Wonder-woven: Poems of Beauty and Blessing

Wonder-woven: Poems of Beauty and Blessing

By S. M. Feir

The Call of Beauty

She waits and wills to welcome you
And waken you to Wonder's warmth,
In blessed bursts of bubbling bliss
that riot as running rivers
Over the stones of sorrow's sediment
Sunk deep within the soul.

She asks only to be allowed
To approach and to walk with you a while,
But flees from the flames of anger and envy
To seek some otherwhere to sit in state
Or dance in dazzling light with one
Who comes to her kindly call.

She is beauty, that blesses them that know her,
And lingers like a song of solitude,
Changing in her chanting all who hear her voice.
It is no luxury to lift an answering echo
Or follow in her footsteps
To seek her certain source.

She is alive and ready to receive
The senses of the soul,
To transfigure them in triumph
To tellers of timeless truth.

The Secret Singing

May love lie still
And linger by your side,
And in its stillness star your soul
With murmurs of silver song.

Yet may the secret singing never cease
To salve your weary wounds of woe
With blessed balsam of delight,
That joy might join with sorrow's solitude
And burnish it to brilliance where it brings
Its mystic music to make glad
The heart of all humanity.

The Door-step

A day without loss of light,
Yet always dawning, dew-dappled
With life which dances to divinity's drum
And answers with echo undying to creation's cry of ecstasy
Waits just beyond the door-step of the spirit
To enter and make eternity out of earthly clay.

Once reached, once crossed by Christ crucified and risen,
The doorstep's deathly stone,
Held hard by hindering hate,
Is leavened by His lightest footfall
Into the living green and gold of unguessed glory.

Theophany

When sings the soul unbidden
In ringing rhymes and chimes of changelessness
Amid a whirling, windy world,
And when guest-right is given to goodness,
And welcome within the heart to wisdom's high harmony,
Then God is glimpsed in glory as light upon a lake,
And senses sundered and shattered, scattered among stones,
Are knit in knots of knowing, caught in a net of nameless joy,
As they find again the fire of love's delight.

Ever haunted by a home not here
The heart will wander willfully in worldly wants and woes,
And settle nowhere, all footholds found false and faithless
To the ceaseless song of silver-hued simplicity
It hears upon the harp of longing and loss.

But then will come a moment, and instant of eternal time,
When hails the mortal heart its well-met wooer
Who consecrates creation's call to truth
And binds in bliss the wounds of weary wanderers,
That they may leap and dance in deathlessness.

The Hermit

Standing in stillness veiled, waking to the stream-vivid wonder of a wooded valley,
Or sitting in silence swathed, plaiting mats made of desert plants,
Or caught in prayer so pure that outstretched hands bear nest-building birds,
Or mulling in mouth of cave, copying classic lines of text to tend the light of knowledge,

The hermit hides from human habitation
And haunts with wild worship the lonely lands,
Though not because to him or her the human home is hateful,
But to find in far-flung wilderness the way to win eternity
And thereby dance more deeply to salvation's endless song.

Repose

Though slumbers deep the lately-leaping clay
That danced through numbered days of delight and dearth,
Though flees the flame of life from earthly flesh,
Leaving embers where once a hearth-fire, filled with presence, warmed,

Yet still the candle keeps a kindly watch,
Close-tended by eternity,
And memoried by mortal ministers in prayer,
In waiting welcome, ready to run again when roused.

Soul-blessing

May worship waken you willingly
To the wildness of its wonder!
May prayer propel you properly
Into the presence of its praise!

May repentence recall you rightly
From the realm of recrimination,
And may God's love guard your going
And in kindness keep your coming!

May joy so journey with you gently
That it jewels the jags of grief!
May abundance always add to
And make no cheat of charity.

May loss lend lovely lightness
To the loads you lay on others,
And may wisdom walk in well-kept ways
To haunt the hedgerows of your heart!

Lacrimae Mundi

None can wipe away the weeping of the world
By force or fear or false fetters on power.
None can balm the bruises of the broken
With salve of silver or gauze of gold.

Humanity is helpless in its half-formed fury
To change its agonized agenda,
But from the winter of our discontent
can sprout the spring of understanding and peace,
If we but meet each other where we live.

De Profundis

From despondent deeps the crushed heart cries,
Hurling its howling to din the crown of heaven,
But bound still by snares of stinging sorrow,
It cannot greet the guest who longs to loosen grief's grasp.

So waits the willing watcher in the night
With hand outstretched, firm-footed, fearing nothing,
To take in tender grip the heart that groans
And bring it, tear-burnished, into the glad gaze of joy.

