Category: Poetry

On Corpus Christi, before the Blessed Sacrament

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A powerful poem by Paul Thigpen

On Corpus Christi, before the Blessed Sacrament

You languish in the darkness like
a criminal imprisoned
a sick man quarantined
an eccentric, babbling uncle, hid away.

Are they so afraid of You?
Are we so ashamed of You?
This is Your pageant day!

Where are Your holy calvacades?
Your solemn ranks of soldiers
with their Captain at their head?
Your festal, fair processions
winding through the curious crowds
who marvel at the sacred spectacle?

In the quiet I hear echoes
from the stones of ancient streets
crying out with praise to shame us
for our silence.
In the blackness I see faces
of a multitude of children
looking down the ages, wondering
to see so plain a feast.

For the glory due Your name,
how long, O Lord,
will You wait?

Pope Benedict XVI leads the Corpus Domini procession in an open van from St. John at the Lateran Basilica to St. Mary Major Basilica to mark the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, in Rome, Thursday, June 7, 2012. Pope Benedict celebrated the evening Mass at St. John Lateran Basilica then traveled a short distance in a procession to St. Mary Major Basilica. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

Prayer to God the Holy Spirit (1)

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Come, true light,
Come, eternal life,
Come, secret of hiddenness.
Come, delight that has no name.
Come, unutterableness.
Come, O presence, forever fleeing from human nature.
Come, everlasting jubilee.
Come, light without end.
Come, awaited by all who are in want.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, mighty one, forever creating, recreating, and renewing with a mere wave of Thy hand.
Come, Thou who remainest wholly invisible, for none ever to grasp or to caress.
Come, Thou who flowest in the river of hours,
yet immovably stayest above it,
who dwellest above all heavens,
yet bendest to us who are bowed down.

~Symeon the New Theologian

to be continued . . .

“God Speaks in Blue”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Our Sunday-poem today comes from Luci Shaw:

God Speaks in Blue

My friend hands me a gift
from overseas.  “Here,” she says.
“For you.”  The small packet rustles
with dry particles.  Through thin paper
my fingers feel the nubs.  I thank her,

 turning over the plain brown envelope.
There from the other side a photo–
the vivid, blunt cross of Mecanopsis Betonicifolia,
a Himalayan Blue Poppy–looks at me with
its gold eye, four azure petals blazing.

A blue to color a dream.  The blue
of Mary’s mantle according to Raphael.
The blue at the heart of a gas flame, within
an ice cave, one a cerulean door in a white wall
on Santorini, a kind of blue that

catches my heart ajar and blows it wide open.
Dry seeds and a picture, until next spring.
But, oh, if only I could be alive enough
to burn like this flower.  If only
I could bloom as blue as this.

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But if we find grace

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Judas, Peter

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves
but if we find grace
to weep and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me

Luci Shaw

Look at the chickadee (Repost)

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Note: every year I repost this poem because I still love it!

A beautiful snow last night and this morning a bird singing outside my window.  This brings to mind a poem by Jessica Powers about a chickadee in a snow storm.  There is always something to be learned from God’s creatures if we just take the time to look and ask Him to help us to really see.

Look at the Chickadee

I take my lesson from the chickadee
who in the storm
receives a special fire to keep him warm,
who in the dearth of a December day
can make the seed of a dead weed his stay,
so simple and so small,
and yet the hardiest hunter of them all.

The world is winter now and I who go
loving no venture half so much as snow,
in this white blinding desert have been sent
a most concise and charming argument.
To those who seek to flout austerity,
who have a doubt of God’s solicitude
for even the most trivial of His brood,
to those whose minds are chilled with misery
I have this brief audacious word to say:
look at the chickadee,
that small perennial singer of the earth,
who makes the week of a December day
the pivot of his mirth.

~Jessica Powers

“Nothing could frighten me”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Do you ever find yourself often afraid of that which could be the best for you?  You fight against the very one who would be your biggest help.  Today’s Sunday-poem addresses that very thing.

