Category: Poetry

A Better Resurrection

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A Sunday poem from Christina Rossetti:

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall–the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

~Christina Georgina Rossetti

Petal upon pink petal

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

A Sunday-poem from Mother Mary Francis:

On Beholding a Field of Pink Lilies

Go, toss your pretty heads!
And who shall blame you,
Seeing your image in the eyes of God?

Petal upon pink petal,
Flirt with breezes
Leaning from dawn to watch your coquetry.

But suddenly my smiles
Of kind indulgence
Melt into tears to see you casting down,

Petal upon pink petal,
Your brief living
Gladly and gaily into the lap of God.

~Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C.

My heart is singing

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

A Sunday-poem from Amy Carmichael:

Too High for Me

I have no word,
But neither hath the bird,
And it is heard;
My heart is singing, singing all day long,
In quiet joy to Thee who art my Song.

For as Thy majesty,
So is Thy mercy,
So is Thy mercy,
My Lord and my God.

How intimate
Thy ways with those who wait
About Thy gate:
But who could show the fashion of such ways
In human words, and hymn them to Thy praise?

Too high for me,
Far shining mystery,
Too high to see;
But not too high to know, though out of reach
Of words to sing its gladness into speech.

Reality itself

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

A Sunday-poem about the way God wants to communicate Himself to us through everything He has created:

THE TRUE APPEARANCE OF THE WORD

As the cataract of ignorance falls
from off the eyesight of my soul,
I realize that all this huge Creation
round about me is the Word.

The hitherto quite unattended fact
that these familiar fingers number ten,
like an encounter with some miracle,
suddenly astonishes me

and the newly-opened forsythia flowers
in one corner of the hedge beyond my window
entrance me utterly,
like seeing a model of Resurrection.

Smaller than a grain of sand
in the oceanic vastness of the cosmos,
I realize that this my muttering
by a mysterious grace of the Word,

is no imagined thing, no mere sign,
but Reality itself.

~ Ku Sang (1919-2004), Korean poet

Dust and Flame

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

A Sunday-poem by Amy Carmichael:

Dust and Flame

But I have seen a fiery flame
Take to his pure and burning heart
Mere dust of earth, to it impart
His virtue, till that dust became
Transparent loveliness of flame.

O Fire of God, Thou fervent Flame,
Thy dust of earth in Thee would fall,
And so be lost beyond recall,
Transformed by Thee, its very name
Forgotten in Thine own, O Flame.

Have a blessed Sunday.  May you come to know how much your own life has truly been transformed into His.

On Corpus Christi, before the Blessed Sacrament

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

But if we find grace

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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)

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

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