Tag: fiction

Call Nothing Common

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Begin the song exactly where you are,
Remain within the world of which you’re made.
Call nothing common in the earth or air,
Accept it all and let it be for good.

Start with the very breath you breathe in now,
This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood
And listen to it, ringing soft and low.
Stay with the music, words will come in time.

Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.
Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime
Is richness rising out of emptiness,
And timelessness resounding into time.

And when the heart is full of quietness
Begin the song exactly where you are.
~Malcolm Guite “The Singing Bowl” from The Singing Bowl

In the center of my chest,
a kindling there in the hollow,
as if a match had just been struck,
or the blinds snapped up on a sealed room,
gold suffusing the air,
and through the wide windows,
a solstice unfolding,
mine for the lengthening days.
~Andrea Potts “On Reading John Donne for the First Time” from Her Joy Becomes

I will not forget, dear harvest moon,
to keep you as my singing bowl
where I can find your song months from now,
even when your reflected light leaks out
to tangle up in the weary trees of autumn.

Once the leaves fall, you illuminate
even the most humble branches
in their embarrassed nakedness.

Call nothing common in the earth or air,
Accept it all and let it be for good.

When I too need your warm light
in the center of my hollowed chest,
I’ll know exactly where to find you,
as you sing lullabies, waiting for me to empty.

I’ll not forget you,
because you never forget to
keep looking for me.

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Softer Than Rain

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Teach me to walk
with tender feet,
as the wild ones do.
Let me be the cinder-glow
of the fox in her burrow, wreathed
around the honey-spark fur
of her sleeping kits.

Let me be the shaded pools
of the doe’s eyes
in winter, when the snow falls,
when the stars lean down to listen,
when the world is darker
and softer
than rain.

Let me be the swallow
after flight, when she is
perched upon the branch
where the petals of the lilacs used to be,
and she is just still, and quiet,
her downy head inclined, as though
she is praying
for their return.
~Kimberly Beck “Tender Feet”

As the weather changes,
softening in the mists of autumn,
I walk each step with careful feet,
my tender heart singing songs in the rain.
I pray for peace in this troubled land,
for protection from harm until spring comes again.

May God grant a gentle night’s sleep for all His creatures.

video by Harry Rodenberger

Lyrics for Aragorn’s Sleepsong:
Lay down your head and I’ll sing you a lullaby
Back to the years of loo-li lai-lay
And I’ll sing you to sleep and I’ll sing you tomorrow

Bless you with love for the road that you go
May you sail far to the far fields of fortune
With diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet
And may you need never to banish misfortune

May you find kindness in all that you meet
May there always be angels to watch over you
To guide you each step of the way
To guard you and keep you safe from all harm
Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

May you bring love and may you bring happiness
Be loved in return to the end of your days
Now fall off to sleep, I’m not meaning to keep you
I’ll just sit for a while and sing loo-li, lai-lay

May there always be angels to watch over you
To guide you each step of the way
To guard you and keep you safe from all harm
Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

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Pure State of Light

barnstormingblog4 Comments

How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mild breeze.
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute,
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf’s off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.
~Mary Jo Salter “Absolute September”

Only nine days left of summer –
I search the skies for what might be left of it.

The mornings lighten later,
evenings darken sooner.

How can I not sadden at the change?

Yet this is where I am in life,
this time of bringing inside the garden and orchard
to savor and salvage before the rains come.

The light leaves behind ripened fruit of foraged memories;
in the darkening, its purity sweetens over time.

AI image created for this post
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