Lines from a Notebook...from 5/1/06
My life is all one, and so this book is all one:
Christ, friends, work, art, all of it comes here
To be arranged according to the passage of days
And the flow of ink from ferule, filament or nib.
(But) Like too many modern men I sat down
To write what in my soul and physical motions
Speaks to or may be understood by any man,
And find instead pouring from my mouth
Babbling praise of the tools I use,
Praise of the capacity in man to write at all,
And turn nothing of my face to Him
Who deigned to beg, and will, I ever stress,
Delight in every twist of brush
His wished for love employs,
But that the work be finished.
the darkness crept into my eyes like blue wash
Floats through a clear warm water not itself,
Slowly, so that when I return to light I see and wonder
How I could have seen otherwise.
Christ, friends, work, art, all of it comes here
To be arranged according to the passage of days
And the flow of ink from ferule, filament or nib.
(But) Like too many modern men I sat down
To write what in my soul and physical motions
Speaks to or may be understood by any man,
And find instead pouring from my mouth
Babbling praise of the tools I use,
Praise of the capacity in man to write at all,
And turn nothing of my face to Him
Who deigned to beg, and will, I ever stress,
Delight in every twist of brush
His wished for love employs,
But that the work be finished.
the darkness crept into my eyes like blue wash
Floats through a clear warm water not itself,
Slowly, so that when I return to light I see and wonder
How I could have seen otherwise.