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.

†