Steven's Poetry/Writing: March 2003 Archives

Maggie, Lock the Door:Three Views

I
That girl has life in her
oh yes, in the sparks in those eyes.

Witness to the endless
chain of human self-calamity
her heart is held in holy love,
love that embraces in its whiteness,
that warms in its purity.
We're through with lies
and yet we live one more
asking ourselves not to see it.

II
One long day of noneck monsters
and moving from sterility to
futility among the enemy,

Oh, you stand there resplendent
in white, fierce heart
spoken--now the only words.

III

White the cross
that woman has life in her.

No, she does not,
a simple removal turns a life
into a lie
and she has seen the world
of lies and longs
to see the end of them all--

an end to pain,
a birth from pain, a promise
of deliverance
in white. Oh the putrid smell
of mendacity
fills this room, drags her
white dress and all
to the edge of who she is and
a heart stands
arrayed and open lively

and bright. Oh yes,
that body has life in it
and longs for life
as what body does not no matter
what we say?

And when our door closes
will we see what
we love or what we would destroy?

© 2003 Steven Riddle

Winter White
suggested by a title by Zelazny and Ellison

Our snow has wings.

When in winter's worst days
the temperatures plunge to sixty
or below, and all the fields and lawns
are burnt brown from lack of sun
and water--our snowfalls.

It falls in flocks and flurries.
It falls with the whiteness of winters.
It falls in feathers and frail bird bones,
and it lands lightly as its northern brother.

It lingers in patchy whiteness,
on the ground and in the trees, and
then when spring's wanton warmth
beckons, it too dissolves and all but vanishes.

© 2003 Steven Riddle

Woodstorks

Black heads
bobbing and swaying
now here and now
under the water.

Feathers in a disarraay
blown apart by the
mysterious storms that
seem to buffet them

as they walk. Not the bird
I would choose to be
the symbol of what I hold
dear, and yet

for all their limbs-askew
awkwardness, for their
vulture-headed hideousness
I hold these visitors

dear, nearly holy
a gift that shows me

bright and beautiful
bold and brittle
awkward and alien
Loving God made us all.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

Background: The Oriskany Sandstone is a huge rock formation that crops out in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. In some places it is highly fossiliferous. In Virginia these fossils consist almost entirely of "gaps" or holes in the rock called molds.

Oriskany Sandstone

This yellow once-beach rises at the crest
of an inland hill, reminder of waves
and storms reduced to grains and lines and caves
that once were living clams. These hollows pressed
tight by passing years, remind us
now of how the sea swept beaches clean and
forced the living water down through sand
that human feet had never known and rose
to swirl away again, new grains on old
each leaving traces in the lines that form
whisper-thin beds that mean years have worn
away. No shells for these fossils, these molds
are now empty, the wash of years having
wasted away.

                  We stand on the roadside
staring blankly at this beach where no wash
moves sand, no live sea thing is left to cling
to rocks against the battering assault of tide
and briny spray. And yet--these rocks do live
if you hear past hollowing years and dive
into the pulse that drives the ocean depths.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

Jesus Laughing

Do you suppose at Cana Jesus frowned
at all the guests? Scowled at all the requests
from host and hostess, mother and all? Droned
endlessly about Himself and suggested
ways each person could improve his life and
then stormed away like a prima donna
when they were far too drunk to understand
a word He said? Or do you think he laughed
and sang and wished the couple joy, and ate
and danced and showed all there how to live well?

Do you suppose he stood away, now quiet
distant and removed? Or did Jesus tell
a joke and talk to everyone?

© 2002 Steven Riddle

Elijah

It took you so long
to hear the still small
voice that had been speaking
to you from the beginning.

To travel through fire
and Earthquake
to face Ahab and worse yet
Jezebel, we know the
end of it.

When you stood before
the prophets of Ba'al
did doubt assail you?
Did you tremble
in the deep fear
of what if?

Yet you soaked that wood,
not once, nor twice
but three times,
letting it soak in--
a new lesson in trust.