Scorn Not to seek

Scorn not to seek the song of simple seeming
That trills in triune harmony and hums
Upon the hidden harp of true heart’s longing,
For though its notes seem naive to joy long-jaded,
Yet power pours from every precious peel
To wake the wayward wanderer from weariness.

Its crystal chords akin to silence sound,
Yet when attended to, thrum thrilling through the heart and soul.
It sings amid the surge of sorrow’s sea
And brings brightness where its lovely lilting lands.
For rightness rings from every element
Of its muted, mighty melody.

Transfiguration

O being of all that is, beseeching’s birth and blossoming!
O root and fruit of life which longs only for thee,
Take now from me the tales I tell myself,
Untenanted by truth, half-formed by fancy’s fumbling,
And carry them kindly to a sure shelter
With all the dignities of holy dying.

Bury them beautifully, for they are but babes!
Cover them carefully, that cold may not kill them,
And hide their healing in the heart of thy death
That they may one day rise from rest and run,
Spilling splendour like sunlight on spring-new leaves!

The Wicket-gate

Within the wall built with bricks of broken dreams
And melded with melancholy’s mortar,
Though it be high and hindering to the calling of the heart,
Beneath twining tendrils of ivy-green,
A little wicket-gate is left lonely, waiting for wanderer’s welcome.

It hurries to open, when finally found,
At slightest touch of hand unhardened,
And through its secret portal
Peeps the merest play of light on lofty mountains.

It is the gate to glorious wonder’s wood,
Where rivers run and trees stand tall,
And good adventure keeps its keenest gifts
For that one who will walk the way
That lies beyond the door from death to life.

Anam Cara Caritas

In frailty is found secretly a soul-friend,
A harbinger of healing for the hunger of the heaven-haunted heart.
It is great grief’s glad guest, unknown and never named,
But always the beloved of bruising loss
And the tender of tear-watered wisdom.

It hymns its high immortal music
To waken weary travellers to truth,
Its hidden holiness homed within a hand, a voice, a fondly-vivid face,
That it might know itself the more by mindful meeting.

It sings in sympathy with the infinite,
Yet bides within the brittle human breast
And turns dust to diamond with its deifying fire.

Wonder-woven

Upon the loom of life is laid the warp of wisdom’s working,
Counted carefully by faultless fingers upon the board of blessed being.
Then, shifting, lifting coloured lines of dark and light,
The tapestry takes shape, shot through with threads of silver and of sable,
As hands unhurried surely catch and throw the shuttle on.

Than at whiles will come the clearing of the sheds,
When sorrow seems to dull the sacred dance of warp with woof,
But only so the shuttle may again with freedom fly,
And after, when it is taken up,
Will weave new webs of wonder, twisting together threads of time and of eternity.

Holy Well

Fallen from the full brightness of being,
We wander far from where our hearts would have us homed.
Sunk in self and buried by broken sisterhood with the soul,
We languish lonely, longing for more.

Yet calls the holy well its clarion “come!”
In water-song of pearling purity.
No drout can dry or drain one drop,
For life is that which bubbles to its brim.

It needs no dousing in order to be found,
For it hides within the human heart and hopes
To heal the hurts and turn to living clay
The desert stone of doubt, and so to drown the sting of death.

For Someone

In solid stone he set the song of stars,
Catching haunting cosmic harmonies and holding chords of high-crying crystal
In hard hands, striking strange music from the stuff of earth
And making it remember its ancient astral origins.

In myriad pathways moved the mighty musings of his playful mind,
And sent his spirit soaring and singing in silver,
Ringing in rhymes of rock and metal minstrelsy
And bringing living fire to brightly touch the bones of trees.

In me he healed a hidden hive of hurts
And helped me hear the secret singing of my soul,
Giving me gifts of gratitude and grandeur,
Which send me still skyward in dreams of deep delight.

Sea-dreams

With the crying of gulls they come, troubling sleepers with their truth,
Waves breaking wondrously upon the shingle of the soul,
Breathing bardic ballads of far-sought sands where mermaids sing and dolphins sound,
And bidding the land-locked spirit to ride, like fairy steeds, their foaming billows.

They speak in spells of surf-song, wave-words whispering
Of weariness relieved and tranquility untempested,
Though only if the hearer will hoist sails and surrender to the swell,
With but the high, far star of hope to steer by.

The soul is meant to sail that singing sea,
Though not all winds will be fair or following.
Yet, if bound bed-fast in brooding sleep,
Then never will the heard-of haven be sighted on the horizon,
And always will the sea-dreams drum sighingly
To wake the yearning of years.

