Twilight Liturgy

Twilight Liturgy

The roar of a distant highway
intrudes like a timid visitor,
peeks between mullioned fields,
then asserts with the cough of a semi.

Elsewhere, a freight train,
as if only just alive,
shoots a warning complaint
of weary, forseen disagreement.

The crickets stall on a false start,
the promise of coming chirrups
that sputtered and choked;
it is yet too cold for their throttling hymn.

The night begins its liturgy
in low, muttered phrases of song.

Thunder's Ghost

Thunder’s Ghost

By peace and obscuring walls,
by field and forest halls,
by silence of a sacred type;
your voice, lost in the muskeg,
calms the building squall.

Your breath, in the morning,
leaves me low beneath the weight of oceans.
Your heart, a heavy Albertan sky,
that hides me under stone and loam and silent water.

Yesterday, in the rain, we were
the low sky and the earth,
eager for the touch of current.
Today, the storm, unbroken, passed
and we, by token, formed of stone,
deny the thunder’s ghost.

Estuary Hymns

Estuary Hymns

When summer drops, out of the green Spring folds

and scatters in a flight of waking bees.

When owls rise in warm twilights

to add their baritone praise to the chorus of growing pains

just behind the dark of every tree –

In this spot, at this time, on this night

(no heron mars your sight) you know

what lovers know when their temples flush,

or crickets when their ankles rub,

or the night when it sees,

or the sea when the tide – swells potent to the moon.

Bottling

Listening to Jackson C. Frank - Blues Runs the Game

   On our journey through the American Southwest, on the eve of the wedding day, I sat with two friends on our motel-room balcony. We smoked our pipes and talked about life; one of us strummed on his guitar and at one point I shared a poem I had written; a bottle of homemade mead was passed around; and the crickets chirruped in the warm Phoenix air. I will not easily forget that.
   Last night we bottled the Stout and the IPA. There were just three of us in the kitchen, listening to music, sipping wine, and doing the good work of bottling. It is good to be with people. It is good to have friends to sit with. I am thankful for the good grace of friendship in my life.
  
Listening to Lightning Dust - NPR Tiny Desk Concert

   This morning at St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church, I became a catechumen. If you would like to know why, please ask me. I will do my best to put it into words. When the brief ceremony was over, the priest said, "welcome home" to me. Maybe that explains it better than anything else I could say.
   A year ago, I would not have understood myself. Five years ago I would hardly have recognized myself. Ten years ago, I would have greeted myself as a stranger.
   This morning at St. Herman's, a kid ran up to me and headbutted my leg. I was confused until he proclaimed, "I'm a Pachycephalosaurus", at which point I understood him perfectly. I understood because I am the same person now that I was when I was five years old and I loved dinosaurs so much that I wanted to become a paleontologist. You might not recognize me shrouded in a beard and smelling like I just walked out of an incense shop, but if you were to sit and talk to me over a glass of homemade wine, in five minutes you would find yourself talking to the person that you had always known. I still think Pachycephalosaurus is flipping sweet.

Will

Juggernaut

Listening to Frank Black - Ole Mulholland

My literate consumption behaves somewhat like a large, concrete, hexagonal block. It seems to be tremendously difficult to get rolling. In fact, I frequently need extensive help to get it to do so, particularly after I have exhausted myself at the task for some time. Once rolling, of course, assuming that the block is on a flat or downward sloping plane, it will continue to roll, juggernauting anything that stands in its way. The block will continue in this way until it reaches the necessary upward slope. At which point, the block slows and stops, refusing to move for some time, until another kind soul helps me to get it rolling again. Actually, that sounds more like my car, Marlin, stuck in Red Deer this past summer. Ah well, such is life.