Denial may be satiation, premature.
Or it is mediocrity that lives in purpose.
Denial is hunger imagined to be feast days.
Denial is sleep when the word prayer escapes.
Denial is not sugar, for sugar faces reality materially.
Denial is love, misguided, hopeful, as well as blindness to
tantrums culled like tangled hair roughly combed after showering.
Love is not denial. Love is not sugar. Love is not rough or misguided, even.
Love is observed, experienced, traveled like cartographers map land mass: careful, precise, knowable,
time making.
Love is sure and shifting, like denial when missing a love companion in an unnamed quantity satellites
ping.
deleted.
inconsequence.
rambling.
simply my pleasure, considering desserts' constant surprise.
Integrity is still integrity, something more than constant.
scentless circle
oranges hopes
pensive peeling
strip by strip
emerging juice
fragrance sweet
luscious tastes
each segment
held, transfers
to lips, nutrient
soft, cold, seed,
tart from rind,
fruit becomes
itself, an orange
renewing life
strong aches
his eating one
circle, full of
joy, full sweet.
visits our deck
stays, trees in another
yard, tall loosened
thumb-white petals nail
drifts breezing blow,
wings down upon and
through our air
surrounds the dove waiting
there. Across our
globe another dove, singly
blew in tall
lands low our breeze's
petals, blossoms go,
re-secure your stays,
for now, hours-
born waters fall, rising
tears falling breezes
carry blossoms, many ones,
their scrim, sweetened
carriage, rungs in meters
stay us, a
single dove is visiting.
did Eve begin to weave
after she left the garden?
_____________________
Evening fell, walking two, their eyes
are dry and memories knew they'd come away
from beasts fresh slain, to fashion for their feet
terrain: clothes to warm their bodies now
exposed to elements both had known, yet not
so vast as this expanse; sown their bodies'
food, two wove from plants an eave to cover,
shelter heads their muffled tears, weave
new home a memory, prayers, and harvest theirs.
Years began to weave from kill{s} another
cloth-grown earth; a garment light as light
beams two, through garments three, then four; their Abel
grew within her womb, blood-born children,
Cain and Abel: blood remained their covering,
both their bodies small, and grown; weaving
mother, Eve, her children's clothes; womb-birthed
off-sprung little boys grew brothers in
sum lessened way that memory can, and strove
in grown, thrived in sun beams taut by God,
close; Still evening blessings dew our morn,
plants and waters knowing giving, gossamer
breathed our fashioned earth of woven garments,
garments, garments, garments light has pierced,
both fresh, for dying clothes our earthen hands.
33. Cantate Domino: SING TO THE LORD: Songs for voice & guitar,
composed and performed by Brian Pinner.
The songs:
1. Creator and King
2. Heart of Stone
3. Ho! Everyone Who Is Thirsty
4. Sanctus Dominus
5. Risen With Christ
6. Charity
7. The Believer's Rest
8. Ecclesiastes 12
9. Breathing After the Holy Spirit
10. Change My Heart, O God
11. — 20. The Cantate Domino songs in instrumental arrangements
total playing time: 47:20
_____________________
copyright 2003, Pinner Publications
"A printed collection of the ten songs from Cantate Domino is available from Pinner Publications. The songbook includes the melodies, texts, and guitar chords."
www.pinnerpublications.com
32. Abel's Island, written by William Steig,
is dedicated by the author: "For Jeanne", and is
A Newbery Honor Book.
First edition, 1976
Sunburst edition, 1985
Eleventh printing, 1993
Lst _ght ws tr lght.
I oe aou_, i _o o _ea e i ee.
Th tr ws mgcl, bhld_g lght.
_w thr r sws rpp_g lmbs thrgh.
ee i e ee? I ea ai_ o i, oe e i (y) e aou_.
I _ee ee u_e I o a_ ee o (y)e. i I?
