Wash to Gray
Gray horizons of wonder
The flotilla scarcely seen for the mist,
Adrift scarcely attended, regarded by sorrow,
Surely attended by age serving the morrow,
Each bark built for borrow,
Enduring the spirits of jealousy hissed,
Ensues to array and a glow as if kissed.
I stand ashore upon the dock which under counsel I have built
Out of readings, writings, thinkings, not many talkings.
In the gardens of the gifted ones I make my walkings.
Words said too soon afflict things with a wilt.
Thoughts hold best to treasure till a ripening is felt.
Logic, proof, surety, and such dockings
Make a place to secure my bark in the rockings
Of the wakes of restless things.
I defend the footings and posts—the planks and all things hard
As my bark must be secured for my humble self to board.
The barks are stout and seaworthy,
Sustaining inward softness in a manner toward
The comfort in reward to servants of the Lord
Who soon will set their sails to the glories of the sea.
Gray wash of wrinkled wish
Apocalyptic artist draws a blind man—
Dark glasses—
Head held high—
Cane sweeping—
Flying saucer overhead beaming a beam—
Blind man half way up—
Unaware.
Does there lurk an unseen puppeteer?
What the trap of ignorance?
Of complacency?
Of stupidity?
Dare we laugh when we are next?
Can we decide between heaven and hell?
Should we have ever lingered in a beam?
Do our feet not love the dust of good ol’ earth?
Does our mindset wander like a cloud?
Is human creed the closest thing to truth?
Is our captured prey forever ours half way?—
Frozen in eternal moment as in a Grecian urn?
Is our elegy a lament that in the end we always fail?
Is our collective effort a stone forbidden the funnel’s lip?
Evidential Gray
How could you have known, prophet,
That the differentiator
Was to stand
In perfect harmony
With the hidden true
Whose false
Was the sea to be diked?
Nevertheless, the angel knew.
Sunday Morning Gray, 1915
Bible students moil musings to monthly publication
Beginning in the year of birth of a poet-to-be of note
Who grows up attentive to the proclamations.
Sackcloth and introspection gird the proclaimers of the happy year
As heaven remains blue above and earth is turning red once again,
The wide waters across drawing a claim of courage against look-the-other-way.
Mr. Wallace Stevens laudably notices the retreating optimism
And suggests pen-to-paper that Sunday morning worship time
Relaxes sans paradise.
Those weighing words against events— like scientists earning their pay—
Scratching in sackcloth—jostle their theory by inspection—
Clarification then Hooray!
Mr. Carl Sagan later notices the resurgence of growth defying
The privation of the predicted and proclaimed world’s end,
Perplexed at how people would follow a failed lead.
Bestirred by strong misreadings,
Had anxieties influenced
Abiding critiques?
Had the notice broadened out to the kindred espials of seven times
Over a banded stump and seventy weeks from a going forth,
Would the jury have seen the pattern?
Trouble had arisen
As scholars hustled their dates.
What did the Kingdom say?
A run of numbers had encountered overreaching years.
—But only by a few—If the portents stemmed from humans,
How so close? If from God, how a miss?
Mr. Kepler, bothered as circular models kept missing,
—By a few—obliged us with an elliptical model
Which hit with abandonment of popular view.
After shedding sackcloth, bothered by what others passed beside,
The students stopped, looked, listened, found, and abridged
What others might have serviced had they seen the need to try.
Clouds and long-suffering gird the Lord Yahweh
As he abides—though hated—his enemy’s lies,
Serving in his guarded way rations of his mysteries.
An active enemy must not be overlooked—
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
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