Sacred

Something must be sacred.

Otherwise, it’s all noise –

A blurry static lapsing into black.

Something must be held up

Beyond the reach of the cynical mind

Where sun and soul can pay tribute –

Body tremble with fear and love.

How do we know what to worship?

We have seen through so much.

So many gods put out to pasture –

Diluted beyond recognition –

Castrated into metaphors.

What have we left standing?

Some vague hope of higher things;

Some small reverence for children;

Precious little precious else.

We need to fill the darkness again –

With wonders if not with terrors –

Before we lose that inward self

That long-dead mystics called the soul,

Which we, too grown for such a word,

Might called “humanity” –

Or whatever we like.

But call it something.

Feed it something, too.

Or find yourself alone,

On the black edge of everything,

Clinging hopelessly to nothing –

Nothing in your heart but blood.

The Well

 

The world gives in its bounty,

And most of it’s unseen:

Mute flowers blooming in an empty wood;

The golden fever of the sunrise hills

When all are still abed, asleep, adream,

But dreaming nothing quite as bold as life.

We only skim the surface,

Glimpsing, here and there,

That deep well of beauty above which we live.

The world gives endlessly, and we receive

Haphazardly at best, in stolen hours,

Half-guessing what a wealth of world we miss,

And all is as it should be.  Let us waste

Innumerable wonders while we doze –

Waking, in the day’s last light, to find

A cardinal has alighted, or a ray

Of errant sun has gilded something gray;

And we’ll smile drowsily, and stretch, and rise,

Content to know the dawn will come with more,

Flowing unstinting from an endless store.