Now don't get my wrong, I don't think my own poetry is necessarily deserving of such a reading, but the voice of my poetry aspired to that. Eventually I realized where this voice had come from. It had come from the years I spent for at least an hour a week listening to the traditional Catholic litanies in St. Mary's church, the large, hollow, wooden church in downtown Iowa City.

 

The subject matter of most of the poems in the series dealt with the mysteries of the sacred, the human, the created and the creator, so it was no wonder that the voice of the poems was the voice of a litany, as that was the voice I had grownup hearing such mysteries spoken of in.

 

Below are a few of the poems from my "litany series." In this series I sought a sense of line that both connects each line to the one before it and after it, but also allows the lines to stand on their own. I hope you can enjoy the voice of these poems, as well as the images and the mysteries they are meant to explore.

 

 

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Litany: Creation Takes Image

 

 

 

WE says God-

make them like US.

 

 

And what is the earth to look like

left to itself,

left to make its own image

of clay and rock and segmented worms

turning it all?

 

 

What image do the beasts take

even if a man cares for them?

And the maggots turning them all

when their bodies finally fall to the ground.

They were never immortal

with no given image.

 

 

The sky is a firmament

and imageless,

unless science soon reveals blue to be

image,

it will float to earth, mortal

like a handkerchief coming down to rest on top of the ground.

 

 

What image was the garden given

when all was sent out? That is autumn,

once a year,

when image dries on branches

from light hiding too long behind the horizon.

 

 

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Litany: Leaving and Returning to Things Barely Remembered

 

 

1.

I am confounded

by the problem of pleasure:

the sweetness of ripe fruit

from this forest's floor

coming to me through my mouth

like days coming to babies

in a stirring. Then they open their eyes.

 

2.

As a truce to you

I will give back all the imperfect abilities I learned:

grammar, love, music, memory, breath, fear, et cetera.

And in turn you will have to take everything else:

my poor eyesight, spelling, love, fear, et cetera.

This truce will be signed at my death

in 50 or 60 years, or maybe tomorrow,

with my last breath drawn from the air you gave me.

 

3.

Come slowly,

with steps that human ears can hear

and take what you want

from this old farm house.

Take the chairs and table that my grandfather

and his wife would eat at,

and take the old family bible, left in its box,

the pictures and letters,

stored in the same cupboard as the bible,

take the Irish sipping whiskey

and put it all on the fire

that is being built in the yard,

so large that it will carry the ashes

like pigeons to places that need to remember.

 

---

 

Litany: In the Middle of Creation

 

 

Man play your part;

woman your own.

Together stand at the horizon-

the thin line between the sky,

from where the earth fell,

and the earth

from where man and woman fell.

 

 

Between both your hands hold the horizon line

like a rod

reaching across,

dividing sky

from all that is set in the soil,

and drag it down,

so the earth is no more

and you stand on only air.

Then raise the horizon

above your head

and all is soil,

holding moisture.

What used to be humidity,

clinging to the air,

now deep springs from which to drink.

 

 

And now finally replace

the horizon to divide

the sky as half

and the earth as the rest.

Stand still at the horizon-

the middle between the sky

that gives light

and the ground

that accepts it-

 

 

and wait,

between all the extremes of dirt and space,

in midsummer humidity,

until all falls back again-

like blood pumped by the heart

after spending all the oxygen it carried-