Evangel Answered

She came like cloud to drop dew upon a sun-dry desert,
And bring the brighter sun whose rays green the ground.
She sang of truth eternal, and in splendid state was borne away and buried,
Yet went to wonder’s welcome in the warmth of living love.

And as the moon, sun-silvered, lights the way for night-wanderers,
So she, all gilded with the gleam of God’s own glory,
Holds out her hallowed hand to help and heal
The traveller who trusts to her true and tender care.

And yet, all could have been otherwise,
If she had not with maiden lips let God have leave
To live within her, immortality made mortal by her humanity.
With that amazing “Amen,” she became the prince’s portal
And the seven-pillared court of Christ!

Mystic Pastoral

Oh, let us live lightly upon the land
As birds that build upon a bough.
Oh, let us drink deeply of our dowered days,
Taking and making what is given by God
Into worthy works of wondrous worship.

Turning time toward eternity is our sacred task,
Tending the garden of the heart as once we tended paradise’s paths,
To plant and to pluck, to gather and to glean,
To water and to weed and to wait,
While deep beneath the ground new green begins to grow,
Bursting in beauty towards the brilliance of bright joy.

Consider

Consider what clings to Christ of its own accord:
The lily, the linnet, the lightly-stepping stag,
The tree that grows unharmed by human use,
The mountain stream unstinted in its steep descent.

All these things and more make merry in their dance of living and dying
In glory and in gratitude to God,
While we, unwilling to await His will,
build brightly-burnished babels and break them,
Murdering mercy with unconstrained cruelty,
And killing kindness in the name of kin, country or creed.

How then to heal the hardened human heart?
How then to hail hope to help us home?
We must learn from the lily and the lightly-stepping stag,
And waken to the waning wisdom of the ancient woods,
Breathing God into our broken being,
And choosing to be changed by His changeless charity.

Bright Sadness

Set in the silver of sorrow turned sacrament,
The jewel of burning joy is made to shine brightly,
For true contrition carries consolation within,
And penitence by despair undimmed will purify.

In suffering may be found salvation,
But only where this bright sadness sings,
Wringing from the heart a true record of wrongs,
Bringing beauty forth from broken places,
That the thirsting heart may drink delight
Which comes welling from the depths of its dearest desire.

Renunciation

Does the dove despise the dew-dampness of the earth
When she wings wondrously toward the waking of the day?
Does the hart hate the high steepness of the hill
As he fleets to the vivid flow of the valley stream?

Surely, no disdain drives the dove into the dawn-crimsoned air,
But she knows she must find her satisfaction in flight,
And though the hart is happy upon the high places,
Yet only in the valley will he find the quenching of his keenest thirst.

So it is with the seeker of the fountainhead of life.
Though joys that fade are filled with blessed sweetness while they last,
Yet do they speak of far greater joy at journey’s end,
When lover and beloved truly meet
In the fullness of eternal ecstasy!

Kenosis

The rarest riddle that was ever read aright
By reasons rich and radiantly royal ray
Is but the babbling of a helpless babe in arms
When set beside the silver-singing sacrifice
Of God who gave Himself to grace humanity’s grief in glory.

The same who brought the blessed earth into being amidst the burning stars,
And with ageless wonder weaves anew from night each nascent day,
Came crying and dying, a creature cradled and crucified,
To clothe the frailty of His kindred flesh
In a deathless and deifying dawn.

Be of Good Cheer

Mere trash is tradition that trammels up the soul’s way,
Turning it out of true in the name of pathless piety,
Whose purpose is to pile prayer on prayer and fence itself about
With hedges of high-minded morality.

Yet if tradition spends itself as the spikenard of old,,
It waters with its ways and words the weary, care-worn world
And brings unbridled joy where it takes root
And blossoms with the blessings of eternity.

It seeks the stray and succours the sick,
And buoys the spirit sunk in sorrow’s depths.
It lifts with love the lost and lonely lamb,
And guides the heaven-haunted pilgrim home.

It bids the human heart be of good cheer,
As Christ once counselled his companions,
For all that is not life is overcome
By Him who dulled the bitter dart of death.

>Where Wisdom Waits

Where wisdom waits, the wanderer finds welcome
Within a brightly-blooming bridal bower
Laden with the lacy leaves of laurel
And scented softly with the sweet-sourness of sage.

To rest from roving is her repeated request,
For here the heart may hide from anger’s heat
And turn aside from false and fleeting things
Which cannot claim to satisfy or salve its soul-sick state.

