|
POETRY
A Morning Ode
Awake!
Radiate joy in being born.
Glory in feeling
the breeze of a spring morn.
Let your body radiate
And gladness clothe
your heart
As you praise and contemplate
The priceless gift thou
art.
Lift your shining face to the morning sun.
Let your eyes break free
from sadness and gloom,
And thank God for the body that sprang
From your
mother’s womb.
With string instruments sing.
Fill the air with
songs of mirth.
Dance under the shadow of morning’s wing
For the
gifts God has given you from birth
Then all manner of people
Will eat the
manna
Of your awakening:
The weak will wax strong and glory in being
alive,
The lonely shed their gloom and sing songs of mirth,
And the sad
dry their tears and dance.
-- Br. Thomas More, CFX
Louisville, Ky.
Jonah’s Flight
Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish
from the
presence of the Lord…
--Jonah 1:3
Off he flees in the opposite
direction
of Nineveh, away from all those bacchic
Assyrians, who might
repent at God’s word,
away from my presence, away from his call.
I, Yahweh, hat in hand, hear “No,
I will not go to Nineveh to
preach
salvation from their ziggurats,
where incense is offered to
Ishtar.”
Stomping righteous feet, he bitches toward Joppa:
“Yet now Nineveh, totem to blood,
whose shame stands naked before your
face?
I, bring your nettled Word? Fat chance!
I pay my desperation
fare, leave
behind his Lordship, land, and temple court.
But his presence
violates the boundaries
of geography, pursues me on the
sea.”
Quit of Yahweh he would be in Tarshish?
I, who invented
chaos theory,
stretched out the heavens, shut in the upper waters,
laid
the deep foundations of the earth,
and he would cup me in his hand,
teach me wisdom,
put commands between my teeth, build borders
around my
mercies. Tell me, you who are wise,
why am I lumbered with this frazzling
prophet?
So I have the sailors suicide him
into the sea, swallowed
into stomach
of my servant whale, who finds the prickly ballast
brings on
indigestion. That speaks to me.
For three days and three nights
Jonah
was in the dyspeptic beast, rumbling among
the odds and ends of
last night’s supper,
then belched onto the port of his
departing.
-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB
Collegeville, Minn.
The Cleansing
The siren call of the ocean
Prances in with great
foaming white caps --
Like the ravaging roar of pranksters
Bound on
dancing to the shore.
Come in, come in they beckon.
Step out into the
deep and I will wash you clean
Of all your weariness, your disappointment,
your
hurts.
Trust me with your flimsy life
As it washes away into
the deep.
Dragging the fearful and timid straggler
Who is unable to
surrender to the great cleansing.
The shore’s power circles the mystery
of dying
and rising --
Life and death.
Awaken in us a surge of this
new life.
-- Sr. Patrice Geppi, SSND
Baltimore
Response
“Be alert!” says the Buddha.
“Stay
awake.” But here, it is dark.
The amphibian lids droop over
sleep,
and diamondbacks shift in Galapagos,
not knowing the
notebooks, still dreaming
of dreaming, while finches’ beaks
quiver:
The strategies of time roil in slow motion
until
“kingfishers catch” -- “dragonflies draw”
and
“shook foil” greets Hopkins on his knees,
scrutinizing fire and
finding it good.
-- Anne Heutte
Washington
No Way Home
(for the memory of Paul Wellstone)
There was
one light along
the road
And no stars
And the bridge is icy
And
the flowers have fallen
Emmaus is on the low road
south
And we still
look for the hitchhiker
-- Michael Welch
La Crosse, Wis.
Poems should be previously unpublished and limited to about 50
lines and preferably typed. Please send poems to NCR POETRY, 115 E.
Armour Blvd., Kansas City MO 64111-1203. Or via e-mail to
poetry@natcath.org or fax (816) 968-2280. Please include your street
address, city, state, zip and daytime telephone number. NCR offers a
small payment for poems we publish, so please include your Social Security
number.
National Catholic Reporter, November 29,
2002
|
|
