Nomad Heart

Dan McCarthy

Nomad Heart

for Kevin Page


Sometimes looking to the cold wintry stars

you can feel the planet move as it whirls

in the flux of the galaxy, the whole

path of the milky way buzzing like a hive.


They say it’s better to journey than arrive—

halting being the usual rigmarole

of move-along-shift. Sometimes the soul

just craves a place to rest, safe from earthly wars.


The city lights come on in twos and threes

and leaves are freezing hard in mucky pools,

cars are stuck in jams or droning home.


If we’re not brought to our knees, we’ll fall to our knees

in thanks, in praise, in trust, in hope—the rule

of law mapped clear on heaven’s ample dome.



Paula Meehan,  fr."Painting Rain"

 

 

Meehan's description of looking up at the stars  - did you recognize how she felt? This is the thing about poetry, it shows us the things that flow between us, strangers, friends, enemies. How many of us have looked up at the night sky, and thought we felt the earth moving in its orbit, saw the stars and the more we looked, the more we saw? How small, how small we feel! And yet, we have our part. Our place. We, stars and cars, cities and planets, moving together on a journey - through time and space  - to where? To what end? And is it really better to journey than to arrive? "If we're not brought to our knees, we'll fall to our knees..." Is that true? Are you thankful, hopeful, full of praise? Should you be? Is there "a rule of law mapped clear on heaven's ample dome"? Is there order and purpose and destination? What are the stars saying?

 

 

Daisies

Unknown

Daisies

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime

we will learn everything

there is to learn: what the world is, for example,

and what it means. I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

perfectly content not knowing. Song being born

of quest he knows this: he must turn silent

were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead




oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

unanswered. At my feet the white-petaled daisies display

the small suns of their center-piece - their, if you don't

mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know.

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,

to see what is plain; what the sun

lights up willingly; for example - I think this

as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

daisies for the field.

Mary Oliver



More Mary Oliver. More of her poems to punctuate my days. She recalls me to nature, and especially the "personal" natural world. "Science"might quibble, might say she anthropomorphizes, which is to accuse her of being childish and sentimental. I disagree. Seeing an animal or object as having personal meaning to us, having individuality (in the sense of uniqueness and purpose), and of their existence impacting us, as in "saying" or communicating a message to us, all of this seems obvious and true to me. (It's very strange to think that scientists, of all people, whose work involves studying natural things and phenomena closely, and whose lifework is so enjoined with nature that it could be said that it becomes part of their person; and whose attempts to describe and explain what they discover comes more close to pure poetry than any other profession aside from poets themselves, that they have so often been the ones telling us "Don't make this about you! Don't ascribe human characteristics to other forms of life!" is incredible. Impossible. "Take what is given..see what is plain."! 

 

 I walk through a field of daisies, and wonder what the mockingbird is singing about. It is singing about something that matters, both to it and to me. I look at a daisy and say it has a heart, meaning that it has a centre, an intention, and a Source - as I do - and recognize the thread between us, the pattern and symmetry we both are part of. 

 

Fact is only part of the truth. Proof is in life, in how we live in spite of what we say we think. It's personal. The bird mocks us, "as one who knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing". No matter how much we learn, birdsongs and flower hearts will always be speaking to us of more. Learning "all there is to learn" is not necessary, not the point. The connection, the pattern, the Source, all these, these are better than knowing. As cummings said in "little birds" ,

"may my heart always be open to little
 birds who are the secret of living
whatever they sing is better than to know". 

O Emmanuel

J. Kirk Richards

O Emmanuel

O come, O come, and be our God-with-us

O long-sought With-ness for a world without,

O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.

Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name

Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,

O quickened little wick so tightly curled,

Be folded with us into time and place,

Unfold for us the mystery of grace

And make a womb of all this wounded world.

O heart of heaven beating in the earth,

O tiny hope within our hopelessness

Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,

To touch a dying world with new-made hands

And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.

Malcolm Guite

“O tiny hope within our hopelessness”. I love how the life of Jesus curls both inward and outward in this poem. Mysteries within mysteries, but at the same time, revelations opening into wider and yet wider horizons. Foldings and unfoldings. So beautiful. Like the whorls of shells or the swirling stars, all these seem to speak of the same pattern, the same name. Unspoken, but singing out through everything.

 

Crucifixion: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

Arcabus

Crucifixion: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

See, as they strip the robe from off his back
And spread his arms and nail them to the cross,
The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
And love is firmly fastened onto loss.
But here a pure change happens. On this tree
Loss becomes gain, death opens into birth.
Here wounding heals and fastening makes free
Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth.
And here we see the length, the breadth, the height
Where love and hatred meet and love stays true
Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light
We see what love can bear and be and do,
And here our saviour calls us to his side
His love is free, his arms are open wide.

Malcolm Guite


The inside-outness of this poem is wonderful. Guite captures the convergence of opposites in the person of Jesus – loss/gain, wound/heal, death/birth, defeat/victory. The Easter story goes against  every human instinct. Power in weakness? Victory in death? It bends my mind.