Daily Poem issued a challenge to compose a poem on Saint Nicholas. Having no resistance to such challenges, I took up pencil and composed. Here is my piece -

To Saint Nicholas

Your left hand did not know, good Nicholas,

What wealth your right hand gave.

Munificent extreme 

and humbly dark,

Your dexterous style of giving to the poor.

 

This marks a saint - to see a need,

Not as a glass in which to preen 

the plumes of charitable self,

But as a gap to pour 

the fullness of a loving heart, 

till it be filled and more.

You shunned the world's remembrance,

And so, like sportive children, we remember you.

While you, untouched by all the world can give

of praise or blame,

Receive with unveiled eyes 

and longing heart

Your Lord's "Well done."

- AFB, 12-21-21

The dowry for the three virgins (Gentile da Fabriano, c. 1425, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome)

To the Periodical Cicada - A Poem

We have been fascinated with the advent of the seventeen-year cicadas. Their presence is overwhelming and many consider them a nuisance, but I see their life cycle as a thing of wonder. This poem is an expression of that wonder.

Spellbound for sixteen years
But on the seventeenth -
Spell breaks.
Earth breaks.
Silence breaks.
Grub of the dust
Is clothed in wings
of flame, body of ebony, eyes of ruby -
a sudden dragon -
and it sings!
Poor things
old earth treaders scorn the sound
of long-pent revelry
from creatures of the underground.
Clamourous and clustering,
Dissonant, disruptive
Impertinent, invasive,
and incredible
What giddy joy of wings!
Whirr, tumble, dive,
electrify the air,
and stop to sing.
Soon all this rush of noise,
resonance of the short-lived glorified
each orange-veined glass of skyblown wing
Will drop into the quiet grass
and crumble to the patient earth
Until another birth

December Prayer

I have begun to note my annual propensity to write early winter poetry as a way of lamenting and comforting the loss of the fair seasons. My eyes almost ache at looking out the window on gray trees and browning grass, and so I must adorn the drear with words. December Prayer is my offering for 2020

We do not see Thee smiling on the land,
But hear the cries of swift departing birds,
Alone the sharp wind sweeps the plundered sky
Between the quaking arms of naked trees.

Far gone from us the sudden hot embrace
Of thunderstorms upon the panting earth,
Rain rushing warm and sweet into our dust
To drench with green each thirsty blade and leaf.
The winter skies despair, lie down, and weep
Long chilling tears into the withered grass.

The outskirts of Thy city in the clouds,
Piled golden eastward of the setting sun -
Those shining trumpet calls of summer's dusk
Have vanished with the dawning of the dark,
And westward glows the hasty yellow gleam
Of noon's surrender to the gaping night.

Yet though we do not see Thee, Thou art near -
Thy mercy is Thy name, Emmanuel.
Come unto us as tender cov'ring snow,
As cardinal flames alight the frozen trees,
As sunrise turns to gold the frosted ground,
Great Lover, give us glimpses of Thy grace.
Thy ways of love surpass what we can tell,
And winter is Thy home, Emmanuel.

 

 

Faith That Can Move Molehills

Imagine faith as small as a mustard seed. What does it look like when it moves mountains? Can it move molehills too? Yes, for while nothing is too great for God's power, nothing is too small for His care. He is abundantly gracious. When we make mountains out of molehills, and then almost despair, he is still there to strengthen puny faith.

It's late winter. I've been inside a lot with three children, and being fond of neatness and order, the grand propensity of small ones to destroy all things visible can drive me a little bit batty. That's not a real trial, right? I mean, on my dresser, I have the Smyrna ministries prayer guide, where I'm reminded to pray for families who are without home and job because of their faith, or who are left to mourn their brutally beheaded loved ones. There is heart-wrenching agony going on in God's worldwide family. So I feel that a bit petty becoming downcast over the fact that the kid's bathroom is being systematically broken to pieces, splattered with mud, and water-damaged, and my top-load washing machine seems unendingly filled with wet mess clean up towels. With the crowning event of the six year old crashing down on the toilet tank while standing on the seat to wipe up the toothpaste he just flung on the wall, and acquiring a knot on his head and splitting the tank from top to bottom - meaning that the kids will now have to share our relatively pristine master bathroom (Nooo!) until theirs can be repaired - I became just a little despondent. It wasn't just the mess, it was the money. Every family with kids usually has a back list of extras they'd like to have when they can save up. Shelling out the stash for a new toilet that you didn't really want is deflating. Still, I was making a mountain out of a molehill. It becomes easy to do when you're in a small house with small people most of the time. But God is not limited by that.

I sat down at the desk in a random quiet moment while the children were playing, and flipped open the Bible, like a hungry person hunting in the pantry between meals. The Parable of the Ten Virgins. "...Watch, therefore, for you know nether the day nor the hour" (Matt. 25:13) Here is reality in its final state. Here was truth beyond the broken toilet. I thought about the horror of being told to depart from Jesus, and the joy of entering with him into the marriage feast. Imagine Him coming at any moment, any second. The sky outside the window was the blank white-grey of cheerless winter. But at any moment the Son of God whom we have long loved unseen, could be breaking through those clouds like lightning and changing reality forever. The devastated bathroom, stained carpet and leaky budget wouldn't matter anymore. All that would matter is that we had loved the Christ of God and been faithful to Him. My heart was flooded with joy - a joy that I felt I could not have had if the fretful state of things had not made me previously disillusioned with life. Was the Holy Spirit really filling me with joy in the midst of trials - when my trials were so silly? I knew he would do this for persecuted Christians, for people really suffering great pain, but somehow that he would use the mere disruption of my daily comforts as a step in the journey to fellowship with him was a marvelous surprise. I did not deserve this. I am too petty. But His grace is not like that. We never deserve it.

I return to this. My faith can move mountains because it is a tiny link to the massive, powerful joy that I belong to the returning King. If we don't get the toilet fixed before He comes back, it's okay. Am I silly enough to need reminded of this? Yes. Is He gracious enough to come to me in the remembrance? He is.