Poetry
Our Anxious Puzzle (2016)
All poems copyrighted © Noel K. Anderson
PRELUDE: OF UTILITY
Out of focus: those burdens I bore ten years ago
(though I still feel their irrelevant weight).
Into focus: the present reality with its burdens and blessings
(only the bearer is bit better-balanced).
These years, like heavy pages of a large, old book
turn and fall with an imminent rhythm –
a steady, unavoidable regularity of writ and loss –
a ledger of moments invested or squandered.
We are left wondering whether we are writing quickly enough
or will the pages in time close us out.
These scribblings feel so hasty –
perhaps they always are—
with limited time between pen strokes
and anxiety chewing our backs from behind;
It is amazing we get anything done at all.
Our life and loves are spilt in black—permeating paper—
a partial consciousness scratched out
with the most meager of hopes
that someday, someone
may seek even here
a little insight.
A LITTLE BIRD WITH A DAMAGED WING
A little bird with a damaged wing
showed up at church one Sunday morning.
She cheeped, cried and pleaded with us, but communicated so poorly
we knew neither what she wanted nor needed.
“Maybe she’s fine,” we thought, “Nature will care for her.”
We brought her in and fed her as best we could,
but we didn’t know if the food was right, or enough.
We held her and spoke tenderly to her
without knowing whether she recognized compassion.
We were ready to see her fly away (truth be told)
we felt we had cared for her enough
despite her need for greater care.
There is a place there—
between caring and having to care in costly ways—
where we teeter between
self-satisfaction and guilt,
between mercy and fear of absorption,
and as we balance there
we face the face of crisis.
When we returned from our deliberations
she was gone—flown off perhaps,
or hopping under a shrub—
or bodily assumed into Heaven.
THE FINAL JUDGMENT
The final judgment
will be like waking
from a fairly sweet dream:
we shall either wake to find
that we are at home
and all is safe and well,
or that the whole house
is completely on fire.
TEN WITH TARA
I know her movements
like the ticking of a clock.
I see the beauties she
cannot see in herself
and my enjoyment of them
is immeasurable.
Marriage writes the narrative of
The Trials of a Shared Heart.
When one is pained, both hurt,
and there is no telling
who hurts the more for it.
Marriage is empathy training,
patience boot camp,
wherein we learn the laws of love.
We trade the comforts of selfhood
for the sanctification of ongoing humility.
And I know she is worth it.
She is known and unknown:
I still woo her in fear
and win her with pride
and nothing can soothe my amazement
over the mysterious endurance
of the mystery of her otherness.
I would have thought my heart
to have settled-in by now,
but I am still being remade—
still getting used to being married—
and just beginning to learn
true love, true faith;
and just beginning to explore
the smoky, mysterious depths
of interpenetration of persons.
BIRDS OF PRAY
A flock of blackbirds
swept up into a budding, spring elm
to rest there like odd fruit—
like musical notes on an exponential staff
or a hundred commas at the ends
of a hundred phrases of praise.
Suddenly, like seeds from a giant, black dandelion,
windblown across a coarse brush of landscape,
the music, the prayer, scatters.
If I had prayed for such a thing to happen
as a sign from God of divine power or presence,
this would have been a complete answer.
Then, for the joy of the thing,
I knew that this was the answer to prayer—
one I didn’t even know I’d prayed.
PSONNET
That psalm is a song in the depths of my hardened heart
a word from past passages of ancient souls
becoming my own as I own each part—
The words, my words, as the spirit controls
the distance between its first utterance and today,
dissolving before the light and heat of the spirit.
Our hope is that these words may yet relay
our sickly souls nearer to the throne, to fear it.
As into a warm bath, I enter the song:
It holds me, cleanses me; it fits me quite well.
The Psalmist sings, my heart sings along;
Immersed together, our souls together dwell.
As I adhere in heart to every line
The miracle occurs: the words become mine.
ABANDONED BUILDING
What once was an asylum
and later a private school
(a college for Catholics of obedient rule),
where bookish girls in tartan skirts
filled the halls with caterwauls
of hormonal anxiety
and the collective scuffle
of a sea of saddle shoes,
now abandoned for twenty years,
holds haunts of memories and yesteryear’s news
a school for vandals
and graffiti’s ignorant desecrations—
a canvas for a crude knowledge.
The time has come when more than a smattering
can keep the work of saints from mattering.
A shout down the ragged halls
calls out pigeons, possums
and the odd, gentle, anonymous interloper
or the ghosts of old teachers—
professors and priests, nuns in their habits
like black-and-white beasts—
the shelves in their heads sag bent from overstacking
distempered and warped—in danger of cracking.
