There's part of him that sighs
The Fourth of each July
At all the noise and fuss
Which feels superfluous.
The hymns and songs of praise,
The pageants and parades,
The patriotic quirks,
The garish fireworks.
The old red, white, and blue
We pledge allegiance to
Seems like some graven god,
Uncivilized and odd.
But then gunpowder reek
Blows across his cheek.
Despite his squinted eyes
His blood begins to rise.
His courage pulls him towards
Imaginary swords
The musket in his mind
Is cocked and aimed and primed.
In stubbled field or mud
He'd gladly spill his blood,
Impatient to have died
With brothers at his side.
However he may try
When sparks light up the sky
To treat it as a game
It stirs him all the same.
All this is right and fair,
For every man should bear
In part, if not in whole,
A patriotic soul.
Category Archives: Poetry
The Stag in the Woods
The naked eye—
Do you see him, antlered there,
Part shadow and part briar,
His foreleg feeling out the air,
Cautious, stepping, tense as wire,
Dappled, out into the glade?
The magnifying glass—
Look, his nostrils storm with ticks
And blackflies lash his eyelids—
Mangy haunches, antlers split,
Limping, fleetness checked by pallid
Illness barely kept at bay.
The microscope—
Insect bodies glow like naves
With stained glass in their chapels,
While microbes deck the cloistered caves,
A riot spotted, prismed, dappled—
Beauty even in decay.
Have You Seen This Book?
The spine is black with white or yellow letters
That have those little hands and feet called “serifs.”
About the height of a new pencil
And the width of my index finger,
It has a hammer on the cover
And the word “Poetry” in the title…
No? I’ll have to ask another poem then.
Disney’s Magic Kingdom
Atop a pirate ship rides Peter Pan
All spring and dance and Dionysian grin.
"This happy place is Never Never Land,
Where time is not and youth has always been,
"Where prince and princess ever after live,
While paper dragons ever after roar
Outside the walls, where fairy spirits give
You all your heart sought after evermore."
What deed the hero's meant to do, he does,
The villain's laugh turns daily to dismay.
And nothing is that wasn't what it was
The day before the day before today.
It can't be otherwise. A place where real
Things happen is a place where real things end.
The costumes, props, and sets are all ideal,
But time is kept at bay. The walls are thin.
The Reading Mother
by Strickland Gillian
I had a mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,
“Blackbirds” stowed in the hold beneath
I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.
I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Celert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness blent with his final breath.
I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-
Stories that stir with an upward touch,
Oh, that each mother of boys were such.
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be —
I had a Mother who read to me.
More Advent poetry
God tries on skin
by Marjorie Maddox Phifer
Once, he stretched skin over spirit
like a rubber glove,
aligning trinity with bone,
twining through veins
until deity square-knotted flesh.
In a whirlwind spin
he shrank to the size of a zygote,
bobbed in a womb warm as Galilee’s shore.
In the dark,
he brushed up on Hebrew,
practiced his crawl.
After months scrunched in a circle,
he burst through his cellophane sac,
bloodied the teen legs
spread on the straw.
In his first breath
he inhaled the sweat
of Romans casting lots,
sniffed the wine mixed with gall.
Required Christmas Reading
Les Murray’s “Animal Nativity”
The Iliad of peace began
when this girl agreed.
Now goats in trees, fish in the valley
suddenly feel vivid.
Swallows flit in the stable as if
a hatching of their kind,
turned human, cried in the manger
showing the hunger-diamond.
Cattle are content that this calf
must come in human form.
Spiders discern a water-walker.
Even humans will sense the lamb,
He who frees from the old poem
turtle-dove and snake,
who gets death forgiven
who puts the apple back.
Dogs, less enslaved but as starving
as the poorest human there,
crouch, agog at a crux of presence
remembered as a star.
O Father You are Sovereign
Like most hymns, this by Margaret Clarkson doesn’t make for great reading by itself:
1 O Father, you are sovereign
in all the worlds you made;
your mighty word was spoken,
and light and life obeyed.
Your voice commands the seasons
and bounds the ocean’s shore,
sets stars within their courses
and stills the tempest’s roar.
2 O Father, you are sovereign
in all affairs of man;
no pow’rs of death or darkness
can thwart your perfect plan.
All chance and change transcending,
supreme in time and space,
you hold your trusting children
secure in your embrace.
3 O Father, you are sovereign,
the Lord of human pain,
transmuting earthly sorrows
to gold of heav’nly gain.
All evil overruling,
as none but Conqu’ror could,
your love pursues its purpose–
our souls’ eternal good.
4 O Father, you are sovereign!
We see you dimly now,
but soon before your triumph
earth’s ev’ry knee shall bow.
With this glad hope before us,
our faith springs up anew:
our sovereign Lord and Savior,
we trust and worship you!
There is one line, however, that jumped out at me as I sang this in church a few months ago. I put it in bold above. “Chance” and “change” make a nice pair, but combined with the syllables of “transcending,” it’s quite arresting. (I might alter is to “All change and chance transcending” to make it less of a tongue-twister. But sometimes tongues need to be twisted.)
I also like the use of “transmuting” in the third stanza. There’s not much science, pseudo or otherwise, in hymns. Although I think the language of hymns should be drawn from the Bible, it would be fun to sing about quarks and leptons occasionally.
A Man Looks Forward
Invisible, yet active, headless, crowned,
A microscopic devil holds us bound
Inside our homes, aflush with fear
And fever, waiting for the axe.
We dread as much the atmosphere
Of quiet thought as brash attacks,
For contemplation shows us that the soul
Is damaged. Splendid, surely, but not whole.
In lieu of sackcloth, ghostly masks are wrapped
Around our mouths as, gasping, we adapt
To quarantine, these forty days
Of washing, fasting, sacrifice.
Each of us in our closet prays,
Raw fingers gripping in a vice
The subtle heart that brought us to this end
We knew would come, but could not comprehend.
Is there no mercy tipping heaven’s scale?
If viruses and panic cause travail,
They further make us look inside
Ourselves, undrape the sheeted mind,
And recognize the gods we tried
To curry favor with are blind.
The firmament above burns brilliantly
When Easter dawns. Oh, give us eyes to see!
A Man Panics Sensibly
Put on your best clothes
for the end of the world.
Wear mohair and gold
watches. A match
or two of tennis
wouldn’t be amiss
at the end of the world.
Plant a vegetable.
Fill a table to the edge
with dishes that draw
exhalations of thanks.
Pray. Play. Work. Eat.
Go to sleep asprawl
unlike a cowed goat.
For us humans being
at the end of the world
is the best time of all.
Christian Leithart 