Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Recovering Lost Ground...

I haven't been writing much, and I've been thinking even less lately. One thing contributes to another, I'm sure. Wherefore it's time to take up the torch again, shake off this lazy feeling, and try to regain the ground I've lost while I've been lying down on the job. It won't be brilliant, but it will be something. These last few days I've been attempting to write something every morning. These somethings have turned out to be a series of personal psalms, most not worth sharing. But the most recent of these reminded me a little, while I was writing it, of the emotionally honest, impulsive, almost unconscious way I used to write before I knew what writing was. Which is to say, it wasn't great--but if I have to start over from the beginning, it's not bad. For a beginning.

So we're going back to the old song and dance, the old rhyme and rhythm.

Psalm the 21st of July. A Psalm at Morning.

In this softer dark we rise and look
with sleepened eyes and elbow crook.
Sheep-slow, but unabashing heads we rove
our morning-skins as curious as love.

We're dust to dust. Our particles of grey
array us end to end, and we arrest
a wrinkled forehead on an open chest,
and pressed dry lips into a smiled kiss.

O fingers to the bone we are transformed!
and love has drunk us deeper than good wine
kept cold in cellars. I am yours and mine
you are. An ocean. Fingers in the brine.

Alone, the sun becomes a rosy spot
behind the kitchen curtain, like a thought
that ripens unattended, it will grow.

Alone, this cup is empty,but the rim
is streaked and streaked with holy.