March Morning
Glazed ferns gleam through tenebrous fir,
Stirring memories that rise,
Like trout to glinting lures,
From root-wheels and sodden logs
Mired on the bottom of years.
Slabs of sun and shadow
Stripe a grassy roadbank
Opposite a stand of pine trees
In the hills west of the Roannais
Above the bright-shining sword
Of the River Loire.
Mid-March,
Morning,
Balsam air.
Here, there,
Birds flit,
Twitter,
Sit like notes on the staffs
Of the scores of the bare branches.
All is on the verge.
On the ridge-tops, blue surges,
Scattering bibulous cloud
Hung over from night.
Blue strides down the green valley,
Embracing the willows,
Lovely in light gowns,
Shaking their tresses,
Their lemon tresses,
Laughing in welcome.
Across the hills, meanwhile,
Like salt grains on baize cloth,
Sheep graze solemnly,
And the Charolais cattle,
Sculpted in chalk,
Stand motionless,
Outside of time.
The Bowl
Under light, O bowl, paint for me,
By dahlias and peaches interposed,
The coral edges of a tropical sea.
Reflect your maker’s Maker’s merriment
At costumes lent by fruits and blooms
To your curvaceous finery.
Your colors whoop like schoolgirls out of class;
Like twinned lips of lovers pulled close
By beauty’s sweet force,
They quiver.
I nudge the glass,
The water stirs.
The sea on beaches at the world’s end sloshes,
The lovers sway among the blossoms.
Ocean sighs.
Late sun dyes the bowl vermilion.
I jar the glass again.
Creatures spring to life, myriad.
“Father, the circus is in town—
Can we go?”
We skip all the way.
Why, this is creation!
The world’s being born!
Elephants stomp through purple dahlias,
Tigers pad on beds of peaches,
Jesters quilt the glass with motley—
Shalom!
Your rim, O bowl, marks out the planet’s edge;
Your oceans breed whales;
Your womb is great with clouds and plants and beasts;
In your depths nebulae gleam.
O bowl, sun-bearer, in you
Light figures the invisible.
Your harmonics paint
Heavenly frescoes;
In your radiance
Alpha echoes Omega.
Shalom
Art
Art is given to hint at depths
Beyond the shallow pools
We spend our lives in,
Dull fools,
Mincing like waders when we might sprint
And plunge into the sea!
What is that deep sea?
The sweep of foam down a wave’s face
Pictures unsolicited grace
Rolling from eternity
To cover broken time.
The puffed cloud’s rhyme,
With chestnut trees
That caparison summer hills
And garrison the ripening fields,
Points to sublime structures of creation.
All speaks of relation,
Transformation,
Of inherent links
Binding galaxies to the pinks
That flower on the wall outside my house.
God’s grand art above
Crafts these paradigms:
