Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Greatest Grandeur

Some say it's in the reptilian dance
of the purple-tongued sand goanna,
for there the magnificent translation
of tenacity into bone and grace occurs.

And some declare it to be an expansive
desert-solid rust-orange rock
like dusk captured on earth in stone-
simply for the perfect contrast it provides
to the blue-grey ridge of rain
in the distant hills.

Some claim the harmonics of shifting
electron rings to be most rare and some
the complex motion of seven sandpipers
bisecting the arcs and pitches
of come and retreat over the mounting
hayfield.

Others, for grandeur, choose the terror
of lightning peals on prairies or the tall
collapsing cathedrals of stormy seas,
because there they feel dwarfed
and appropriately helpless; others select
the serenity of that ceiling/cellar
of stars they see at night on placid lakes,
because there they feel assured
and universally magnanimous.

But it is the dark emptiness contained
in every next moment that seems to me
the most singularly glorious gift,
that void which one is free to fill
with processions of men bearing burning
cedar knots or with parades of blue horses,
belled and ribboned and stepping sideways,
with tumbling white-faced mimes or companies
of black-robed choristers; to fill simply
with hammered silver teapots or kiln-dried
crockery, tangerine and almond custards,
polonaises, polkas, whittling sticks, wailing
walls; that space large enough to hold all
invented blasphemies and pieties, 10,000
definitions of god and more, never fully
filled, never.

 Pattiann Rogers, from Firekeeper

4 comments:

the wild magnolia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
the wild magnolia said...

And so, this morning I find this lovely poem of grandeur, and hear that..."10,000 definitions of God and more, never fully filled, never."

These fine words lift my spirit high and twirl my heart in the winds of imaginations.

Thank you, for sharing! Most beautiful photograph!

Happy Thursday.....

Guy said...

Hi Cate

I love Pattiann Rogers, I especially like the poem "Suppose Your Father Was a Redbird". Thanks for sharing her work and your lovely photo.

Guy

lunalaurel said...

I really loved that poem, what a great way to sum up the sense of the Divine. The photo was very well matched to it. Thanks so much.