And yet, to linger long in languor will not do,
For even as she invites, so does she urge
With winged words and phrases full and fair,
The traveller to trust to higher truth,
Whereof wisdom, heaven’s handmaid, is but the happy harbinger,
And her seven-pillared palace is but the doorway to the divine.

Song for Soul-kin

The sweet refrain of friendship freely swells
From soul to soul in songs of sacred sympathy,
Antiphons of affinity echoing endlessly,
Ringing the changes of charity and cheer,
And bringing to birth the true beauty of treasured belonging.

No distance dims the bright fervour of fellowship
And though death may divide its devotees,
Still softly the song comes stealing
From beyond the grave and bitter grief,
To where they blithely meet in the mansion of blessed memory.

Spring Stirrings

What comes when the blackbird sings as the sun of February shines?
What wakens in the heart at the faintest Robin’s trill?
What Dawns from darkness when the ducks return
To rest themselves a while in backyard pools and ponds?

At such times, earth’s ancient dream of spring begins,
In little joyful bursts of sunny song amid the winter wood,
And all is suddenly sealed with a new nearness of hope
That life will once again arise from sleep,
To spill itself in spates of green and gold among the glad hills.

Heart’s Harvest

As land that is let to lie fallow for a time,
Its fertility left free to renew its fruitful friendship
With wind, rain and sun, answering only to the call of earth,
No plough-share shattering the peace of its wild perfection,

So will the tranquil heart abide untroubled,
Unworried, unhurried by the whims of a world
Which seeks to seed its ground with tares of greed,
And spend its spirit in labour not its own.

Yet when the heart is ready and renewed,
It yields to the yearning of the wise and gentle gardener
Who has journeyed far to find it and to sow its soil
With the grain of wheat which must be born from death,
That it might reap the full riches of unfading joy.

Echoes of Emmaus

Will wandering awaken the weary one
Who seeks to settle somewhere beyond the sound
Of sorrow’s sea-deep sighing,
Breaking breathlessly on the bitter sand of solitude?

Can the homeless heart ever hope to hide itself
In hurrying from haunt to haunt, itself haunted
By unheard harmonies of healing
Set in the simple-seeming silence of soul-sung song?

The echo of eternity will ever invite
The wanderer to wait a while in wonder,
And caught within the splendour of its spell,
The spirit stills to listen,
Its unspoken loss relieved, its mighty longing, for a moment, met with love.

Two Stones

The cock crowed and the rock cried,
Denial dying with the dawn
Whose downing would see the Life of the World laid dead,
Being borne away to burial in a brand new tomb.

Then came the Sabbath and the sealing stone
Set by soldiers standing guard,
The sepulchre hiding hope within its sad self,
Till, come morning, the women came weeping,
Mourning bitterly with myrrh as was mete.

With fear they found the stone rolled back,
The guards as dead men lying down,
And on the stone, God’s angel sat
And told them of the empty tomb.

Then came the one whom peter had denied,
Turning tears to endless joy as they beheld
His beloved face in fear and awe,
And at his word ran as willing witnesses
To tell the tale of one stone strangely stirred
Unto that other stone whose heart had also been unsealed
And broken by the breaking of the day.

Vernal Offering

The heart hails the hoped-for waning of winter
As spring spreads her warm green wings
To waken the weary land to wondrous life.

Leaping to the growing light, led on by longing,
It yearns to yield to the call of youth,
To bind itself to the boundless bliss of beginning,
Restless to rest amid the riot of rich renewal.

Now dawn seems destined to delight
As the soul is stirred to race the robin’s running ripple of song
Toward some new and splendid thing,
Some king’s feast for the senses to gratefully receive,
A guest-gift of holy hospitality
To cheer the stranger and the sojourner
And set the seeker on the royal road to joy.

Seeking Salem

We wake to walk the world a while in wonder,
Tumbled into time for triumph or for tragedy.
More likely a bit of both is what we are born to bear
As the sparks fly high into the sky.

Torn from our trust in eternity,
We learn to seek solace in rhythm and rhyme,
In the chime of changing seasons
Dazzled by the dance of days and nights.

But when a measure of the dance is missed,
And time seems terrible with the weight of worry or woe,
Then do we seek the peace which passes all perfection,
To be held hallowed in gentle, healing hands,
And to live once more in light which knows no loss.

Soul-Song

As upon the harp a sound-struck string sings in sympathy
When wakened by the nearness of another instrument’s note,
So sings the soul in echoes of eternity
When time takes its leave for a little space,
And brightness spills brimming from the golden chalice of charity.