The Voice

I am afraid of silence.  I am afraid
Of my own soul.  I am afraid of hearing
A voice–one voice above all voices–made
Clear in the silence.  I shall grow old fearing
This silence that goes with me wherever I go.
I cannot keep it in or bar it out.
Always within, around, above, below,
It beats upon me.  I am hedged about
Most utterly.  Surrounded.  Yet I raise
Even now a futile barrier of sound
Against the voice in silence I dispraise,
Against the voice I dread that hems me round;
To which, did I but listen, I should be
Afraid of nothing.  Nothing could frighten me.

Sr. Maris Stella

“The Grit on the Track”

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A Sunday-poem from wonderful Luci Shaw:

The Grit on the Track

The ground is always there witnessing
how you walk.  You need light to travel
a dark path, and you need to travel light.
Otherwise the shadow that turns out to be
a boulder or a root will trip you,
and your heavy pack will bear you down
into the hard anguish of gravel
that is more than your knees can bear.
Even roadside dust clings to your heels as if
God is in every crystal of sand.

Gravity and the possibility of falling
will keep you aware.  In the twilight you
come home from walking the dog in the woods
with the walk still clinging to you–twigs
and the stain of berries on your soles.
Each clot of sludge from the forest floor
answers back–another footfall.  This is all
my handwork, he is saying.  Stay with this mud,
this humus.  Every next mile you walk
will be a revelation.

Our Lady = Laser Light

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

A Sunday poem about Our Lady:

Our Lady = Laser Light

Our Lady, Laser Beam, incredible creature held
in God’s omnipotent hand, for help of deviant, unwise man;
pure straight-line, steady, truth’s most leashed light,
love’s billions more than surface-sun concentrated fire,
sure, unwavering, non-fanning beam, heaven-homing radar-ray.

Coherent, clear, no unsimple spectrum spread,
but narrow one-wave-only burning arrow-jet
that in a single photon-packed burst of focused fire,
with a needle point annealing heals smallest rent in eyes;
light that lures dark-lurking cancers of the soul
to absorbent ruin, fuses lips of lesions and wide wounds
unites, not rough-stitching but with a mother’s gentle
hand and surgeon’s high finesse; and with no scarring pain
erases demon-traced tatoos that mar God – consecrate limbs.

Humble, immaculate beam borne by peasant Bernadettes;
yet fiery-potent force that light-explodes gloom-visaged
serpents of evil; slender, sensitive finger probing
for uncoined gold hid deep within us; mercifully wise
lens in whose clear scrutiny we see, multi-dimensional,
known and secret faces unparalleled path-finder ray
spearheading balanced tunnel through mountains of rock-doubt
and tightly-tangled fears, into the open valleys of whole air.

Final, lucent tool in God’s hand, cutting flawless-faceted
blue-brilliant Christ-diamonds, light sculptured souls of men,
Our Lady, Laser Light, inerrant, bright rod-road trajectory-less,
high-given guide-line, shortest-surest, pure light-fire path
flaming straight out, unfaltering, even to infinity …. to God.

Albert Joseph Hebert, S.M.
Mary, Our Blessed Lady
New York: Exposition Press, 1970.

Advent Prayer (repost)

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Advent Prayer

Like foolish folk of old I would not be,
Who had no room that night for Him and thee.
See, Mother Mary, here within my heart
I’ve made a little shrine for Him apart;
Swept it of sin, and cleansed it with all care;
Warmed it with love and scented it with prayer.
So, Mother, when the Christmas anthems start,
Please let me hold your baby–in my heart.

Sr. Maryanna, O.P.

Robert, Cyril. Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine. New York: Marist Press, 1946.

Advent Antiphons

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Advent Antiphons

From Mary’s sweet silence
Come, Word mutely spoken!

Pledge of our real life,
Come, Bread yet unbroken!

Seed of the Golden Wheat,
In us be sown.

Fullness of true Light,
Through us be known.

Secret held tenderly,
Guarded with Love,

Cradled in purity,
Child of the Dove,

COME!

Sr. M. Charlita, I.H.M.

Robert, Cyrus. Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine. New York: Marist Press, 1946.