Gentle Arms

Last Tuesday, a dear friend and peerless man came very close to dying in an attack on the Humvee he was riding through the streets of Afghanistan. The three men inside the Humvee were killed, and he only survived because he was manning the machine-gun turret on top of it. He escaped with blessedly minor injuries - singed lungs, broken legs, and local burns - and is currently in Texas awaiting surgery. I wanted to dedicate a poem to his return and recovery, but it took me a while to find one that fit my mood. I hope this does the trick.


Gentle Arms

Carry me home;
my body is worn.
Long did I roam,
but now I am born
upon gentle arms
and though my old door,
away from all harms,
to wander no more.

Your Silence

I wrote this one Summer day at Laurelhurst Park. As with most of my poems, the first two lines came to me in a sing-song way, and the rest followed slowly and ploddingly from there. I suppose I was thinking of Elijah's journey up Mt. Horeb, and so the language of the poem tends to mirror the perception of God not as wind or earthquake or fire, but as a still, small voice in the silence, which is yet infinitely more powerful than any of the preceding chaos. As a side note, I unconsciously mimicked Chesterton's rhyming pattern and meter in his dedication to 'The Man Who Was Thursday,' which reads thus: "Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world." If you are not familiar with this poem, you should read it immediately. Though it is limited somewhat by Chesterton's rigid two-step style, it has some of the most beautiful and powerful imagery that I have ever come across. It is, by far, my favorite Chesterton poem. You can find a copy of it here: To Edmund Clerihew Bentley.


I never gazed upon your face,
nor heard the words you spoke.
Your silence was a thunderclap
that sudden on me broke,
like staffs against the knotted backs
that cut the furrows deep
and terror calling soldiers
to an everlasting sleep.
I could not name the moment
when your standard rose, unfurled,
but when it did, I heard your silence
ring throughout the world.

Ascent

The turning of Summer affords a special freedom; one which is not found in the vast expanse of cloudless days and long evenings, but rather in the welcome release that comes with life's quiet rest. Autumn allows us to put away the frenzied activity of the past months and look instead to the slow peace that resides in rainy days and leafless trees (aided, of course, by hot fires, cups of tea, and the like). It is a measured freedom, but that does not keep it from being boundlessly liberating.


Ascent

Mist on the water, my soul is light,
a quicksilver shadow now taking flight,
to glide on an autumn-whispered breeze
above crimson crowns on the royal trees;
past clouds in the sky, mounts capped in snow;
place stars in the heavens; I count them low,
for no earthly cords can bind me long;
my soul makes to fly and my wings are strong.

The Last Leaf

I anticipate the coming months, I know, but I could not wait to post a true Autumn poem. It's about time we had some real weather!


The Last Leaf

One leaf left upon the wood,
and time once was that it withstood
the shearing winds, but wick and fill
have fled before the autumn chill,
that little breaths can free its moor
and send it forth from timbered shore,
to plot its twisting journey down
and settle lightly on the ground.