When I go on retreat, which I try to do quarterly, I like to review my journals. This is a common practice for journal keepers. It’s easy to forget where God has been, or to have missed how present God was in a previous moment when you were mired in the vagaries of that moment. In a recent review, I found my New Year’s resolutions from January 2020 . They included having people over to dinner twice a month. Ha! They also included that I would post a poem on this blog once a month. I did not do that. So here is a remedy. Two recent sonnets I wrote;

Could Be a Raptor
A Sonnet for Birders

O fix your eyes on a heavenly host–
Those wind-hovering ecstatics of sky,
Held up by figures of physics and ghosts,
By feathers canting “Wonder!” “How?” and “Why?”

May your own neck ever swivel for wings,
And long gaze ever rest right where you saw
Up there! and right there! something, O! — something
That’s swooping down, talons open towards awe.

May trust in each potential eagle spied;
In every would be hawk that is a crow;
In seagulls, yes, take them, wings open wide,
Half raptor beauties, all gripping air’s flow,

Make hearts rise with all the birds you have dreamed–
And soar on lift of desire’s thermal streams.
__________
Walking on Collings Ave, January 12, 2021

You can listen to me read it here.

Earth’s Most Careful Feet
for the Browns

Declaring absolution for shells crushed
Beneath my feet, I walked the glittered sand
Too littered full with shining treasures flushed
From gentle rush and pull of ocean’s hands
For Earth’s most careful feet to miss them all.
It is decided—crushing shells can’t be
A sin, and if it be, then sinner I shall
Go on being—so going by a sea
Now emptied by the cold but golden faced
From sun’s thus angled gilding of the tide
In patterns left like slips of satin, lace
Retreating, leaving fringe on edges’ glides
I wonder again if footprints belong(?)
No, not unless God’s tide had pulled you strong.
__________

Walking in Margate,  February 5, 2021

You can listen to me read it here.