Despite the effort to write a brand new poem every day, I’ve still managed to fall into a little mental cul-de-sac that insists on making rules. To resist this, I’m going to attempt no meter at all. I am terrible at blank verse, which amuses me thoroughly. It only seems like it should be easy. There’s lists of words… then there’s actual poetry. Someday I’ll figure out how to bridge the two.
ore
o, Let the light of
your face on Us
shine. let the searchlight
of your eyes eXamine
every part And see
that which within hidEs shadow.
the Twisting thicket of my
thoughts thus lEads, turn by
tuR, back where I
began. eterNal my surprise –
my self I find Afresh: still
still with thee.
Boy, there was some of everything in there. Thinking of the new $20 – which fifteen years from now will be a weird pastiche of oppression and freedom, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” – also a weird pastiche – came to mind. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s poem (which later became a hymn) has its title in the poem’s final lines. One of my favorite choral pieces by Edward Elgan is Variation IX (Adagio) ‘Nimrod;’ listening to a choral variation put the words lux aeterna, or eternal light, from the Latin prayer during a requiem mass, into play, using Kwame Alexander’s acrostic technique. “Ore” is the phonetic pronunciation of the Hebrew word,אוֹר – which is to be, or become light, and is reflected in Ps. 139 – a tehillim is the Hebrew word in the Torah for a psalm. I wrote this poem thinking of my friend, Jess, who has the enigmatic plea of John Donne’s Sonnet 14 inked on her back.
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
All we are: a mishmash of impulses, hopes, half-dared dreams and unuttered prayers, yet within that tangle, we are not unseen. May every turn of your path be light.