Jacob's Ladder

Ascending and descending the angel’s fly,
Going about their secret ministrations,
Rejecting as unworthy our adulations,
Showing themselves only to those with eyes
Made clean, to eyes that have been purified.
They work behind the scenes, an undulation
Of hidden waves, of hidden murmurations
We cannot sense no matter how hard we try.
But if you can find the Stone of Destiny,
The rock on which poor Jacob played his head,
The Stone on which he slept, on which he dreamed,
The Earth will seem as liminality.
It teems with life, it lives and is not dead,
And every single creature is more than it seems.

The Milky Way

Herbert said it was a kind of prayer,
The galaxy in which we spin and live.
Looking up, he saw what you had to give,
He saw it through the liminal, luminous air.
For him there was no light-polluted layer
To obscure his sight, which allowed him to believe
That the whole of God’s creation is alive
In him and shining with celestial flare.
But I can barely see the stars at night,
Let alone Phaeton’s streak across the sky.
So how am I to use it as I pray
When it has been obstructed by our lights?
But then I see the pictures by those who try,
And I can say I’ve prayed the Milky Way.

The Holy Fool

His grey and wiry hair falls in tangled knots;
His beard is long and hallows his ancient face.
He wanders the streets and talks and talks and talks,
Wandering the streets without a trace
Of real direction for his stumbling feet.
Then I see him stop in the local park by a tree.
He stops and makes himself a little seat,
So he can watch a passing bumble bee.
He talks to the bee and looks up at the tree and smiles,
Throws back his head and laughs and laughs and laughs.
I watch him closely, staring all the while,
“Why are you laughing?” I get the courage to ask.
“I see the fairies flying with the bees;
I see the angels dancing in the trees.”

Ekstasis

Poets must be called from death to life,
For the ekstasis is certainly a kind of death
Where the Spirit of Creation fills our breath
And cuts us to the quick like an exacting knife.
The Spirit comes like Pan upon his fife,
Playing music through the reeds and in the depths
Of the whispering flames upon the hearth,
Leading us to lands both grim and bright.
But even when we’re called back from the edge,
And brought into the world of everyday,
We keep the poet’s roving eye and flame
Which glances Heaven through the earthly sludge
And sees the Earth in a transfiguring way,
Giving “airy nothings” a local name.

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