89[36] Theotokos (Mother of God)
.
For Mike
Changes
Pilgrim
Covey
The shadows from our narrow wood
have disappeared beneath these first low clouds.
The white fall
muffles to silence all but
the call and scurry of several dozen quail feeding near-by.
They are dark, nervous patches on a crystalline field of white.
The snow is only somewhat thicker where it has fallen
than where it is falling.
Saint Andrew’s Priory
Valyermo, California 1975
.
Awaiting Satori
I
Snowstorm
White, gray, milky blue-gray.
White, undulating around animal tracks
and single, yellow stalks of wild oats.
It covers a plateau: smooth, particled,
over a hidden path, over a plateau, to the edge
to a fall.
Trees,
apples trees bare in their orchard,
crotch full.
Then translucent white, not so very, but gray and black also. Slick, hard above flowing water, and willows, frozen in the stream.
Silent
before the first sighting of the sun
after the first light.
It has been a long freeze, a long wait.
I am silent
The snow touches all things bare to the sky.
***
Satori II
The Desert
Rocks.
Gravel.
Dry Branches.
A hilly path of crumbling rock.
Long silent days.
Rocks,
hot to touch.
The brush is dry,
seeming dead.
Here, a flower
tiny beneath its bush
one
several,
a miniature meadow
of moist repose and glory.
This warm stone
cools
light-washed
beneath its dry tree.
Valyermo, California 1975
Slivers
Silver swift behind the rock,
beneath the water,
sliver quick, and slipped
beneath the surface of a cloud.
Splicing between particles
is the Word,
a field, unified to completion,
peeled to a seed of fig.
stig-motted
divided
dismantled
undiscovered is the Name
before and now the same,
beyond sight and angel’s measure
man of sorrow
tears of blood,
transmuted in the clay,
from the first breakage by time
from that arrogant first moment
to an intimate mingling
of clay and light…
St. Andrew’s Priory
Valyermo, California 1975
- First Series: c. 1977/78
- Day at the Beach
(Misc.)
For Mike
Changes
Pilgrim
For mike, on the occasion of his mother’s passing.
In each melting moment
we might face the inevitable
loss of anything held dear
or everything or one
precious person whose presence we thought
held firm against transient
time and space.
Whose being conjured
screens of love for our nurturing
and held us sweet in their concern.
Some moment as it passes
will take our waiting love
and leave us sometimes empty,
robbed and incredulous at the loss.
(moments melt and flow
forms change
the sea beats the land to beach
becomes rain
carries land
by river to the sea)
Tangible form is so only as it passes
–and what remains?
The well-loved form?
The loving sigh?
The sigh, then
since it issues from a cohesive force, an eternal realm.
The tie in binding
binds for good.
Love once given is not like energy that can dissipate
in empty space
but rather it remains
waiting sometimes–
inside
in-between somewhere
forming heart
shaping vision
silent–
present
beyond each melting moment
above the flood of time,
waiting
waiting…
In light
in love
for you—
Venice, California, 1978
Changes
(Written while living in a Trappist monastery..)
Red-leafed maples
have cried the death of this year’s green delivery.
Hills are
mottled gray
beneath the waiting
of a cloud-shaded day.
It’s as if something had changed or was about to change…
within the silence and the dying,
within the creation of fall and spring,
like a worship of holy things,
still in the singing of Godly things,
a rising,
a stepping-over,
beyond earth and Fall
to spring without the Fall
and that brothers sisters all, is all…
and All.
Steve Frost
Abbey of the Holy Trinity
Huntsville, Utah. 1977
_____________________
Pilgrim
I.
As I wait
leaves fall glorious dead
magenta red
blood, magenta red.
As I wait
squirrels, nearly falling, hide their forage
nearly fall in the dance
before quiet rhythms of winter waiting.
II.
Mother of pearl sky
above gentle, clattering, blood-red leaves
Mother of sky
speechless in magnanimous largess.
Cities of steam
clouds blown up to blossoms
congeal down thunder dark,
shake our puny particulars to the point of pleasing God?
in humility.
III.
As I wait
decadence dies
fresh blooms open sky wide.
In the in-between (oh yes, between feast and fast)
I wait
for that last vision
that lasts…
that is
as now/before
for labored whore
as well
the monk in solitary cell.
IV.
So, in Central Park, trees no longer grow green
rather gray before our jagged horizon
beneath movements of clouds blown high against crystal blue.
So, in Central Park,
on my way by,
the woods fill with damp-trodden leaves
bruise red, glorious dead upon the damp ground.
Fragrance reaches with hands to caress…
It’s time
It’s time to set time on the shelf,
to set sail in conestoga wagons drawn by the wind.
To where?
Where else, but the waiting. Or…
Perhaps that’s not quite the word
V.
A leaf turns yellow red
red to pure light…
right
right as waiting was the word
It wasn’t my waiting though,
but ‘other’ I heard
… from the start, you’ve waited
and you’ve waited
for the turning
for the turning of my heart …
…Unfinished, 1978
43. [12.] Macros I
Macros I Oil on Hung Canvas 9′ x 4′ 1976 See captions #s 1-9 above.