Sonata

"Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alteration of sound and silence there would be no rhythm."

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

The grave is empty.

Darkness, half lit by the blurred moon,

Chilled by the sea, the fog waiting,

The enthralled stars, nearly lost,

Searching for another earth,

The dark soil waiting for the seed.

Chaos-night.

The memory of a fireplace,

Warmth with music

Undulating arias

Like small birds falling into darkness.

Cold rain

Driving against my window.

Muffled music and dreams of water,

And another grave.

Rocky Shore

Photograph: "Rocky Shore" by Sonja Bingan

The new man lives in a world that is always being created and renewed.  

He lives in this realm of renewal and creation.  He lives in life.   

Thomas Merton

ancient lake

spirit of

glacier,

waves recede

and the bones of fish

swim

to summer 

shallows.

day follows day;

sharp edges

blunt

to anger,

to blue

sky

until arise

souls, smooth

and wise.

risk

"Sooner or later . . . we have to risk everything in order to gain everything. We have to gamble on the invisible and risk all that we can see and taste and feel.” Thomas Merton

Soft autumn breezes,

hills: brown, blue, violet - black

moving to nothing.

risk it all, keep no-

thing in your hand; grasp thin air

and take everything.

taste your fears, salt-tears

sting your eyes; glare like the sun-

set on the last day.

questions

Destruction in Homs, Syria 2012

“While I am asking questions which You do not answer, You ask me a question which is so simple that I cannot answer. I do not even understand the question.”  Thomas Merton
 
“In distress you called and I rescued you; I answered you in secret with thunder.” Psalm 81: 8

City in rubble,

walls exposed,

shattered windows,

shards

rudely ripping

`children

waking

the dead

searching

for any good reason

to live.

They ask

questions

which you do not

answer.

I want to understand

your master-plan

but you speak

in secret

in whispers of

thunder.

Victims of Bashar al Assad in Homs, 2012

Spider Web

The spider web drifts,

abandoned, useless,

high in the window 

bright in the setting sun,

close to a world in motion.

Not immersed in the savage flow,

it is protected from wild birds 

that caw in the swaying tree

peering down

at creatures bound to solid, 

unmoving ground.

Their motion 

is sacred motion,

but the web just aimlessly stirs

in an inner breeze 

always on the edge 

of the living sea

held fast by stasis 

of gravity.