Lst _ght ws tr lght.
i know sleeping is now, where we are, or would
be, were i not awake thinking of you there sleeping
down the hall, several footsteps away, near the plumbing
and every squeaky board, wooden floor, treasure under carpet.
my dear,
time, much time mornings, when Night had taken me over
years or days lived in terror, i'd awake and listen to your routine,
comforted to listen, your minutes precious, quiet as your game could be,
since you cared to be very quiet during your back house morning routine, before
kitchen with heated water and cold food cooked, a bowl of cereal, juice, and tea.
my dear,
many years, for love, I'd rise and go to the kitchen and quietly prepare clean and tidy spaces for you and our daughters, or just for you, if I heard you up. i loved you, my dear husband. Love does wonders, simply.
and i might refresh myself with early water or brushed teeth and thyroid medicine before climbing back in bed to listen to the rest of your routine, comforted in your presence, especially if the Night had let me go from terrors and I'd returned whole.
I cannot say more of years past,
of incidents, small and large, that altered
mornings and, now, nighttimes. The terrors have fled away.
i credit friends' prayers and God's Word letting the Night become safe
to bear us.
my dear,
for all the years we have stood at other ends of squeaky boards, have walked
with a wave and blown kiss, saying goodbye and have a good morning, have
entered, perturbed by an hour's harm or a puzzle wedged into our house, an ill
parent, a trip necessary for weeks on end, caring for one and then the other. So many years those were. my dear husband, Jay, you are strong and good.
i see no other way that you are anymore. you are strong and good. and God gifted
you with gifts that you wear with a humble grace anymore. i am thankful to know you, as i know you.
years ago, i was confident to give you a young, dedicated, loving, forgiving, devoted, heavenward bride—myself, body and mind and spirit. now, time has turned us, made us One become four and then a very fast three and finally Two, you and i.
You and I. We are married, my dear Jay.
And I have fumbled more than i could carry, faster than i could run, the Day bringing terrors to me. In chasing reality's Right and purity's Secrets, i fumbled us and fell way down, so far that standing up has been with a broken head, mind reactor to life noise, searching for you, husband, your natural reassurance that you have not shamed me beyond safety to recover from the fall.
my dear husband,
i cannot promise you more than is the woman you know, this wife who writes odd phrases into cuppenrood.com.; the woman who attempts to harmonize a unity that became a monopoly, like the kind of fabric that tints two colors in one passing through light. in that one i have felt buried, like an accident, like a freak of nature, and not like a treasured woman who made her entire life of loving and seeking you. did i make a mistake when i did that? did you tire of me?
our life is larger than one wife and one husband, not that we admit more into our covenant, but that we have seemed blind to the life that is a union of husband and wife, two whole people giving their lives into the world and bringing a family into society, children grown Godward, from Him and returned to Him as their days are lived.
my dear,
may we be two? once more a union that finds a high creativity, noncompetitive, in being married, these years?
i dream of barbed wire wrapping my head and face and neck and torso and hips,
sleeping like that.
Tormented conscience won't so much as tiptoe naturally to a place it is safe to be.
to ease pain
i dream of how the noose will coil above the loop, and the walks, how many beautiful walks, will find a place to release the burden of not knowing the "truth" others have, but bearing mine, finally.
tormented, conscience lay still as floorboards, breathing the basement below.
__________________
Continue, writer.
Do you know torment, really?
Use another word, find another.
You are disturbed. Your pain is eased by those imaginings,
and do you desire them, really? Do you not desire better ease?
Kindness you have and have had given to you, and you still call out
barbed wire and rope, really?
You are disturbed, conscience, for not having as much agreement
as comforts you. Mind you, your conscience is not another's and cannot be
that other person's agreement. Disturbed you, dreaming to ease sleep in foreign
forms, wake yourself to forgiveness, your own.
Free becomes what you think. Do not bind yourself or another, those who love you,
because an agreement is not met, disturbing as this is. You are not tormented. You are free, disturbed writer. Draw from love, and better, let Love draw for you the weight you know is empty for want and thirst. You sleep too much. Torment is physical where reality dwells. Put your words away. At night,
sleep, and when the day arrives, arise to meet it.
