These are poems written over nearly a year in 1996, ecstatic, bewildered, exploratory, celebratory, remembering Allah in all the usual and unusual places, seeing (God willing) His Light through all things, people and places. A trajectory arc of heart over and through time. Hoping by these flights to acknowledge His Generosity to us in adversity and peace.
Poem Selection from Miracle Songs for the Millennium
Blizzard Bacchanal
As if the earth were to go on and on forever another four inch layer of snow silently covers time and space out the window stretching all the way to the ocean,
icy white powder piled up on garden furniture out back
salvaged two summers ago from
four doors down as being
paint-spattered but still usable,
snow covers the cars out front
lined up in all one direction, carpeted with
white, granted an ermine blanket,
sweetly docile with iced
windows and frozen locks, unlike
gas-guzzling road hogs, more like
obedient slaves,
it covers the park at the end of the street
with its wild trails over fallen tree trunks
deep in snow, growth stopped in its
tracks under repeated onslaughts of
angelic frosting, the
small mammals enduring, small
insects gathering their eggs for a
Spring resurgence or savage revenge,
the palace of pure nature wall to wall with
snow-crystals waiting for
princely footprints, for
small quick prints of the princess to
imprint themselves or for
long loopy chorus lines of angels to
suddenly cavort on fresh snow in the
little wood, pixieish
post-midnight bacchanals on
pure white floors, under full moonlight,
time frozen still,
think what he knows, those multiple eyes are enough. God’s sight through them shows him the world.
Birds don’t think, “Fly or soar as I might, I’m only a bird in a bird’s world, one eye on each side of my head, my limited universe not enough!”
The worm in the sod blind as
death, pushing through darkness it may not
see, does it think “I wish I could stand on two legs in a drawing room and sip tea as I listen to someone at a spinet play Mozart”?
Enclosed in the world, we enclose the world, and
it’s enclosed inside us until
we open. We’ll bump into
every wall until we
go from world to
Creator of world, Who’s
given us our world apparatus and sensitive
contraption for grasping the world, and
if we sight along His
cross-hairs in the
Unseen we should
see Him originating this
display.
He who
creates us as we
go.
Fly, bird and worm, and
man, hearts on the
optical throne.
