Look. Sometimes, you decide to end the line with a ridiculous word because it fits the sense. And then you’re stuck for a ridiculous rhyme, so you look in the rhyming dictionary and find a word you’ve never seen, but you like it. So you look it up in the OED and–miracle of miracles–it fits the sense perfectly. So even though you usually try not to drop fifty-cent words in these things, you use it. It means “made of gold and ivory.”

I stumbled on the journey, Lord: You caught me
across the shins.  You always do.  I try
to carry out the precepts you have taught me—
I always fail.  Here in the dust I lie
beside my Lord, my God, my stumbling block,
where he will feed me honey from the rock.

And when he lifts me up as he has promised
it will be but to set me on himself,
for all the myriad mansions of our solace
in his pierced side have their foundations delved.
Our home is built on you, O cornerstone,
and someday I will rest on you alone.

And we shall be like you, be adamantine.
Though we are dust and unto dust return
you raise us up again chryselephantine
with gold that in the furnace did not burn.
‘Til then, O Christ, be dust with my dust here;
though I have fallen, Lord, be ever near.  Amen.

Crystalline Gold By Unknown author – Enhanced from resourcescommittee.house.gov/subcommittees/emr/usgsweb/photogallery/ (resourcescommittee.house.gov/subcommittees/emr/usgsweb/photogallery/images/Gold%203_jpg.jpg) [via Wayback Machine], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38780

Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.
—John 14:15-21

What is the word for us except its keeping?
No ornamented columns to a facade
but piers sunk deep into the earth and deeper
until they strike the bedrock of our God.

And who can know the length of such a burrow?
The blind worm does not work by plan and chart
but digs ‘til all he does becomes a furrow.
As seeds spring up behind, he finds God’s heart.

So then I know this road but in the walking;
I only know my loves in loving them.
What does it matter that I walk in darkness?
This is the way to New Jerusalem.

We hold your word, a mystery unfolding,
and we unfold ourselves to its commands.
This road can lead me nowhere but your holding;
I walk the darkness cupped within your hands.

Vincent van Gogh – Wheatfield with crows – Google Art Project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22621755

You bade me hold my tongue, but I have spoken,
have wrenched the desert open at the seams
when I should not.  This silence I have broken,
and like the stone it pours out living streams.

I grumbled at the working of your mercy
and envied the contentment of the dead.
I cried out to you living, hungry, thirsty:
You made the waters flow and sent the bread.

And yet, O God, you led me to this desert
as you will lead me through the vale of gloom.
I know that even there I shall be sheltered;
then let me see you make this desert bloom.

Though I break faith as easily as silence,
you never once have broken faith with me,
for never have you sworn this road was trialless,
yet ever here beside me you shall be.

Oh, someday, maybe, I will learn to listen,
to wait for you in trust and not to speak,
yet when the sun and all the dead have risen
we’ll shout your praise from every mountain peak.

The iris burns blue flame beside the door,
but I have seen this miracle before.

The daffodils unfurl above the grass;
in truth, I hardly notice as I pass.

The amaryllis spreads its scarlet wide;
I have no echo blooming deep inside.

The tulip opens empty to the sky,
and so do I, my God, and so do I.

This is a picture of the Semper Augustus. This tulip is famous for being the most expensive tulip sold during the tulipomania in the Netherlands in the 17th century.By Unknown artist – Norton Simon Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=199488

Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.
—John 14:6

You are the stumbling midnight road;
you are the valley ’round its bend
whose noon with shadows overflowed.
You are the sunrise at its end.

You are the road to Calvary,
and at its end, a hill you rise.
You are the crosses, one, two, three.
You are the light that fills the skies.

You are the way we walk upon;
you are the truth that draws our steps.
You are the life that springs at dawn
up from the chasm of our deaths.

Glory to you, O risen Christ,
glory to brighten all that’s past.
Shine out, O way, O truth, O life,
that we may walk in light at last.

Sunrise over Benmore Range, New Zealand By Michal Klajban – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77978517

As for you, o holy brothers: the Lord came to send this fire on the earth, and he longs for it to burn boundlessly. I’m not so spiritually conceited as to presume that in feeding that fire I’ll add any heat to your own ragingly hot resolve. No. I do it so that you’ll influence the next generation more powerfully if you teach not by the dead sound of words but by your own living example, backed up by the advice of the best and most ancient elders.

Until now I’ve been tossed all around in a treacherous storm. Now it’s up to the spiritual breeze of your prayers to sweep me into the safe harbor of silence.

–John Cassian, The Conferences, 24.26.19, tr. Jamie Kreiner

Though I have written reams and reams of words
as here-and-gone-again as morning dew,
they yield no thirty-fold and house no birds.
Empty of all unless they’re full of you,
these lines are painted signs to say I YEARN,
just so much kindling, only fit to burn.

Set them aflame, O God, and let them rise
as incense disappearing in the air—
sweet savor, and man’s smudge against the skies,
and then a breeze, and they were never there.
But still you hold them in your memory
where they are burning in eternity.

