Poetry for An Upcoming August

It is late July in Northwestern Georgia. The forecast today is for a high of 94 degrees. I have walked my dog already by 9:15, so that he and I can avoid the panting and the perspiration that yesterday sucked us dry of energy. I sit inside with two fans and some indirect air conditioning on me, with no plans to go outside for more than a couple of minutes today.

Tomorrow should be better. August is always a little better with the heat here, with shorter days of sunlight and leaves starting to say, "It's enough, we will give up our lives."

Yesterday I pulled up my beans. They have yielded, but I did a poor job of creating a frame for them to expand. I may plant another two rows, and plan for a better skeleton of sticks. The okra lives, and the peppers, but tomatoes languished this year and zucchini and cucumbers seemed prefer May and June.

Rain would be welcomed. But I remember that it falls on the just and unjust, and that rain does not make the choice of who it falls on or when it falls or how hard it falls.

I have been reading a commentary every morning The New Testament and Its World, by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird. It is thick but not dense; however, Tom Wright's interpretation of Paul and the gospels takes a little getting used to. It's not that it's wrong, but that it incorporates the Jewishness of that world that we have come to overlook in our study of the Bible. I like to think I am more aware of it than some, but I tend to think in terms of cultural practices instead of deep-seated world view.

This morning I was reading about Paul's legacy, and Wright/Bird make a statement about how God created a world that he (He) was not part of (question, should we not refer to the triune God as they? Is that heresey?) God is separate from His creation. Could God have created a world that He was not separate from, that was part of Himself?

Maybe. . . but He did not want us to be confused by that. I tend to think "to create" is to make something separate from yourself but something that represents oneself in unique ways, but not in every way. Thus we can see God's power and grandeur in a creation that is currently corrupted by humankind's sins. If we had not corrupted it, would it also show God's love and justice, which I submit, based on Psalm 19, we do not see now in creation. That has to come from direct verbal revelation.

Ah! words!

Today I share some poems I collect from the Internet. This first is by Richard Wilbur, and came to me through Jonathan Rodgers (of the Habit Podcast) in his newsletter. The second was posted by a friend, who I assume wrote it.

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,

My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing

From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys

Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff

Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:

I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,

As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.

A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,

And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor

Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling

Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;

How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,

We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature

Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove

To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits

Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,

Beating a smooth course for the right window

And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish

What I wished you before, but harder.