Yet yearning is not assuaged by mere harmonic happenstance.
The echo must be endlessly renewed,
Restated in the resonating rhyming of the body,
Which bound in time can nonetheless bear the soul in singing silence
To seek its consummation in chords of cosmic joy.

In Pacem

It needs the plumb of prayerful peace to sound the depths of the soul
Whose song is silence to the unwary one
That seeks to drown it deep beneath the deluge
Of business and bother, buying and selling,
Never telling its ways in wonder
Or weeping for its woes in kind compassion.

Some space must be spared the spirit to spiral,
To dance in time to timeless truth,
To feel its fell wounds and to seek their succour,
And to walk a while where love will surely lead.

What Will We Bring?

What will we bring on that bright and burning day
When all we nestled near and dearly kept
IN careful concealment, hidden in our hearts
Is bared to all, beyond the bounds of shame or praise?

What will we bring when brought before the living lamp of love
Which will not leave the tinyest truth untold,
Nor let the dross remain amid the gold, beyond all greed,
Of humility and selflessness He seeks?

Will we be rooted deep and hanging heavy with fruit,
Or will we wither at His gaze because we were never nourished?
Will we be as the wanderer welcomed home,
Or will what seems a palace to some
To us be only wilderness and want?

We will come there at last, when life is left behind,
And therefore must begin to learn the ways
Of this green and living land which only seems a foreign shore
To those who have been too long estranged
From the place where time may touch eternity.

Yet in that strange and secret meeting may be glimpsed a narrow track,
A steep yet steady path to paradise
For the one who seeks to travel it in trust,
journeying in faith toward the fullness of joy.

As It Comes

As it comes, light lingers, and then it leaves,
Dimming the day, once drawn in muted morning tints,
Then brimming with the bright hues of high noontide’s healing,
Now departing as the dusk draws down to dark,
Shadowing all the visible beneath its veil.

As it comes, beauty balms, and then it burns,
Bringing joy to the heart which bears no jot of hurt,
Letting love lie lightly upon the soul unlearned in sorrow,
But teaching eyes to weep at its wonder
When they glimpse it through the bitter glass of grief.

As it comes, so it goes,
Life leaps up, and then lies still.
But if we take it in truth and hold it holy,
We gain the more by its going,
For then we are embraced by eternity,
If we can but meet it as it comes.

Let Go a Little

Let go a little,
Releasing the thing to which you too-close cling,
Relaxing the grip of your clasping grasp,
Relenting, repenting the limited love
Which prisons and poisons both lover and beloved.

Let be a little,
Denying desire’s despotism of despair,
Departing from frantic freedom-stealing need,
Delighting instead in what comes without claim
And is gained by gift of eternal grace.

Doubter’s Prayer

Will You walk with me a while,
Even when I cannot stand?
Will You weep with me a while,
When all weeping seems vain?

Will You stay near me still,
Wherever I may wander?
Will You wait for me in welcome,
Though I come with nothing but questions?

Will You mother me with mercy
And father me with truth?
And when my own faith falters,
Will Your faith hold me fast?

Keep me kindly, oh King and Kin!
Love me dearly with Divine longing!
Seek my sorrowing soul and save me!
Lift my languishing life aloft,
And again and again, Oh! Carry me home!

Still and Small

It sings when silence seeks its own,
When words unwoven will not wait
But flee through flailing fingers to fly
Freely floating upon the winds of worry and fear.

It comes when fury spends itself,
Burning brilliantly to aching ashes,
Leaving embers where the anger boomed and shook the world,
Giving place to tears and then to tired peace.

Then it speaks, still and small,
The voice of truth that brings you to your knees,
The breeze whose gentle joy is sweet surrender,
Wounding you with the wild welcome of wonder,
And lifting you aloft at last on wings of unfading fire.

Heartsmith

As spills in sparkles a sunlit stream over sunken stones,
Smithing them to smoothness with its tumbling touch,
Rounding their roughness in its ruthless rushing,
While they lie long and let themselves be sculpted, little by little,
Till they gleam like jewels in the depths,

So the wild human heart, hardened by heat of hate and hurt,
Jagged with hidden jealousies and edged by envy, eater of all joy,
May be smoothed and shaped anew by hands more skilled
Than the scudding scrape of water and time,
To something soft yet adamantine in its strength,

And where it is polished by tears and hardship,
The lustre of love will dance dazzling from deep within,
And leap like flames to light the living world,
Spending itself as it spirals toward eternity.

THE END

Written between January 8 and April 10, 2024