O God, come to my aid; O Lord, make haste
to help me: All the noisiness of flame
is rushing wind and cracking wood laid waste,
but burned to embers then they blaze your name
in steadfast silence.  Take from me my word
and give me that the formless void first heard

and let it shape me, let it make me light
and heat as I am burned but not consumed
where there is no more darkness, no more night,
and flame is feather for a Spirit plumed
to shelter us beneath her fiery breast.
In burning silence may we find our rest.  Amen.

Magdalene with the Smoking Flame (c. 1640). Georges de La Tour (1593–1652) Oil on canvas, 117 x 92 cm (46 x 36.2 in). Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8872704

Let all the earth cry out to God with joy:
the hungry grasses pleading through the soil,
and, reaching further, flowers seeking sky
to consummate and wither by and by,
then concentrate their forces in the seed.
Let them cry out to heaven in their need.

Let all the earth, the soil itself, cry out.
The spring rains now, but soon is summer’s drought
when roots dig down to mine the ground for life
and leaves unfurl to a sky with sunlight rife.
All this, all this they draw into the seed,
the sun and rain God sends them for their need.

Cry out, O earth, ‘til winter silence comes.
Leaf falls, frost falls, snow falls and benumbs
all that still lives and all that silent sleeps,
and in that rest the seed its spring hope keeps
though it fell first.  Lie fearless there, O seed.
Though you are dumb, the good God hears your need.

Let all the earth cry out to God with joy,
with joy, though it be agony and toil,
the breaking and the hungry upward thrust
as living water courses through your dust.
This was the end of hoping, little seed;
this is new life. Cry out in joy your need.

Growing sprout in sand– By Evan Kirby evankirby2 – https://unsplash.com/photos/jl8x6XpE8Y4Image at the Wayback MachineGallery at the Wayback Machine, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61639164

So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and robbers,
but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy;
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
—John 10:1-10

All we, like sheep, had gone astray,
grown fangs and hunted after prey.
As if a lamb took up the sword,
so far we wandered from our Lord,
for we have followed after thieves
and, oh, our shepherd grieves, he grieves.

So he has clad himself in wool,
the very wolves of hell to fool.
They close their jaws upon the lamb
and swallow down the Great I AM;
now death devouring him shall die
and dawn shall break at last on high.

And in that morning we shall see
the wolves we had begun to be,
cast off the shaggy, ash-gray pelt,
and let him clothe us with himself
who bore our wool to be with us.
He will divinely gild our dust.

One hand on earth and one on heav’n,
he draws all things together then,
and when our winters all shall pass
the wolves shall turn and browse on grass.
Then wolf and lamb at last shall be
one springtime flock eternally.

Anton Mauve – Heide te Laren – http://www.rijksmuseum.nl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2606315

Let there be sunshine. Let there be silent rest
within my head that can’t stand silences.
Let there be peace in my unquiet breast
and, too, an end to my defiances,
my closed and empty fists slack at my sides
until the feast is laid upon the table.
Let there come forth from in me all that hides;
let there be welcome for it, make me able
to welcome what I cannot stand to see—
there in the bright sun let it take its place—
to bid it sit and break the bread with me
and learn to bless its strange, unlovely face
and know myself the enemy I bless,
the thief who’s broken into quiet places.
Let there be sunshine there. Let there be rest.
Let there be room for thieves within your graces,
there where we long to go though we are strangers
to you and to each other and ourselves.
Let there be somewhere free from death and dangers,
where peace comes as the dew and overvelvets
and all is still, and stillness is alive.
If this exists, let us someday arrive.

A meadow with dew in the morning By MrBenjo – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=153645408

Cuccu cuccu
Wel singes þu cuccu
ne swik þu nauer nu
—“Sumer is icumen in”

What follows was spurred, first of all, by reading a footnote to an essay on the medieval English lyric “Sumer is icumen in,” on the use of “sumer” to mean “April,” not “summer.” It was spurred secondly by listening to “Sumer is icumen in” on YouTube and being struck especially by the lines quoted above: “Well singest thou, cuckoo; stop thou never now.”

Comes April, and the mourning doves
fill all its hours with falling note,
as cottonwood on breeze-breath moves
in the bright sun, a drifting mote.
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu.

The wildflowers almost past their time
still bloom along the interstates,
and young men come into their prime,
impatient for the world that waits.
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu.

Sing, ye doves, your falling notes;
days stretch out beneath the sun.
Tireless be your mournful throats:
Keep the spring that tries to run.
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu.

Summer comes when silence falls,
storms that turn the boys to men.
Keep the spring here with your calls.
When will April come again?
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu, cuccu.

‘Sumer is icumen in’ [Whole folio] ‘Sumer is icumen in’, a vocal composition for several voices; it is probably the most celebrated piece of English medieval music. The melody is one of the earliest known examples of what is now the major mode, and the earliest example of ground-bass. Besides the English secular text ‘Sumer is icumen in’, the melody is provided with a Latin sacred one ‘Perspice Christicola’, and it is the earliest known manuscript in which both secular and sacred words are written to the same piece of music. Catalogue entry: Harley MS 978- Illustrated catalogue – Online viewer (Info), CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31452995