Your pain is eased, writer.
Hone your words to bless.
Tame your disturbance by
waking God's gifts, even if
sight is all that is for now.
Other gifts will rise, and as
they do, receive them how
they are, large or small, a
portion that grows more
graceful than you can see.
four three
knows the added ones
As do others, your voice
speaking ugly imperatives,
I remember; and reassert
your voice speaking urgent
as war sonar. For later one
would be minus several.
How one new, I, still, cannot
speak. Yet, remembering, I
underline every word I read
assessing each phrase meant
urgent, more sentient than war
cries well after the first day, week,
month, and years of body counts, over-
dubbed with vocal noising statistics, strategies:
four three is surrounded,
we see.
Made to wait, to stay, to patiently, slowly go, careful not to walk out of fast-stepping shoes, heel stuck in a sidewalk. Learned to wait and see who went where and why they would, then, step in with them. Learning to step aside for another and stay where stood, give seat to others, no tantrum-pinched toes: that small a gift, standing, we suppose. Learned to carry heavy stacks and heavier bags of words, carry them for the waiting time, when reading would be life. And possibly open another way for waders in rivers waiting rising fish, flies cast sleeping. Now, leaden, conditioned to shape something heavy, not even shapely, not lithe for motion. And—God's firmament!—partially formed, as caught in a graph, days coming, conditioned for grafting, awareness cut away, being dropped for the burn pile, after sweet time of papers, written, written complete and, (thrilling were) some, crumpled for tossing, their efforts laughable!
And we did laugh! In the dark, at night. When we would not remember, for the sun. Waiting every day for more air to pump blood to the necessary organs existing. Waiting every day for the better ideas to burn the feet standing, the feet put up heart-high, waiting for new conditions changing slow.
-0
+100
of worlds pointing through chalk
lines drawn one time.
pyramid and wandered through the crawling spaces into the room that is Grateful. stayed here for a long time, fiddling with the wrapping and spices.
wearied of the darkness, crawled through more corridors to the treasure room to find some golden or pretty thing to have in room. It was a thrifting day, pushing the spices and wrappings to the side, climbing out of the stone bench.
The darkness remained, but could hear rhythms and tears and work, heavy, not far away at points of crawling through. How much time has passed? What have they done with the constellations? The eye-shadow is iridescent, glowing forward, like gardens in Babylon, hanging curtains grown privacy, fragrant, glorious, unmatched, and growing, tended.
Then ended the daylight, and moving homes have the sturdiest rooms to slim in. Calcium content bones is more now than was when skin wraps complete systems, constellations small and grand-circling the heart that is now in pottery in the room returning to, with a little thrift from the larger caverns, spaces holding a ruler's ransom.
know that, if stop bones in these crawling passages, may be found to be a buried worker in this grand space. But if return to room, return the spices to my skeletal portions, ask air-filled spiders to wrap the linens over, around, be taken to the constellations' airless gardens growing memory light through the darkness, away from the star that grew Babylon's hanging, entrance.
words frame work book
kept living, Book of Life.
Lamb there?
imagination animated two inanimate objects:
First, a purple sign. In the dark, the height of it appeared to be a person. I steadied my gaze to see what it really was: inanimate object, a sign. But careful not to be mistaken twice, I did not look at it as I neared, walking past it to my car. I focused on the taller hedge and the opening to the parking lot where I could unlock surety and travel on.
Second, on the drive home, once in my neighborhood, my peripheral vision saw a small person waving its arms at me: another imagination. It was a yellow hydrant, not a small person or wagging animal. At that point I felt more tired than I cared to know, hoping that those two inanimate living sketches would be the writer in me, wrestling to put words on paper, for ignoring that work's long fires to tend a stillness that is this room's security. Somehow the imagination is projecting through a non-reality, relationship.
Some may call those two instances hallucinations, and maybe they were; but I acknowledge how they felt ever-so-slightly like company.