From every school and every college
all the folderol of this long-accrued knowledge—
a great weight of paper, a head filled with books,
a stacked attic, packed to the rafters
with the smallest of volumes crammed into its nooks—
all falls and flays on insolent fools
where petulance plays and insolence rules.
The time has come when more than a smattering
can keep the work of saints from mattering.
We all grow grand in the architect’s shape;
no longer abandoned, we may yet escape
the ever-turning wheel of this foul and feckless condition
as we submit in love to Love’s relentless manumission—
that means of mercy may meet in the streets
and deal their redemptions among sad defeats.
The time has come and that time is at hand
to leave the old buildings and make a new stand,
freed from the shackles our sins once displayed
to reclaim the land where the innocents prayed.
METANOIA
The world could use just one generation
that refuses to lose its innocence.
The unrepentant are irresponsible.
Life is not an exam
for which we must find the right answers;
it is a puzzle designed
to aim us at God.
Knowledge is overrated
and wisdom serves us a necessary meal:
the constant reawakening
to our own foolishness.
THE MATH OF CHARITY: 7 SUMS
1. Humility + Generosity = Charity
When a humble one gives and loves free
the humble heart is crowned with nobility.
When humility freely and generously gives,
infinite treasures are tapped
and the humble one will lack for nothing—
always giving out of a miraculous abundance
like a king or a queen in common disguise
2. Temperance + Charity
When Temperance adds Charity,
it looks to the world like noble sacrifice;
as though one, like Jesus, has bread others can’t see.
The more they give, the more they seem to have,
as with the loaves and fishes.
They are never hungry, never concerned,
and every meal becomes a feast,
a spiritual banquet of lavish helpings.
3. Chastity + Charity
When Chastity adds Charity,
the world sees lovely mothers and fathers,
brothers and sisters
reflecting warm care and tenderness
that feeds every soul and heals every wound.
All become lovers who give a better love
than anyone could expect—
a mature, complete love—
a love that gives and lifts up,
a love that makes beloved children of
every churl and hardened heart,
a love tat makes gods
of every God-beloved child.
4. Kindness + Charity
When Kindness adds Charity, we become healers.
Ennoblers (not enablers) empowered to lift up the lowly,
help the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk.
The gentle word, the soft correction and the helping hand—
all welcome rescue from distress.
5. Patience + Charity
When Patience adds Charity,
the world sees the persistence of love:
a father who never rejects his rebellious children,
a shepherd who seeks every lost lamb.
With love, the turned cheek becomes
an unspeakably-powerful witness
to the perseverance of grace.
6. Diligence + Charity
When Diligence adds Charity,
the world sees purposeful lives driven by generosity.
To them that have, more is given
because more is certain to be given away.
Love drives work to boundless energy and joy.
7. Charity = X x 10
Charity turns every virtue
from an inner discipline to an outward practice—
every self-control into shining witness.
Charity is the salt and light
that seasons and preserves the world.
Charity completes every virtue,
and grows, mysteriously,
at its source.
MID-FIFTIES
So suddenly, the big, big future
slips beneath your feet
and you know you are now
on the backside of the wave.
The endless summer is over.
It takes some getting used to.
It’s hard reality to accept.
You don’t want to believe it.
You feel the same inside—
the same awakened child you always were—
but the playground has changed
and you will no longer fit
on the merry-go-round.
In the same all of a sudden,
from forgotten rooms in the back of your head,
all those questions about consciousness, mind and meaning
shed their outer garments as idle playthings
and emerge stupendous and red—
great, threatening figures
moving into your home to stay.
No need to worry:
though they appear vicious and powerful,
they may be made friends,
and then, ah, the joy
of such engaging good company!
And how pale and papery—
tiny and tinny—
seems that old playground.
THE RULES
(because God is good)
1. Stay calm
2. Share food
3. Help others
4. Spread joy
MIDLIFE NUN
Another year older,
more hair gone gray,
her head bowed, palms pressed together—
but she can’t silence
the old New Wave song
as she fights to focus her soul
into the ancient words of the prayer.
As the nostalgia of the new
threatens to eclipse all immediacy of attention,
the older, more blessed remembrance
runs deep and undeniably fixed.
The new is chattering water,
the older stone.
She navigates for stillness
and as she sinks through the busily roiling rapids
onto the stony bed below
she finds her bliss
in the assurance
that the habit still fits.
EPILOGUE
The day is aflame
with the breath of many angels.
Their misty presence
pervades all thought and action.
So long we waited
for the stars to shed
even the least light
on our anxious puzzle
only to discover the light
that had been there all along.
Would that we might live one day—
just live this one day—today
seeing, living and loving by that light,
perhaps to make the angels sing.
†