You knew in your
marrow God could not
abandon those He
so loved.

Teach me.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

Chanterelles

When I first learned of them
they were a form of poetry,
a small French song.

          Indeed, they are.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

Haiku al Fresco (since I can't be)

These flags fluttering
like thick water over thin
rocks, speak with the wind.

A small miracle
heron and lizard in sun
side by side, at ease.

We write haiku to
be flowers, edelweiss on
less than alpine slopes.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

Breath of the Sea

The hope I hang onto
as I sit here so distant
from anything natural
is the scent of the sea
the shimmer of sun
on thin water sinking
into sand, the hop
of sandpiper, the call
of gulls, the sussuration
of the waves as they
return to their watery
vault. Oh, I hope
they will not be
drowned by the still
low drone of the human
buzz. How I hope
I can hold on
and hear again
the conversation
of the sea and sky
of sand and air,
the song of salt
and wave spume.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

Reminders
Bauhaus monument
to utilitarian bad taste,
buff concrete and rebar,
these block buildings
dot our landscape
boldly declaring
our independence
from all bounding
principles, making
our formal offering
to the only God
we acknowledge--
call it what we will--
liberty, equality,
beauty, personality--
it all becomes the same--
ourselves.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

from 31 Poems for 31 Days

VIII
Night shattered
by the noise of the first
two bare twigs counting out
the time of the breathing
wind.

IX
Apples, the last and first
of the season,
the taste of that last
bee-buzzed cider.

X
All that isn't
begins to come together
the promises of vacant days
thee abandonment of beach umbrellas

XI
Ask where and who and why
and kick the leaves as
they die and fall and float
and drift and fill
the fields and choke the
streets with color.

XII
I have seen the birds
fail. I do not hear
the chirp of frogs
and I know I am not home.

XIII
Turn me around and I am the end,
Read me as I am and I am the end.
Mute, imperfect, and prime as my mirror.

XIV
Full fire the color flashes
destroying all illusion
of lingering summer
the illness has come upon
the year

XV
Clap hands, dance
and sound the tambourine,
sing your voice back
into its birth,
join in making all things new
by coming to birth
yourself.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

You can see that the punctuation is still crude and the definition of some of the days not quite there--but I had dismissed this handful of trivia some time ago and was surprised at how fresh it seemed this morning.

Your speech, your song,
winds words breathed with arctic
breath that burns like tropic sun.

You have convicted me with the lies
I tell others and acquitted me in my
sin, freely without cost

but at such great cost I cannot
bear it--freely as water in a well
costly as a fragrant oil or

frankincense purging all
impurity left behind and asking
God to hear us all

and bate that winter's breath
that arctic tropic sun that burns
with such cold beam

O my seigneur

© 2003 Steven Riddle

Serenity Wake

The vortex that passes where she walks
unstirs the vibrations of the air,
undoes the coils of conspiracy
untwists the lies that have woven so thick
a web on lives all around.

She passes scentless, like a dream
of roses--color and light and the promise
of a gentle aroma--and yet
nothing. She is precious.

© 2003 Steven Riddle

What I See When God Looks at Me

When His pale eye searches me
a mourning light wings a little way
from heart to spirit, proud night
stars unfurled in the giant space
that perfects me, wink out and then
glare with brilliance that makes
translucent bones that throb in His
agony. That beam clarifies the eye
so that once seen blue oceans
turn under the cloudlit sky to
pale ochre, sunset rouged
and back again with jeweled
intensity that dazzles not just
the eye, but every sense is subdued
renewed, made over again so that
things without scent now writhe
with fragrance--silent spaces
are filled with the sounds of His
voice, salt-burned tongue can
taste light, sense-worn skin
wears air as bright as rainbow droplets.
What have You asked of me
for all that You are? Where have
you hidden my heart? Will the
years shyly drop away until
unclothed I stand in the center
of Your glorious eye wearing the Glory
you wreathe me in, the patina of spilled
blood so red it is white?

© 2003 Steven Riddle