Light on the Page

Fall and Ascent

The Fall is present in us and likewise the Ascent. If I look at birds I see – rather unscientifically – that they are kept aloft by faith and love. I see nothing else – they’ve gained and earned their wings by pure and simple acceptance of the higher power. They rest in the hand of God continually. And in their song I feel a stair that rises up to the divine again – it transports me in invisible, elemental fifths and thirds. This is at least poetically correct.

The human ‘Fall’ is a rather more complicated matter. Is it scientific? Ah! I would rather it were not true. We no longer rest in the hand of God in the same way. But the sound of the birds creeps into the heart, love paints pictures in our minds which will not be denied. Sadness and infinite longing. Infinite, infinite longing which returns to the mind and to the will and moves us to climb back again. How? With freedom and with choice, with the perspicacity to know that science and religion combine in the song of a bird. There is no truth worth having that is not lifted by love back into the realm we fell from.

Are we not there all the time? All the time we are tutored by such things as unaided flight or by the power of song which also ascends like flights of golden-carpeted stair. These things are in us, alive, as poetic truths. And love, always love, is in the hand which holds the bird aloft and in the thread of music, now light, now dark, which moves through the human heart.

Fly

Now every part of me is sent in prayer

and what remains is music of the birds;

and every note transports me on a stair

composed of elemental fifths and thirds.

Each bird has won its wings through faith and love

and sings its salutation to the sky;

am I the last to reach that god above

who gives all feathers honesty to fly?

Fount (For H.)

The moon has sometimes fallen from her sphere,

appearing wan and jaundiced, out of time;

then sorrows spill out in the now and here

and lovers empty out their love in mime.

So sicken with the season, time will count

its minutes in a metronomic beat;

the fallen will climb back up to the fount

and love with love will choose its place to meet.

Kissed

I fell from heaven once and now again,

without the love that made all heaven mine;

the first time I was pinched and like all men

plunged into form and worldly design.

And now I worship distantly the face

that once touched mine with lips as soft as mist;

I feel with fingers absently the place

which love once understood and heaven kissed.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Confluence

The savor of life is very much connected with doing the right – the hidden right, not the ostentatious one which acts in order to be seen. But in reality the hidden is spread out around us all the time, like a clear and shining light – like an alternative world. Time itself runs in two dimensions: the one of nature, where events happen and pass as naturally as day passes into night; and the moral continuum where only spiritual beings may walk. This, in the end, is proof that the human being is a spiritual being: life loses its savor – the salt goes out of the salt – if as a person you fail to pay heed to the pull exerted by the hidden world. For the poet this world is the source of all true verbs and nouns. For other professions it will have its equivalent significance.

Yes, there is any amount of possibility for the ambitious to accumulate possessions and signs of success. But these all fall into the category of what passes into night. And on their own they do not constitute the savor of the salt – they simply form the body of the salt, its crystalline structure. How many a person do you see whose life may be rich, even famous, but who appears completely dried out? Of course it’s not for the idle onlooker to judge another person’s life, but in many cases you can’t help feeling that someone has abandoned the living current in favor of accumulation.  Needless to say the material world trades on this.

The point at stake is doing the right – seeing the opportunities within everything you do to serve the hidden world. You may be able to see where other people stand within that world at a particular time – it is the world of confluences, of movement and true opportunity. You might be able to play a part, to free an obstacle – in whatever way is best-suited to your abilities. Perhaps it’s just a question of being a human being at the right moment. But for the duration of that activity you are a spiritual being in a spiritual world, the salt has its savor, and you have done something which will not pass into the night.

All this might seem obvious: doing the right is not a new concept. But the world is hurtling down a passageway which leads only to darkness. It wants to obscure the inner heart and mind. To be aware of where you stand in relation to the world of light and life is to create a future and to prevent the world itself from passing into the night.

Mattered

Now here I am in muttered imitation

of everything that better sings its song -

the careless bird which knows no limitation,

the stately stars with voices clear and strong.

Yet in their silence they acknowledge me,

whose line and verse is learned outside of time,

whose song is neither mattered in degree

nor layered with earth in sequence or in rhyme.

Better

So if my salt should lose its trusted savor

and leave the taste of life distressed and flat,

I’ll search again for its more subtle flavor:

the crystalled sea and shimmering salt-flat.

So little time is left to do the right

inside a life as brief as nature’s verse;

but in a single morning chance may light

to lift the better from the sunken worse.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Christmas Haikus

Nothing mesmerizes the heart so deeply as nature during the twelve holy days and nights of Christmas. If you listen well and look you see your own innermost feelings walking abroad each day. They are carried in the flight of a bird and its song, in the mystery of the slumbering trees, in the gigantic wind which may choose at any moment to sift your soul for truth.

Each day takes its own strides and each night carries you into eternally hidden places. It’s not for nothing that the dreams of the twelve nights are considered to be prophetic. For, just as your own feelings are walking abroad in nature during this time, the cosmos with its stars and secrets is spiralling through you.

The haiku, with its seventeen syllables, may seem like a very slight poetic form for capturing the mood of each of the twelve days and night of Christmas. But it is precisely this form which best understands the transposing of outer and inner taking place at this time. At its best the haiku can be a perfect balance of nature and insight.

I’m not saying my haikus are the best. They may be more or less successful. But they are conscientious and I tried very hard to make that effort of sifting each day. The blackbird is the greater artist. Unfortunately I missed two days so what we have here is the ten haikus of Christmas instead of the twelve.. (Note: the plural of haiku is properly haiku. I’ve also diverged from the stricter Japanese forms.)

Christmas Haikus

A soft coat of wind, tree-lined

sun; blackbird sings my heart

across the air.

*

A vast wind, tiny

solace; there are angels

in the threads of my coat.

*

As many raindrops as notes of birdsong;

my ears are tumbling with sky.

*

Grey-lit sun, miles of sky;

alone a small bird

touches lips with the wind.

*

Under a thickness of clouds, alone;

the night-bell rings out three -

who comes?

*

Naked trees

smile

in their sleep;

the birds

bring meat and drink

to their table.

*

In dead of night I search for soul;

frozen wind clasps only flesh and bone.

*

Night opens. Stars pour in.

Wind and rain shine

as dreams in clear sky will do.

*

A sifting wind. Feelings

adrift in the night.

Great storms shift

in their sleep.

*

Wind-carved trees,

solemn as gods.

What poet gave such gold

to your swift limbs?

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Storms

A sifting wind. Feelings

adrift in the night.

Great storms shift

in their sleep.

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Night

Night opens. Stars pour in.

Wind and rain shine

as dreams in clear sky will do.

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Soul

In dead of night I search for soul;

frozen wind clasps only flesh and bone.

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved