this vigil

Follow this powerful silence
faithfully.
Wherever you listen,
your receptive heart
will always find
the persistent disciple this
vigil reveals:
love, holy in its
blush of perfect
humility,
a psalm of ordinary
reverence,
translating grace into
a gentle, compassionate
feast.

I got this found poem from the Rule of Benedict. I make lists of words that speak to me from these sources and then pull them together. I put this one together yesterday while sitting by Talking Rock Creek.

a recipe of whisper

Sometimes
the warm hum
of a quiet wind
lights an empty field
with a recipe
of whisper.

Anything sings
when you let it.

--lks March 2012

This is a found poem I culled from Maurice Manning's book of poetry, Bucolics. 

the singing of light

And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh and bone, began to sing out, the way a sun would sing if the sun could sing, if light had a throat, if god wasn't just an idea but shoulders and a spine, gathered frozen from everywhere, even the most distant planets, blazing up. Where am I? Even the rough words come to me now, quick as thistles. Who made your tyrant's body, your thirst, your delving, your gladness? Oh tiger, oh bone-breaker, oh tree on fire! Get away from me. Come closer.

--Mary Oliver, from West Wind

Epiphany Ashes

from 2007

The last time I was here

a mountain of coniferous fuel

awaited the snickering flames,

and we loaded on the greens,

hauling limbs and branches and trunks

and snapping pieces of tree

into the orange mouth of the Epiphany fire.

We stood around in down and flannel,

hugging ourselves and shivering.

A coyote howled up on Sassafras Mountain.

Today I pull together a snarl of rusted metal,

the pale green glass nose

of an old-fashioned Coke bottle,

 a dented metal bowl,

and a stick, long as a branch

but barer,

to frame a place of ash and pagan collusion against the cold,

a marking of the passage of winter

and the exchange of sacred gifts.

The dry grass crackles around my heels.

The auburn pinestraw

and the green imperious blossom

of an invading dandelion

have become the gifts these Epiphany ashes offer me,

the sacramental metal of the bowl

the perfect shade of gray

(not silver)

in the summer light.

©Laura Sorrells 2007

all rights reserved

a habit of vision

This is a found poem I put together today from John McQuiston's book Always We Begin Again.

Every mystery we seek
carries a ruthlessly patient
habit of vision.
A compass of fire
refines our sacred work.
Something infinite and vast
gently pursues us,
an affinity for praise,
a currency of mercy,
insatiable and healing.

--lks 2/17/2012
©Laura Sorrells
some rights reserved

Tentbuilding

 

This is from 2007. I plan to write something new very soon.

Last night I read something about impermanence and I remembered the time when my mother gave me the kaleidoscope. I was about twenty-two and living temporarily in the downstairs bedroom of my mother’s house. It was a surprise when she handed me a brass cylinder in a soft cobalt blue velvet cloth with a drawstring on one end that tied with a white ribbon. I don’t know where Mom got the scope, and it was apparent to me that she had just acquired it, but I never asked her where it came from. It was midsummer and I was drinking too much. I remember one night I lay awake and watched the foxfire-green pulse of a firefly that had gotten into the house. It was flying intermittently around the room the next morning, and when I went off to work I left my mother a note to warn her that it was there, dormant and flareless against the windowpane. For some reason I was afraid she’d think it was a wasp or a bee and kill it. It seemed so fragile to me, so vulnerable, and its tiny folded wings, black with red stripes at the edges, tightened my throat with their smallness.The kaleidoscope held colors darker and less bright than you might expect: slate, oxblood, cleargold, winesong, deep purple, palest winterblue, hard rust. No cerulean, scarlet, or fuchsia, or kellygreen. Reflective tones. Strong, subtle. I can still see them when I hold the kaleidoscope up to lamplight now and they’re as pure as they were then. The blue cloth encasing the scope is musty and the circle at the end that I hold up to my eye has come loose. All it needs is some super glue but I hesitate to fix it. The circle is spotted with rust and I rather like how its tones of sienna and gray fit into the colorscape of the glass at the other end of the tube. When my mother gave me this kaleidoscope, she told me that change was the only constant and to celebrate that. I like having to hold the loose metal ring against my eye when I hold the kaleidoscope up to the light, a scrap of fallenness gently acknowledged but not negated or rejected. A tag of flow and scatter, of attachment come loose and propped lightly against the grooves of its house of glass and metal. 

©Laura Sorrells 2007

all rights reserved

the sky's whisper

Together under
the little red
whisper
the sky thinks,
we let the world
open.

--lks 2/10/2012

This is one from the haiku magnetic poetry kit.