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All poems
© 1993 Blake Steele
© 1993 Blake Steele
THERE IS A RICHNESS OF VISION WHICH GROWS
There is a richness of vision which grows
as the heart softens, as the mind opens.
"Grow into a better vision," God seems to say,
"And...play in it!"
Jesus came.
The man stood like a flame of God,
His eyes clear with the clarity
of His own Spirit.
God shone through!
Everybody saw it,
(though not all believed,
even then in the light.)
Still, grace and truth flooded out!
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is
is spontaneity of outflow."
So said St. Paul,
though translators missed the implications.
"And Wisdom played in the earth," was an old Jewish proverb.
Here wisdom stood as a full and free man:
He shone with the light that births and becomes
and bore His freedom like a lover should.
His words were to the souls and the spirit
of the people
when He worked to illuminate the people,
but when He was alone
(I believe this in my heart),
He bellowed his words, and roared His words,
and rang and sang His words,
soaring them out to touch the stars,
until they fell back down like rain
to swallow up animals in the wilderness
with rich, honeyed light.
He spoke in the night to the fish of the darkened sea,
and their scales glistened with His voice.
Glimmering fish sang silently His silvery words
in morning's first light
as they were gathered into nets.
And their words to the fishermen were,
"Sons of men, you are loved!"
Even as the fish were gutted
and thrown roughly on the decks,
the light of His voice still shown
through their pearl-like eyes.
*
Everything was then a flaming word of this man's Word
in a richness of vision which grew
as hearts softened, and minds opened.
And for those who could see it,
for a brief season,
all common things… shouted and danced!
Do not let religion shield the truth of you
from me. Words are but doors.
Can you pass through them?
Let me believe in you.
ON CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL GROWTH
How shall we imprison the life of our Lord?
Ignore Him. Ignore Him.
And how shall we loose the rivers of His Love?
Adore Him. Adore Him!
We must yield ourselves: all our light and all our dark—
do not fear, He will hold us!
Be sure we are known and cherished
as we open our hearts to the risen Christ.
All feelings which deny the joy of this truth
come from the force of our alienation.
Listen with care to the voice which heals us
and surges in waves of elation.
*
Step aside, and let Christ through
in everything you dream and do.
FIRST THE NATURAL, THEN THE SPIRITUAL
One must develop a good eye and open ears
before a taste comes for sublime things
beyond sight and hearing, when the heart
cries out to awaken.
The body’s beauty sags and fades
in countless small deaths
as inner beauty grows
in preparation for the big death
when the whole soul slips out
into the essence of beauty.
There is a transcendent wonder
everywhere we turn:
the worm, twirling in its brown hole;
the ruby headed sparrow on a twig;
the gray mouse atwitter in the grass;
the prowling cat, with candle-lit eyes at dusk:
each drinking essences of what they are
through roots sunk into the Light of existence —
the wild Source of earth and shimmering stars.
What does each signify,
the philosopher cries?
An immutable resplendence beyond themselves
the prophets reply.
THERE IS A QUIET SEER
(A meditation upon the philosophy of Heschel)
There is a quiet seer
who gazes at the seer.
The gazed at seer
most often grows undazzled by the act of seeing,
being too enmeshed in the unconscious act
of memory recall
and interpretation.
The ineffable becomes an image
with which, in our developing judgment,
we are familiar.
This image is in the gazed at seer,
being a miraculous mental reproduction
of the unknown reality
within which
the ever silent seer
who gazes at the gazed at seer
lives in ecstasies
so great
as to have rendered
it dumb.
TRUE BAPTISM
May we wash in the luminous pool
of God's dream.
May we be immersed not into a religion
but into a holy dream
and fall back naked
into the dreamer.
LANTERNS OF THE DIVINE
We are made of the dust of the earth.
We are strange clay beings
who live:
beings who hold the priceless miracle
of life's consciousness.
We are clay images
of the boundless divine.
He enters us at times
like a bird, alighting suddenly
in a tree. The tree ecstatically shivers!
Or, again, our clay is alit
so sublimely, we barely know it:
Have you ever felt sunlight moving silently
upon the open sea?
Consciously, or unconsciously, (no matter),
He comes!
But when Life is poured fully into life
there must be fire!
And, whenever the wick burns,
—the lantern glows.
HOLY FAITH
To mourn with song
is the highest expression of faith.
TWO WORLDS
We must stand in the center;
we must stretch out our arms
into two worlds.
Where these worlds overlap —
we are!
This is soul.
ALL THE LIFE
There is more life than we can conceive of
in one twig on a bush.
*
A bird lands on the twig and sings.
The boundaries of amazement blow out.
THE FATHOMLESS DEPTHS
Oh, the fathomless depths
of the fathomless sea
aren't half as fathomless
as fathomless me.
Do you think it's presumption?
Do you think it untrue?
Than fathom the depths
of the fathomless you.
The refusal to spiritually grow
makes the mind like a stone.
"Write the law upon the Stone again,
to make us secure in our knowledge,"
so says the Pharisee of every age
and religious persuasion.
Paul said, "This is a ministry of death."
The glory has faded. The beauty diminished.
Yet, God grows...
When Jesus was born,
(after the star stopped shining)
he crowed out into the fields, "Joy!"
and doves flew down.
And when three years had passed,
he remained in the heat of his innocence,
"Let the fields rejoice!" his little voice shouted,
"Let the mountains sing."
Birds hopped around his feet,
and he exuberantly scattered them into the sky.
The scribes, meanwhile, were studying things,
like what to do with blood money,
so they could teach their sons
how to use the law to crucify God
when their time came.
SOMEONE HAS FAILED TO OPEN THE HOMEWARD WAY
It is the world that is fallacious,
fabricated by humans
that have not listened to the trees
to hear their psalms;
that have not unclasped the book of the wind
nor observed the liturgy of water.
Someone has failed to open
the homeward way
and children are crying.
FROM THE ELECTRIC WILDNESS
From the electric wildness
of some little girl's hair
to the slow essence of swans
creation is speaking.
Its visible syllables
are a power
we are far too dull unto
to be reckoned a sane race.
Therefore, the poet must be free
to sense and to speak.
And the poet's words
should sound something like this:
"Blue sky... Be Amazed!
Budding branch... Celebrate!
Bird on the branch...
Blow me away with Praises!"