The Tree, denuded of foliage,
Yet stretching forth branches,
Strains Spring-like as it unites
Widest extremes
Of earth and sky.
The purity of fresh snow,
Finely textured and light,
Blankets Sky-like and deep
This ruddy earth
With its cloying clay.
Much more than annual respite
Then this Spring’s emergence
And re-shaping history’s time—
But Phoenix-like
From the funeral pyre.
Michael A.G. Haykin©2008.
It was the winter of despair—
The bleakness of March:
With
Its ashen piles of snow
And firmament of gray
That seemed to wrap forever.
Forever?
No, not so permanent,
As forty legionaries
With only second Adam’s
Coverlet of glory
To shield them knew.
The men of Legio XII
Were never so warm
As from that Fire with its hope
Of being recalled to life.
Yes, that recall shall come—
And so shall their Christ.
March 9, 2008.
Michael A.G. Haykin©2008.
What better and sweeter
Truth than this:
The One who draped the moon
With silver raiment
And clothed the sun
With fiery furnace
Is not silent.
This barren ground is not untrodden:
Its vales and plains,
Climes and craggy knolls
Mapped, marked and noted
By mighty Magellans of the mind
Who have come here thick in droves.
And Mayflower-like
A multitude follow
To domicile in murky mist and mud.
And wherefore?
Why, for Reason’s sake
Or reeking rage–
But there is One who has come
To signpost this land
That hollows out the soul
And alienates the heart:
“Give up hope,
All ye who enter here.”
I am so much a child of my time in many ways! There is music from the sixties that when I hear it, it sends a nostalgic chord running through my heart and my mind.
One such song is The Mamas and Papas “California Dreamin’.” The tune is so evocative of the utopianism of that era. The words are simple although the middle stanza puzzles me. It runs thus:
I stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees
(Got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray
(I pretend to pray).
You know the preacher likes the cold
(Preacher likes the cold)
He knows I’m gonna stay
(Knows I’m gonna stay)
California dreamin’
(California dreamin’)
On such a winters day.
What to make of the pretense in prayer? The song is about the dilemma the subject faces about telling his or her beloved about going to L.A. Stopping into the church might be for direction or guidance. But why then the pretense to pray, especially when the sixties were all about transparency and honesty?
I had gotten down on my knees to pray many times when I was growing up a Roman Catholic. But it was all a pretense.
But I shall never forget the time in February 1974 when I got down on my knees for real and asked the Jesus Christ to be my Saviour and Lord. That was real.
Nostalgia is good as far as it goes but it won’t save you from the wrath to come. Reader: have you ever gotten down on your knees to pray to the true God through the Lord Jesus?
Light,
Essence and quiddity of all that is,
Has deigned to flood and flame
My dungeon dread,
With its sweet radiance–
What favour this!
And now, though once blind,
I see.
Michael A.G. Haykin © 2007.
Slime cannot slake this thirst
Nor silt and sand.
And salt only hardens its resolve.
But his sweat can—bloody sweat
That shimmered on the brow,
Shivered him and shook,
And was sensed at depths divine.
It alone is sweet to thirsty tongues.
© Michael A.G. Haykin, 2007.
Bristle and whisker,
If they be not shorn,
Shall grow into such a bearded lattice and mat
That a thousand roughnesses
Could there be hid with ease.
Some claim ‘tis only nature’s way
For others, the fashion of the day;
But, for me, once plainly seen in mirrored glass,
The die is cast: shave off it all
And have done with sin.
© Michael A.G. Haykin, 2007.
What meaning for Java’s life
When sight for those lustrous eyes has gone,
Sensations ceased and his purring voice been stilled?
And what the import for me
Of those hugs and tickles, and love bestowed
In silly words like lovers speak?
And what for God of his gentle life—
Lived out in peace’s ambience? Had he but known
He could have shed his fears like fur.
Beyond, Brilliance shines
And lambent answers.
© Michael A.G. Haykin, 2007
Refulgent, an angel of light
Came to me the other night
(Tho’ not for me Abraham’s sight)—
I did not see him
Could not share bread
Like the patriarch or offer
A pillow for his head—
But light was shed upon my path
And peace outpoured instead of wrath—
And all because his Lord and mine had died.
© Michael A.G. Haykin, 2007
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