A phrase entirely

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I t ' s   a   S i g n

Elmo's Diner

Durham, North Carolina

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If we could get the hang of it entirely
It would take too long;
All we know is the splash of words in passing
And falling twigs of song,
And when we try to eavesdrop on the great
Presences it is rarely
That by a stroke of luck we can appropriate
Even a phrase entirely.

If we could find our happiness entirely
In somebody else’s arms
We should not fear the spears of the spring nor the city’s
Yammering fire alarms
But, as it is, the spears each year go through
Our flesh and almost hourly
Bell or siren banishes the blue
Eyes of Love entirely.

And if the world were black or white entirely
And all the charts were plain
Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters,
A prism of delight and pain,
We might be surer where we wished to go 
Or again we might be merely
Bored but in brute reality there is no
Road that is right entirely.

> Louis MacNiece <

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Happy Friday

Hack and rack the growing green

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I n   M e m o r i a m

St. Simon's Church

Peak, South Carolina

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My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what to do
When we delve or hew --
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

> Gerard Manley Hopkins <

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Happy Thursday

Semper fidelis

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G r e e n   N e w   D e a l

Trinity Church Wall Street

New York, New York

>>>>++<<<<

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to you;
Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain --
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the open hand, no thing but that,
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,
I bring you, calling out as children do:
"Look what I have! -- And these are all for you."

> Edna St. Vincent Millay <

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Happy Wednesday

By instinct, by inevitability

>>>>++<<<<

W e   B e a r   T h e   S t a n d a r d

Zion Chapel of Ease Cemetery

Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

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Down these mean streets a man must go

who is not himself mean,

who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

He is the hero; he is everything.

He must be a complete man

and a common man

and yet an unusual man.

He must be,

to use a rather weathered phrase,

a man of honor --

by instinct, by inevitability,

without thought of it,

and certainly without saying it.

If he is a man of honor in one thing,

he is that in all things.

He must be the best man in his world

and a good enough man for any world.

He has a sense of character,

or he would not know his job.

He will take no man's money dishonestly

and no man's insolence

without a due and dispassionate revenge.

He is a lonely man

and his pride is that you will treat him

as a proud man

or be very sorry you ever saw him.

The story is this man's adventure

in search of a hidden truth,

and it would be no adventure

if it did not happen to a man

fit for adventure.

If there were enough like him,

the world would be a very safe place

to live in, without becoming too dull

to be worth living in.

> Raymond Chandler <

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Happy Monday

Life everlasting

>>>>++<<<<

M a g n o l i a   C r o s s i n g

Elmwood Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

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Needing strength for my journey,

I knelt at the cross

Where Jesus once died for me

And I asked,

"Is this the place where hope abides?"

And this He said to me:

Beyond the cross is a tomb that is empty

You won't find Me there anymore

And beyond the tomb is life everlasting

And hope forevermore.

Then I sought reassurance

And I went to the tomb

To the place where His body once lay

And I cried,

"Lord, help me see. Is there hope here for me?"

 And this I heard Him say:

Beyond the cross is a tomb that is empty

You won't find Me there anymore

And beyond the tomb is life everlasting

And hope forevermore. 

> Mosie Lister <

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For the preaching of the cross

is to them that perish foolishness;

but unto us which are saved

it is the power of God.

I Corinthians 1:18

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Happy Sunday

And met the gaze direct

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H a v i n g   D o n e   A l l ,   T o   S t a n d

Laurel Grove Cemetery

Savannah, Georgia

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No Notice gave She, but a Change --

No Message, but a Sigh --

For Whom, the Time did not suffice

That She should specify.

She was not warm, though Summer shone

Nor scrupulous of cold

Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost

Upon Her Bosom piled --

Of shrinking ways -- she did not fright

Though all the Village looked --

But held Her gravity aloft --

And met the gaze -- direct --

And when adjusted like a Seed

In careful fitted Ground

Unto the Everlasting Spring

And hindered but a Mound

Her Warm return, if so she chose --

And We -- imploring drew --

Removed our invitation by

As Some She never knew --

> Emily Dickinson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday :: Happy February

The way I might have gone

>>>>++<<<<

W a i t s   L i f t e d

St. Simons Episcopal Church Ruins

Peak, South Carolina

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Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther -- and we shall see.'
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather --
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled -- and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

> Robert Frost <

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Happy Friday

I want to be stretched

>>>>++<<<<

W a f f l e   H e a r s e

Exit Seventy-Seven

Rock Hill, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

> Charles Wright <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

The loss to song

>>>>++<<<<

T h e y   T e a c h   W h e n   T h e y   R e a c h

From the Passenger Seat

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

THE LOST FOLLOWER

As I have known them passionate and fine,

The gold for which they leave the golden line

Of lyric is a golden light divine,

Never the gold of darkness from a mine.

The spirit plays us strange religious pranks

To whatsoever god we owe the thanks.

No one has ever failed the poet ranks

To link a chain of money-metal banks.

The loss to song, the danger of defection

Is always in the opposite direction.

Some turn in sheer, in Shelleyan dejection

To try if one more popular election

Will give us by shortcut the final stage

That poetry with all its golden rage

For beauty on the illuminated page

Has failed to bring -- I mean the Golden Age.

And if this may not be (and nothing's sure),

At least to live ungolden with the poor,

Enduring what the ungolden must endure.

This has been poetry's great anti-lure.

The Muse mourns one who went to his retreat

Long since in some abysmal city street,

The bride who shared the crust he broke to eat,

As grave as he about the world's defeat.

With such it has proved dangerous as friend

Even in a playful moment to contend

That the millennium to which you bend

In longing is not at a progress-end

By grace of state-manipulated pelf,

Or politics of Ghibelline or Guelph,

But right beside you booklike on a shelf,

Or even better godlike in yourself.

He trusts my love too well to deign reply,

But there is in the sadness of his eye

Something about a kingdom in the sky

(As yet unbrought to earth) he means to try.

> Robert Frost <

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Happy Wednesday

We are home free

>>>>++<<<<

R u s h i n g   T o w a r d s   N i g h t

Beaverdam Creek

Landrum, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Now, we take the moon

into the middle of our brains

so we look like roadside stray cats

with bright flashlight-white eyes

in our faces, but no real ideas

of when or where to run.

We linger on the field's green edge

and say, Someday son, none of this

will be yours. Miracles are all around.

We're not so much homeless

as we are home free, penny-poor,

but plenty lucky for love and leaves

that keep breaking the fall. Here it is:

the new way of living with the world

inside of us so we cannot lose it,

and we cannot be lost. You and me,

are us and them, and it and sky.

It's hard to believe we didn't

know that before; it's hard to believe

we were so hollowed out, so drained,

only so we could shine a little harder

when the light finally came.

> Ada Limón <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday