Next time I shall die

Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;

After that, soaring higher than angels-

What you cannot imagine

I shall be that.

                             ~ Rumi

I pray to the birds.
I pray to the birds because
I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward.
I pray to them because I believe in their existence,
the way their songs begin and end each day,
the invocations and benedictions of earth.
I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love
rather than what I fear.
And at the end of my prayers,
they teach me how to listen.

—Terry Tempest Williams

My lover is the silence of time,
   from whom is conceived enormity.
I am the raging of ashes.
You, who might have been he,
   are not here.

~ Lou P. Rogers

No temple god I
who open raw galaxies
to assault your eyes.

~ Lou P. Rogers

As for losing a love
I can only complain that lovers are
       intemperate givers
who will sack their       souls for a
       gift to make,
for example:
I delivered the power of judgement
       into the hands of another
then wept when I was judged unfit.
I shone the light of my seeing eyes
       onto the face of another
and the rest of the world went dark.
I gave to unknown feet the fullness
       of paths.
Now the feet have passed and no one
       walks here.
So I cry,     Who has done this thing
       to me?
When in fact
I hurt for the burden of beauty
       and awe
which I laid on the features
       of a stranger.

~ Lou P. Rogers

Spring Flowers in a Vase

The husband brings home a vase filled
with white daisies because he knows his wife
likes surprises, and there have been so few
lately. The vase is clear with internal
cracks that don't quite run through
the entire side. He had joked with the cashier
that he hoped it would hold water, which
it does as his wife fills it and places it
in the middle of the kitchen island.
 
The vase bereft of flower finds its way
to a bookcase in a guest bedroom,
where the wife sometimes gets away and
reads classics she meant to read when younger:
Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre. She notices
it is dusty so she takes it to the hall
bathroom and rinses it, wiping it with
the hand towel. She smiles remembering
her husband. It has been a year since
he passed away from a heart attack.
 
The woman's niece is boxing up belongings
for a yard sale, tells a neighbor that her
aunt is adjusting to assisted living:
no room for all this stuff. The vase
sells quickly to an artist who uses it
for a still-life filled with orange tulips,
then sits it on his table where it collects
dried brushes and rubber bands from the mail.
He one day empties it before driving west
to visit his mother, his hatchback full of gas
and packed with his annual stock of paintings.
 
His mother takes the vase and smiles widely.
She begins to transfer lilies and gardenias
from a cheap green vase to this new one,
stopping to discuss all the baking she has done:
sugar cookies in their respective tins for
the neighbors, peanut butter fudge just for
him, and a pecan pie resting next to the oven.
He shows her the painting of the tulips and
she carries it into the dining room.
She takes down a painting of sailboats
and asks her son to hang it right there.

~ Mickie Kennedy

Plea and Reply
(on the death of a pet)

O merciful and holy,
hear now and once forever
these myriad I witness daily:
feather broken on the road,
small pelt impaled,
claws locked in ice
or dim eye sinking,
or flutter and buzz,
or any who falls under a mountain.
All these need a saint.

O kind observer,
here you see us:
feather broken on the road,
small pelt impaled,
claws locked in ice,
or dim eye sinking,
or flutter and buzz,
or any who falls under a mountain.
Did you think we pass in ignorance?
Do you not know we are the fingers of the saint?


~ Lou Rogers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

~ Emily Dickinson

The Mysteries (a poem)

   After the plague-laden bug bit the king, his kingdom waned,
his towers crumbled, his treasures were ravaged, the princeling was torn in half, and the bug
didn't live long either. 

  A displaced scallop stands naked at the gate of Heaven, saying,
"The hand of John the Baptist took my house that I, the simple-minded,
built to live in."

And the mute Earth for aeons grinds its shining crystals no one finds.

~ Lou P. Rogers

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and (it) will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly-- to keep the channel open."

~ Martha Graham

Sonnet V

Aghast, I look upon the steaming plain
Where Love doth stride, a ruthless fire-footed thing
To blacken bone in wash of flaming wing:
There, be neither shelter nor shield from pain
Seared flowers wither in its burning mane.
I turn my streaming face away, and cling
To lesser thing and stop my ears lest hear it sing
Its ringing gimlet cry to blight the sane
And set us trembling at its seeming rage
Or, ripping chin to stern in bleeding rite
It eats the flinching heart and strews but jumbled cage
Of ribs to rattle in its wrenching flight
And so consumes the wailing babe and blinded sage,
Till naught be left but ash and wholly joyous light.

                               ~  Isabelle Rathbone Greene,  c. 1894

Sonnet I

For every lovely ordinary thing
My heart would do with thee apace each hour:
Because these cannot be, Beloved, no bower
Holds that bright true center, and spread of wing
O’er tossing hollows blown doth truer sing
Our tale than nested wren or nightingale's lure;
Let us embrace the harsh high cry, grieved pure
Call of sea bird bowed in wind, and wring
From aerie solitude a liquid silver link
So bright and darting strange that none may sunder
This heart from thine, though tumbling chasm brink
Should yawn between. Thus sleep quiet, wonder
Of the daily round, dear in fading ink,
Whilst Love doth run the racing salt-sewn thunder...

                              ~ Isabelle Rathbone Greene,  c. 1894

Sonnet II

Were my soul a land and sea, and thou begun
A wild climb ‘twixt the lichened stones to find
Midst tiny blossoms starred, bright fruits of mind
On thornèd tree, with much to seek and naught to shun:
Then deep thy reach, beyond the pale spines of sun
To salt anemone with fingered weed entwined,
And high, to arc of bird and leap of hind
The gentle shadow of thy hand would run.
But soft in human body snared and tied,
A single separate shade set ‘round with wrong,
I fold my beating heart within and, thus denied,
Shall be to thee but unexpected song
A dim and solitary stranger cried
Upon the road: I loved, I loved thee long.

Sonnet III

I shall not burden thee, nor bind, nor crush
Nor blunt thy spreading wing beneath soft loving blows:
Nor sew with threads however bright, nor close
The windows of thy swerving flight, sweet wild thrush;
I shall not encircle thee, and so eschew the lush,
The cumbered bough, the weighty scent of rose
The heavy cherry, bound with fluttered bows.
Rather, scrubbing clean my heart with new stiff-bristled brush,
Now in the frothing river stand, to wring
The need from Love amidst the scraping sand;
A strapping, sturdy laundress’ song I sing
And shake that free which can withstand
Thus pure translucent, clear and fair, and bring
My love for thee to rest near weightless in thy hand.

Sonnet IV

Thou sayest thou wast better in every way ‘before:’
In childhood’s flight the moon thou tossed, and tall
The tree of youth did stand before its seeming fall
To woes and fears and losses gone that tore
Green hopes and bruised the glossy fruits they bore.
Yet, coulds’t thou but see a sliver sheer of all
I see in thee, through vine and web and caul
Of years, we might stand before new opened door
And, as students of thy downturned face, disclose
That spreading lines, harsh and fair, have long outshone
The bright years flown and speak, Beloved, to those
Who see, a language deep and singing grown.
So keep thy years, with tangled thistle, thorn and rose,
Keep thy wounds, and let thy seeing heart be known.

~ Isabelle Rathbone Greene,  c. 1894