Poetry

A Shadow of My Present Self

Steve · January 13, 2020 · 3 Comments

Steve Shadow 2 — Shadow of My Present Self, January 2020. SJG photo.

An image and memory from a recent walk, a poem of reflection and shadow for a mid-winter day…

A Shadow of My Present Self

Walking through the woods near the lake
at the end of a warm winter’s day
the sun so near the horizon
that it sends its golden carpet unfurling
recklessly across the earth,
I catch myself walking beside me.

A shadow thrown
in black-on-orange-on-oak-brown,
A temporary photograph
reminding me who I am at that moment.

Wandering, quiet, willing to be surprised.
Trying hard to see and be aware.
A child, after all these 60 years,
of the source of light
shining in and through and around me.

Playing in the Wild Garden of Childhood

Steve · January 25, 2019 · 12 Comments

FOD BAll — At the "Field of Dreams," Dyersville, Iowa. SJG photo.

I recently came across this line of poetry from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.” And, of course, that’s right.

Take, for example, the pick-up games of some variation of baseball (fuzz ball, Indian ball, Wiffle® ball, cork ball, kickball, step ball) of my childhood in North St. Louis in the early ‘70s. These were “wild gardens” in the very best sense, meaning they required no adults, no official field dimensions, no uniforms and very few rules, other than the ever-evolving ones that existed only in our collective consciousness as 12-year-olds.

A (Very) Short Story: The Question

Steve · November 24, 2018 · 6 Comments

Path — Mallard Lake Trail. Creve Coeur Lake. SJG photo.

He was walking through the autumn-thinned woods, a carpet of fallen yellow beneath his feet. He put one foot in front of the other, the walk more of an obligation to himself than anything else. Sometimes, he thought, he prayed while he walked, but today he could not gather the will. The woods were silent and empty, as was he.

He walked on, stepping over fallen logs and zagging around occasional puddles from yesterday’s rain. Light cut through the upper reaches of oaks and hickories, casting both beams and shadows on the ground before him. A breeze lifted gently off the stream to his left, and he caught a whiff of dead leaves and rotting logs.

And out of nowhere he asked: “Where are you, God, in all of this?”

And a choir responded.

All he had learned from poetry sang out, “God is in the light and shadow.”

All he had learned from music intoned, “listen to the wind blowing through the trees. God is there.”

From study and reading he heard, “God is in everything. Pay attention.”

From his beating heart he knew that God was deep inside him.

He knew all this and yet could not find God. He could not summon a prayer.

Then a still, small voice said, “I am in your question.”

And he smiled and walked on and, knowing that was right, he whispered, “well, amen then.”

Within This Holy Quiet

Steve · February 25, 2018 · 10 Comments

leaf — Leaf in the Meramec River. SJG photo.

Sometimes, the quiet we seek is not mere silence. Rather, it is silence enough to hear a whisper, the voice of God calling out to us in the sounds of the earth. For this sunny, warming Sunday morning, I offer a poem about what we can hear if we dare silence ourselves.

Within this holy quiet
I hear your word in the wind
blowing through trees
in the caw caw caw of crows
(always three times, it seems)
in the rat-a-tat-tat of a singular distant woodpecker
in the slap of water against a mid-stream rock
at the bottom of the hill.

The Creative Spirit: The Human Necessity of ‘Being Moved’

Steve · August 27, 2017 · 8 Comments

Over the past week, I have been reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’ve seen the B movies and a very good theatrical version years ago at the St. Louis Repertory Theatre, but I’ve never read the book. It was assigned reading this year for all the first-year students at the university where I work, so I thought I would join the throng of readers.

We all read books, poems and sacred texts with different mindsets and personal histories, of course, so these words purposefully and creatively strung together by the authors affect each person differently. As regular readers of my blog no doubt know, I write often on the idea of paying attention to the world around us, of leaving ourselves open to being moved by the things in our lives and, ultimately, by the looming presence of God. So I was delighted to read this passage below, spoken by Dr. Frankenstein about his hike through the woods and mountains, during which he observed the desolation after an avalanche, dangerous and deep ravines, “somber” pines, the distant valley with mist rising off the river and the mountain summits shrouded in clouds. In short, he was paying attention and was deeply aware of the human necessity of being moved. He says: