THE CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY
1990
Poetry by Blake Steele
Index
A...
A CHILD'S SIMPLE ANSWERS
A LETTER WRITTEN UPON WIND
ALL WE LACK IS SPIRITUAL
IMAGINATION
ANOTHER POEM ABOUT INCARNATION
A PRAYER TO THE GREAT GOD OF LIFE
A PRAYER UPON KNEES
A SIMPLE SONG OF AN OPENING HEART
AS SANITY RETURNS
B...
BEFORE THEY CALL, I WILL ANSWER...
BEYOND EVERY REASON
C...
CREATION'S SIXTH DAY
D...
DAWN RUN
F...
FRANCIS AND BLAKE
FROM OUT OF THE SIMPLE, SOFT LIGHT OF BEAUTY
G...
GOD IS KNOWN
IN IMAGINATIVE LUMINESENCE
H...
HALF-LIFE
HOLY BREATHING
HOLY QUESTIONS
HOW BLESSED IS THIS LIGHT
HOW CAN I BE WILD AND WISE?
HOW SHALL WE LIVE THAT WE MIGHT FEEL
THE NAKED, YOUNG WOMAN OF POETRY?
I...
I INVOKE A BLESSED BLESSING
UPON THE WHOLE OF ME
IN THE DAYS OF GOLDEN WHEAT
IN THE WARM POOL OF BEING
IT IS NOT I WHO SPEAKS
I WILL KNOW YOU WHEN YOU ARRIVE
M...
MAY GOD'S BLESSING STREAM FORTH
O...
ON BLESSED SIMPLICITY
S...
SEED PLANTER
T...
THE LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM
THE NUTHATCH
THE TREE MAY BE OLD, BUT THERE'S
BUBBLING WATER IN THE HEARTWOOD
THE WIND BLOWS THROUGH IN PRACTICLE DEEDS
U...
UPON THE NEEDS OF THE SOUL
W...
WE MUST SEEK TO MAKE A MUSIC OF PRAYER
WOULD THAT GOD WOULD COME DOWN
Last Poem in File: GOD IS KNOWN
IN IMAGINATIVE LUMINESENCE
CREATION'S SIXTH DAY
When Eve placed her foot
upon the wet stones
of Eden,
Adam's blood jumped.
And the light of God
moved in the wind of the day...
And God looked out upon
Eve's
tender, high breasts
and her long thin limbs
and said, "Ah! This is beautiful and good."
And God looked upon Adam's thick arms
and felt the man's thighs grow hot,
and said, "Ah! That is scrumdumpaly good!"
So God poured his creative pride
over them
as waters laughed
down into the azure pools
in which they played.
And God was happy
that He had made them.
And God's blood jumped!
DAWN RUN
Restless,
I ran
in morning dark
when the full white moon
was shimmering out
her completed beauty
and longing for the sun.
Shyly, she dipped behind
low colorless clouds to the west,
transfiguring them
into luminous cream.
A small band of birds broke the hush,
eager for that fabulous diamond
of the morning star
to dim in a slow, gray rush of light.
The river drank down
her last spilt milk
of moon light
and was dark silk again.
I heard beavers
slap their tails mid-river
to greet each other
with
the deep hollow sound
of a large stone
dropped from a great height.
Suddenly inspired, I ran like a sandpiper.
Then with monstrous strides
I licked up the ground
and felt for an instant
as if I was running on air.
The amazement broke through again!
I was like Abner running for his life;
I ran like Asahel who overtook him.
The sudden smell of grass
spun my soul into ancient worlds.
So I sat upon a stone,
worshiping God by the
river,
and felt an essence of young blue
soak through the sky.
*
Dawn came!
It began as a little yellow-haired girl,
yawning.
Then, suddenly, countless golden gazelles
scattered everywhere
before the bright lion of the sun!
To the west,
white clouds put coral bands
upon their billowing hats.
IT IS NOT I WHO SPEAKS
At my best,
it is not I who speaks
but
the breath
of the laughing wisdom
of God.
The laughing wisdom speaks.
Long after I am gone,
the laughing wisdom speaks.
WOULD THAT GOD WOULD COME DOWN
(Isaiah 64:1-3)
The breath of God is subtle,
sublime, breathless.
Would to God
that
He would come down
like a blast:
rattle the blinds like bones;
explode windows wide open;
slap and slam doors off their hinges;
blow
open the cupboards;
roar and rage around rooms;
rustle the sheets,
fling them off of beds,
suck them outdoors,
sail them far into the sky.
SEED PLANTER
One must plant seeds
patiently, ever so slowly,
with the consistency of sunlight,
or the tides of the sea.
A seed planted is a thing
of unestimatable value.
It may grow, or may not.
This is in the hands of God.
But to plant it is the thing:
To long for more life!
One never knows,
what a poem may do
in
the heart of a child,
or a man or woman
who suddenly finds
in the spirit of words
the awakening of their deep heart.
An awakening
can be a startling thing,
like hail stones
on a picnic-sweet summer day,
or it can be a mere nudge that grows,
like silent, silver trickles
amongst stones
swell into rivers
which make ground shake
with
spilling laughter.
Every soul has its own time,
and place and way,
in the sensitive hands of God.
Some souls seek no seed at all
other than the seed of silence.
Others pour wordless spirit out
upon white altars.
For some, the sight of a tree
or
a beautiful woman is enough.
But words can also help...
BEFORE THEY CALL, I WILL ANSWER...
In the days before Adam and Eve
ate of the tree of knowing good and evil,
they ate freely of the tree of being
and explored in innocence and wonder all things.
God never cried out,
"O man, where art thou?"
for they never drew back from His presence of majesty,
or from the delicate feminine Shekinah
which sweetened the wind.
They looked upon their naked bodies
in the same way as they discovered the flowers.
They touched each other in the same way
as they ran their fingers over river stones
or the soft mouths of flowers.
And God said, "It is exceedingly good!"
They lived in awe, and so kept true faith,
a God-huge
awe which opened their eyes to seeing,
their ears to hearing, the miracles
which welled forth uniquely,
(as life welled forth with green freshness
around them, and in them,
like
water in bubbling streams rushes around the bodies
and runs through the gills
of lively fish).
Sadly, we are now wise in both good and evil
and so terribly familiar
with that which we shall never understand.
The splendor is right before us,
and within us the wonders unfold
as constant as sunlight!
Yet, "Having eyes, we see not, having ears, we hear not!"
Thinking we are
wise--though dull of heart--
we miss, the moment and miracle of life!
Therefore, it is we who are absent, though God is present!
And his question ever flows out to us
in the stillness we rarely attain,
"Adam, Adam, where art thou?"
FROM OUT OF THE SIMPLE, SOFT LIGHT OF BEAUTY
From out of the simple, soft light
of beauty
shines forms.
They are the loves of God:
white birds gyring,
a cow, a cherry tree,
a weathered old man
tending his olive grove,
a young woman with a basket
in her arms...
We were made
to be cherished within
the light of God's loves.
The light is always shining!
*
A cow smiles in its mind.
Birds sail rapturously
through the subtle colors
of
the sky.
The cherry tree swells its buds
out of hard, tight knots
into soft coral pinks:
silky lips which open to drink light.
The
man's eyes twinkle
with the robust humor of God.
The young woman, being of God's Shekinah,
is herself the rosiest bud softly unfolding,
and the warm, fragrant milk
of cows,
and whispery white wing feathers...
and the sensual young heart
of the old weathered man.
THE WIND BLOWS THROUGH IN PRACTICAL DEEDS
We shall never be whole in a self enclosed way!
We are not a globe, but a circle
silent and open in its center.
The wind must blow through!
We are always dependent
on the wind.
HOW BLESSED IS THIS LIGHT
How blessed are these rays of light
that have traveled 93 million miles
to reflect off my watch
and illuminate a small crucifix
upon the wall.
How blessed is this light within my eyes.
IN THE DAYS OF GOLDEN WHEAT
In the days of golden wheat
when our grief is making us mad,
and must hide no more in shadows
of passing things--even great things
such as the wings of birds
which carry oranges and apricots
from the seller to the buyer,
or, the flair of a horse's nostrils
when wind and sunlight slips over its skin,
or the thigh of a woman revealed in a skirtÕs slit--
we must turn in loneliness to ponder
the barrenness of human hearts:
eyes like pools of darkness in shadowed caves,
bodies like
empty cisterns, with the thinnest skin
of clay covering slime and stones.
For when the wheat arises
like honey drawn up from the comb,
some drop of light drips down
through a fissure in the roof of the skull
onto the dark of the soul
and we yearn (like bucks for hot does),
after common human pleasures,
those fabulous things once found in small,
valley villages:
the smell of men like leather and brine,
the smell of woman like oily sheep's wool,
--milk and lavender--
the sound of children like light on silver waters,
all this music like magical love, like vines
subtly interweaving in starlight;
like moles pushing through the thighs of darkness
looking for moist worms.
It is then we might hear whispers of the One behind us,
that silent watcher of the skies
whose eyes see everything,
the beginning and the ending of time's matters
and people's souls:
He who sees emerald rainbows spinning in forests,
and ships of clouds spiraling over seas;
She who speaks silver fish into the air
and quivering ouzels into the bottoms of brooks
--the dark languid one
who sings in silence and holds the sky.
And then the voice of waterfalls,
and rolling mists,
and thunderous movements of light in space
may unfold their speech, and ask us,
"Where have you been for so long?" and...
"Why do you persist in asking all the wrong questions?"
A SIMPLE SONG OF AN OPENING HEART
The Almighty Child
of omnipotent innocence
calls His children
to freedom.
As we, by simple poverty
are
made clear,
wonder opens:
eyes see, ears hear.
Listen. Listen!
it is the subtle voice of love:
God's silent, drunk bird,
His white dove, cooing sweetly.
The sky is full of God!
packed with angelic wings...
An opening heart
sings.
ALL WE LACK IS SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION
(If the heart is clean and free, all else will follow)
Blue pours down
from a God huge sky.
It is clean,
a holy bath of blue.
My spirit drinks it in.
This sky is full of red rain drops
blown into an airy mist
by a wild wind from the north.
It is the mist of Christ's
blood.
I am drenched in blue
and in the swirling mist of blood.
The blue wind blows up and down
the open chambers of my heart,
rattling
the closed doors,
forcing them open.
Shadows spring out
and are dissolved in blue and blood.
A CHILD'S SIMPLE ANSWERS
The answer is in a spiritual communion
which cleanses and transforms the heart.
This comes through words which open
the imaginative eyes of the heart,
words which are alive and working
through
the commitment of faith
and childlike love.
The God-huge world
is a world of pure love
working through a free imagination.
A free imagination is one illuminated by
the pure love of God to see
a God-huge world.
ON BLESSED SIMPLICITY
(The Holy Spirit)
Welcome
into my soul
blessed simplicity,
my bride, my holy lover.
You are my guide
into all the flavors of life;
you the lover of every soul,
every living creature,
every inanimate thing;
you the seamstress who weaves
all elements of life
into one luminous fabric,
one pulsating tapestry.
Little Sister simplicity,
I cherish you, for you are
the essence of that grace
which flows into my deep heart
and inflames it with the love of God.
THE LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM
The little child shall lead them
when words of truth
come out of the inner chambers of the heart,
the deeper heart
opened by simplicity's white hands.
There
are wise children:
a little golden haired child,
a black faced child with shining eyes,
an almond eyed child,
a ruddy skinned child,
who
are behind us,
locked in a fortress prison,
yet who are before us
with Christ in fields of lambs and lions,
beckoning us on
into
our final freedom.
These children alone
know the way through
the tremulous storms
of thick darkness;
these children alone
may walk between two dragons
into earth's final
paradise of peace.
When will we learn to listen to the ones
who shall take off all mortal gowns
in death's slow disintegration,
to step naked
out through pure nothingness
into heaven's bright fields?
ANOTHER POEM ABOUT INCARNATION
A young rose
hangs in blue air.
Its roots drink pure rain water
from a clear glass.
It is tenderly taken
by imagined hands
and planted in a hole
painstakingly dug in thick clay.
As the rose takes root
the ground grows luminous.
Slowly, the rose loses its luster.
It soon looks like just a common rose.
Only birds with sensitive feet can feel
the light in the ground around it.
Only an occasional child glimpses
something other than the rose.
HOW SHALL WE LIVE THAT WE MIGHT FEEL
THE NAKED, YOUNG WOMAN OF POETRY?
How shall we live
that we might feel
the naked, young woman
of poetry?
Like a girl with half-soft,
undeveloped breasts,
she comes.
Her breasts are high
with drops of moisture
which
delicately drip.
She comes
and wraps her supple arms
around the poet's neck,
whispering her simple words
of guileless love
into his ears.
If the poet listens
he will never grow old in common ways
(sap-wood dry and branches stiff),
but he shall maintain
the litheness of young trees
whose lime-green twigs
burst out from the free movement
of water through tender heartwood.
For she is the Shekinah-life
that is ever young,
laughing through aging eyes
and drooping cheeks,
waiting for the body to drop off
that all her sprightly beauty
might become.
And though the poet becomes encumbered
with countless clothes,
she remains naked
that she might live on the wind with ease
and slip down through crevasses
in stones
to ride dark, underground rivers
and feel the moist earth moving
through
her outspread limbs.
HOLY BREATHING
There is a Love
that inspires me
to love the Love
that loves the Love in me
that inspires me.
THE TREE MAY BE OLD
BUT WATER BUBBLES IN THE HEARTWOOD
When
matted roots untwine
blood and sky flood the body.
A golden, "Yes!"
drifts through the center
into a young, open space.
There is no age thereÉ
MAY GOD'S BLESSING STREAM FORTH
May God bless the sun in my eyes;
May God bless the moon in my mind;
May God bless the singing birds I feel;
May God bless the running waters I hear;
May God bless His fire; pure and clear;
May God bless the wind in my emotions;
May God bless every child
And the good folk who tend them;
May God bless stones and grasses;
May God bless the soulful trees--
May God bless me
Who He has charged to love all these.
WE MUST SEEK TO MAKE A MUSIC OF PRAYER
We must seek to make a music of prayer:
akin to the wondrous rumblings of rivers
and the rattling of gray stones in the wind.
Close
akin to the ceaseless murmuring
of the sea;
the play of the breeze in a tree.
Why not pray like a simple flame
upon the candle's end?
Why not pray like a lullaby
which love croons through a mother's lips?
Why not pray like a silent tree
which draws water up through its core
and spews it out as juice
into the naked air?
We must seek to make a musical prayer
for the great God
who has given the stars
their light-humming songs
and the stones and river-runnings, songs,
and the birds, songs
(as every child
knows).
The God who makes all thing grow
musical and mystical
in His harmonious spirit--
one would think He'd
love to hear it! this praise
through us.
And I am of a grave certainness
that it is musical prayer
that is best carried with swiftness
by the singing angels
into Heaven.
HOLY QUESTIONS
Where is the place
on God's green earth
where the land
and the people
and their poetry
are all together
twined into a unity?
Where are a people
who are singing their prayers
to the God
of fish, and claw, and padded paw,
scale, fur, skin and wing?
Where is the God
of sun and moon,
of root and fruit,
of virtue and blessing?
There were such a people once,
who knew the Holy;
who lived in the presence...
but their manner of life has died,
and with it--
sonorous
and sacred rhythms.
We have killed them
for our comfort and convenience.
And so half our heart has died...
Where is the place
on God's green earth
where the land
and the people
and their poetry
are all twined together
into a unity?
Where are the people
who are singing their prayers?...
A PRAYER TO THE GREAT GOD OF LIFE
Great God of life,
High Maker of mankind
and all creatures
which teem upon
this blue-green wondrous earth,
may we, with all our
heart,
return to you
something of the boundless love
you pour out to us
at every instant,
in countless
ways.
And may we say "Yes!"
to your Will
with all the gathered powers of our will,
as we learn to think kind thoughts
with minds made clear
by wisdom
and thus only invent and wield
toys and tools
which express glimpses
of your great beauty
and the purposes of your love.
I INVOKE A BLESSED BLESSING
UPON THE WHOLE OF ME
Bless my body Lord,
Maker of my miraculous body;
Bless my mind Lord,
Fashioner of the miracle of it;
Bless my heart Lord,
And
the deep things hidden in it;
Bless my will Lord,
And the work that I may choose,
(May it be for your glory).
Bless my chattel,
All the goods I have gathered;
Bless my loved ones
And all of their offspring.
Bless all the gifts you have given,
Precious
and innumerable.
Amen.
A PRAYER UPON KNEES
I am putting myself upon my knees
in the light of the God
who created me,
from my Mother's womb
from my Father's loins,
in water and blood,
through hidden wonders,
in miraculous outpourings,
in countless gatherings,
through tearing and mending...
and in the presence of the High King
who
has poured out his life
to soften my calloused heart
through water and blood,
in hidden wonders,
by miraculous outpourings,
in countless gatherings,
through tearing and mending,
in losses and gains...
and by the breath of the Holy breathing
who
has washed and birthed me
through wind and fire,
in hidden wonders,
through miraculous outpourings,
in countless gatherings,
through tearing and mending,
in losses and gains,
in teachings and scoldings,
and comforts innumerable.
I am upon my
knees
to thank the High Three
in the presence of angels,
and the pilgrims of glories.
And so I speak my quiet words
(or shout them if I choose)
into the listening ears
and loving heart.
And so am I blessed once,
and twice, and a third time
again.
Amen.
UPON THE NEEDS OF THE SOUL
The soul needs
the gentle words and deeds
of a loving community.
The soul needs rituals of blessings
upon every moment and passage
of its journey.
The soul
needs to be known.
The soul needs to love the other.
The soul needs to be touched
through its body.
The soul needs to be wrapped
in the Love of all loves.
The soul needs to glimpse the face
of the God of Life
shining through all creatures.
The
soul needs to see a bit of glory
radiant in all creation.
The soul needs to sing praises.
The soul needs a blessed birthing
and a
peaceful dying.
The soul needs to be celebrated
as the beloved one
of God's cherishing.
A LETTER WRITTEN UPON WIND
I have paid a great price for you
my unknown love.
A bitter road of loving and losing.
Love's fire has twice been enkindled
in the dry burlwood of my soul.
Twice the flames flared up
and raged to burn the forest down.
And so I sat waiting upon smoking stones
by a cinder blackened road
until you should come
with meadow grasses pouring out
under your feet,
with wild flowers marching behind you.
See! Innumerable poppies, like trumpet notes,
are splashing upon the hills;
the black earth smells green.
Who has pointed out the way to you?
What tree spoke to you my name?
What rock, what cloud showed you where I waited?
Or was it the sweet influences of my guardian
who bore to you these words
I have written with a quill of straw
upon the wind?
I WILL KNOW YOU WHEN YOU ARRIVE
Will you understand the strange life
of the writer of wind words
a dreamer of water and stones?
Will the silver ecstasy
lying lightly in your eyes
recognize the young wind in me?
