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95 - Holy Luck |
Holy Luck
"Good luck have those with thine honour"
Psalm 45:4 (BCP).
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96 - Holy Luck |
II. The Lucky Sad
"Blessed are those who mourn"
Flash floods of tears, torrents of them,
Erode cruel canyons, exposing
Long forgotten strata of life
Laid down in the peaceful decades:
A badlands beauty. The same sun
That decorates each day with colors
From arroyos and mesas, also shows
Every old scar and cut of lament.
Weeping washes the wounds clean
And leaves them to heal, which always
Takes an age or two. No pain
Is ugly in past tense. Under
The Mercy every hurt is a fossil
Link in the great chain of becoming.
Pick and shovel prayers often
Turn them up in valleys of death.
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97 - Holy Luck |
III. The Lucky Meek
"Blessed are the meek"
Moses, by turns raging and afraid,
Was meek under the thunderhead whiteness,
The glorious opacity of cloudy pillar.
Each cloud is meek, buffeted by winds
It changes shape but never loses
Being: not quite liquid, hardly
Solid, in medias res. Like me.
Yielding to the gusting spirit
All become what ministering angels
Command: sign, promise, portent.
Vigorous in image and color, oh, colors
Of earth pigments mixed with sun
Make hues that raise praises at dusk,
At dawn, collect storms, release
Rain, filter sun in arranged
And weather measured shadows. Sunpatches.
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98 - Holy Luck |
IV. The Lucky Hungry
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness"
Unfeathered unbelief would fall
Through the layered fullness of thermal
Updrafts like a rock; this red-tailed
Hawk drifts and slides, unhurried
Though hungry, lazily scornful
Of easy meals off carrion junk,
Expertly waiting elusive provisioned
Prey: a visible emptiness
Above an invisible plenitude.
The sun paints the Japanese
Fantail copper, etching
Feathers against the big sky
To my eye's delight, and blesses
The better-sighted bird with a shaft
Of light that targets a rattler
In a Genesis-destined death.
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99 - Holy Luck |
V. The Lucky Merciful
"Blessed are the merciful"
A billion years of pummeling surf,
Shipwrecking seachanges and Jonah storms
Made ungiving, unforgiving granite
Into this analgesic beach:
Washed by sea-swell rhythms of mercy,
Merciful relief from city
Concrete. Uncondemned, discalceate,
I'm ankle deep in Assateague sands,
Awake to rich designs of compassion
Patterned in the pillowing dunes.
Sandpipers and gulls in skittering,
Precise formation devoutly attend
My salt and holy solitude,
Then feed and fly along the moving,
Imprecise ebb- and rip-tide
Border dividing care from death.
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100 - Holy Luck |
VI. The Lucky Pure
"Blessed are the pure in heart"
Austere country, this, scrubbed
By spring's ravaging avalanche.
Talus slope and Appekunny
Mudstone make a meadow where
High-country beargrass gathers light
From lichen, rock, and icy tarn,
Changing sun's lethal rays
To food for grizzlies, drink for bees-
Heart-pure creatures living blessed
Under the shining of God's face.
Yet, like us the far-fallen,
Neither can they look on the face
And live. Every blossom's a breast
Holding eventual sight for all blind and
Groping newborn: we touch our way
Through these splendors to the glory.
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101 - Holy Luck |
VII. The Lucky Peacemakers
"Blessed are the peacemakers"
Huge cloud fists assault
The blue exposed bare midriff of sky:
The firmament doubles up in pain.
Lightnings rip and thunders shout;
Mother nature's children quarrel.
And then, as suddenly as it began,
It's over. Noah's heirs, perceptions
Cleansed, look out on a disarmed world
At ease and ozone fragrant. Still waters.
What barometric shift
Rearranged these ferocities
Into a peace-pulsating rainbow
Sign? My enemy turns his other
Cheek; I drop my guard. A mirror
Lake reflects the filtered colors;
Breeze-stirred pine trees quietly sing.
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102 - Holy Luck |
VIII. The Lucky Persecuted
"Blessed are those who are persecuted"
Unfriendly waters do a friendly
Thing: curses, cataract-hurled
Stones, make the rough places
Smooth; a rushing whitewater stream
Of blasphemies hate-launched,
Then caught by the sun, sprays rainbow
Arcs across the Youghiogeny.
Savaged by the river's impersonal
Attack the land is deepened to bedrock.
Wise passivities are learned
In quiet, craggy, occasional pools
That chasten. the wild waters to stillness,
And hold them under hemlock green
For birds and deer to bathe and drink
In peace-persecution's gift:
The hard-won, blessed letting be.