Saturday, April 15, 2006

Spring Healed Jim

Is love an act of endless forgiveness?

Endless something--if endless even.

Late again. Those small, bare hours, when a half poet knows he has never said anything. Never sang.
And when a whole poet morns that he ever did.

We forgive music for marring the still. We forgive words for scarring the page.

It's all cut from the flood, and we have stillness left (and so many blank pages), so we live into the forgetting that's forgiveness by default. Even if that's only cruelty holding its breath.

"He asked forgiveness, and wondered if he was asking to be forgotten. And asked too often. And wondered enough to wallow."

The Spring comes to relieve, and not relive. Still, though the clock jumps forward an hour, the season's first warmth whispers: Lover, you'll be the death of me . . .

If meaning hadn't ceased, forgiveness would come wallowing again.
But these are smiling, speechless hands.

Focus. A moment is passing.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Gossamer

Is Art enough?

Through the medium of words, strands are woven, which connect us, constitute a bond.

True seeing.

But also true Faith. Substance of Hoped for--evidence of unseen. Always this philosophical middle between the mystery and the self. How can something swallowed whole remain at arms' length?

Art cannot be constructed, or even woven, by human hands. Words, and all other forms, are ARTIFACTS only. Art is the unseen--the unseeable--verb, the connection that forms between human souls through the medium of the artifact. A more effective artifact weaves, or, rather, facilitates stronger, more pervasive connections. And here is timelessness and immortality.

The connection is manifold: Reader to author. Reader and Author to subject. Observer to observed and then to all other observers.
And all involved unto God. And the God within unto the God without.

But then, if it is self-justified, if it can only be flattened by explanation--if it exists in and of itself, independent in its sphere--why does it seem to need us? A connection needs something to connect. But this is a need that waits, that loves to wait, that does nothing but and does it passionately (Rilke).


Our need for the connection is less serene. Less serene still is the soul that has stopped needing it.