Posted on by EAT

i found God

Photos of Aylan Kurdi, the 3 year old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Bodrum, Turkey, have haunted my thoughts for several weeks now.

i found God

cradled in the pensive palms of earth,
his head rocked slightly in the gentle surge,
caressed by waves that murmured quiet prayers;
his arms lay pale and tranquil at his side,
his legs pulled partly up as if in sleep—
perhaps he slept, but he would never wake.

eyelids lightly closed on sunken dreams,
a cherub cheek lay pressed against dark sands;
and clothes that only hours before were filled
with flames of life and curiosity
now covered only stillness like a bruise,
a shroud still dripping fathoms’ worth of rheum.

peace was on his brow, immeasurable—
such contrast to the violence of his plight;
what circumstance would bring a child here
curled sleeping cold and graying on the shore,
his shrieks of laughter silenced to a sigh
caught strangled in the throats of passersby?

this is God, i thought, in all his glory—
we praise with words his name, then turn and plunge
him flailing in the dark of angry seas
until his strength plays out and every breath
is filled with brine—and sudden quietude—
just flotsam on the altars of the deep.

yes—i found God on the beach today,
the seagulls circled high above his head
and cried their long and steady mournful calls;
the people saw him and they knelt in prayer,
hands clutching at their heaving, hollowed breasts,
all hope of penance ripped from out their souls.

If fatherhood has given me anything, it is an incredible pain in my chest at the sight of a dead, abused or impoverished child. I see the eyes of my baby son in the face of every child. I’ve heard it said that God is revealed in the face of our children, in their innocence, love and wonder. If this is true, then there is no hope of salvation for any of us, for we are all responsible and we all bear the shame of such atrocities.

Posted on by EAT

Aural Borealis

This is my 14th trisect, by far the most challenging of them all for me. First the poem, then some thoughts.

Aural Borealis

Vibration

Her voice began in a furnace where blinding flashes of light
arced through scraps of metal until they swirled in a pool
of fiery molten fluid, drawn through a running cast
to red hot beams that slowly dimmed to a charcoal gray.

Her voice remained congealed within those cold gray billets
until at last they were moved once more into the fire,
reheated to a yellow that rivaled an alpine sunrise
then rolled into burning coils of thick unfinished wire.

Her voice emerged like a mist—heavy, cold and gray—
clanging anemic pangs with every shift and shock,
until it was drawn through the eyes of a series of shrinking dies
and thinned into tensile threads of spidery, silvery hue.

Her voice awakened at last, a vivid reverberation
borne aloft on the wind to dance over rolling hills,
chasséing amid the bunchgrass, jetéing through the sagebrush,
and pirouetting through the air with flying seeds.
 

Resonance

Her frame was born in the grip of weathered, ancestral hands,
leveled against the kill, for when the shaft was flown,
the hunter’s ears were piqued by a sound that yet remained,
inspiring him to hunt for a means to play the same.

Her frame took shape in the calloused hands of inspiration,
coaxed into living form from scraps of wood and skin
by ancient artisans who notched imagination
in ornamental bows that flew but melodies.

Her frame evolved in marble halls that harbored kings,
scales and chords expanding until resistance formed
a pillar to hold against the pull of hallowed strains
and serpentine harmonic curves to relieve the same.

Her frame outgrew the very hands that gave it being,
bursting forth a will that of its own accord
would volley out barrages of elegance and meaning
on airs reechoed over undulating lands.
 

Serenade

Her breath is a wind that brushes gently through the desert,
stirring the stained glass petals of Venus’ looking glass,
exciting wild bergamot atop green towers,
and swaying deep-throated harebells lightly on their stems.

Her hum is a feathery rain that tickles arid sands,
drifting down from downy skies until all ears
relax for a moment from the wary, watchful strain
that haunts and harries every living thing through life.

Her chant is the purl of a spring high up a narrow canyon,
wild mint and licorice gathered round the edge
of small, translucent pools wherein the heavens ripple
impressionist renditions of hawk and thunderhead.

Her call is a shower of light that streams over emptiness,
distant mountaintops and nearby shrubby hills
dissolved into a silhouette that circles round
beneath the shimmering flow of relativity.

The inspiration behind this piece is two wind harps, both conceptualized and created by New Mexico resident Bill Neely. Most people know the wind harp as a wide, narrow box with a few strings upon which one may close a window in order to force air past the strings. These two harps, however, are shaped like the concert harp and larger than life. The first, referred to by its sculptor simply as “the NFO windharp,” stands 20 feet tall and weighs 1600lbs. The second, called “Tempest Song,” was commissioned by the owners of the now defunct Traditions shopping center about smack in the middle of New Mexico and weighs in at 3000lbs at 24 feet in height.

“Tempest Song” was the first of the two wind harps I chanced to visit, in 2002, actually driving out to New Mexico to see and listen to this living, musical instrument after stumbling across some information about it online. The experience was somewhat ruined by noise from the close proximity of Interstate 25. Upon returning home, I sent its creator an email along with a copy of “Aeolian Strains,” a poem inspired by my visit, and I was invited to visit the first of the two wind harps on his private property the next time I made it out that way. I made it a point to take him up on this offer two years later, spending a night under the soundboard of this 20 foot harp—a wonderful and somehow enlightening experience. It has ever since been my intention to try to write a poem worthy of that first harp, remembering that night under the stars listening to her sing.