I will know you when you arrive
by the light of lemons in your hair
the black figs in the heart of your eyes.
And when the sun pours upon me
its tiny flood of fire through your smile
I will know you have always known
and forgiven me.
IN THE WARM POOL OF BEING
In
the warm pool of being
--every opened person is--
the currents of God
glide freely:
the fish of holy thoughts
wriggle, twirl and dance.
The pool circles slowly,
like ancient tidal waters
spangled by the moon.
The sunlight of God
sparkles upon the surface
and sends thin shafts of light
down into the vortex at the depths.
There, another Sun is shining up
from the bottomless waters
at
the base of the heart.
IN THE WARM POOL OF BEING
In the warm pool of being
--every opened person is--
the currents of God
glide freely.
The sunlight of God
sparkles upon the surface
and sends thin shafts of light
down into the vortex at the depths.
There,
another Sun is shining up
from the bottomless waters
at the base of the heart.
HALF-LIFE
When the outerworld
flows into the innerworld
its images, sights and smells,
all luscious miracles
and gifts of being
in graces,
and the inner world
flows
back out,
crossing currents
of consciousness
with pure creative stuff:
dancing imaginings,
essences beyond images
through images,
feelings, longings
understandings,
--and all the city of God!--
it is the land
of two mingling currents
that is the expanding soul!
If all was inner,
or all was outer...
where would be all this
intoxicating significance?
AS SANITY RETURNS
A common man or woman
opened to divinity
shall be more interesting
than all the comic book heroes
which
rock'em and sock'em
through vastly impossible
sensational sensory adventures.
A common man
hearing the wind blow,
or
seeing a sparrow
twirl through a bush,
and actually hearing, and in reality seeing
until his heart is expansive and tremulous
is too great a miracle
to describe in words!
Being too sublime for words or images,
such a subject shall stimulate a new wave
of artistic outpouring
forever.
*
When a soul is understimulated
and Love-hungry,
the doors of wonder open.
BEYOND
EVERY REASON
From the outside
many gods are observed.
Religious souls generate
them from their energies
of
devotion.
But from the inside
the spirits are discerned:
gardens are cultivated;
temples built in the midst of gardens.
The walls of the temple fall down;
the garden walls crumble;
countless stars fall from the sky;
the earth disappears
and appears again.
A face appears over the
horizon.
Light blinds the brain!
The holy one speaks...
from the inside.
FRANCIS AND BLAKE
It is not Francis's Brother Ass
that is the problem
but the worm
in Wm. Blake's rose.
THE NUTHATCH
The little brown nuthatch
(nifty, warm little ball of fuzz and feathers),
bops and dips, skips and drops
through the skeleton branches
of
the lilac bush.
High mountains to the west
are shrouded with black mist.
A wind howls like a knife of ice.
It carves holes in the nuthatch.
It bends the little bird's wings
and snaps off its feathers!
The bird suddenly sings as if it has no care
as the wind catches it and its song
and
violently carries it
beyond the eastern deserts,
beyond the high mountains of the east.
As quickly as it came, the wind dies.
All is still.
Once again I hear the nuthatch singing.
Its voice is ringing
in expanding circles of silence.
in expanding, silent, circles
of air.
HOW CAN I BE WILD AND WISE?
How can I be wild and wise?
Love the essences
and never grasp them.
The holy floods through.
Love the holy.
It lights up the clay.
Love the miraculous clay.
One
is the flowing holy;
one is the holy clay.
Isn't it the soul
that exists between?
Honor the soul!
Differentiate:
Ineffable rose water
in a glass;
glass sinking in a sea
of rose water.
GOD IS KNOWN
IN IMAGINATIVE
LUMINESCENCE
As white light
pouring into pale blue,
(like common sun
in the morning sky),
so the light of
God
streams into human light.
No one can feel
light mingling with light
unless they are completely empty
and
utterly pure.
Because we are not,
we must apprehend this
by imaginative faith.
And mysteriously, it is so.