OFFICIUM HORARUM

Somewhere someone has said: to go
where it is difficult,
and therefore painful,
and therefore necessary
– this is the office of the poet

Yes, yes: the torment; storm’s wauling
and reel; the intensity we are so eager
to make of suffering (as if it needed more)…

All that.

But what, say you, of the dishes
presently requiring your attention?
What of heat in summer,

plodding, oafish?

You will say: “empty”
You will say: “meaningless”

Just so.

But to accede to
the flashes where and whenever
they occur: soap suds blushing along
sink’s edge…or, as the case
may be, 17 years worth of
longing become audible
in cicada-song….

For that is the task,
is it not?

 

GENEROUSLY

Faces
opening doors
which they themselves
are incapable of
answering:

Not to languish
there, in the wishing
differently
or wresting otherwise —

But to abide,
praising it,
with unclenched hands that
loosen, like
sails, upon
the welcoming wind;

And to move freely
within the guilelessly
unattainable, content
with how
what flows forth
generously,

generously recedes

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Matthew Lawrence Luévano Campbell is a poet, musician, coffee shop manager, and aspiringhospice chaplain. Originally from Tucson, AZ, he now resides in Albuquerque, NM among thecottonwoods along the banks of the Rio Grande. There he lives with his wife, two sons, a dog,and two cats. His writing is in many respects a product of the desert of which he feels himselfinexorably a part. Here, perhaps as in all deserts across the world, the things of Heaven and thethings of Earth converge and intersect in striking ways, coursing silently within the same darkrivers.

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