“Horses at Midnight without a Moon” by Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and sufferings suround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Jack Gilbert
Collected Poems (2012)

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Tanka by Akiko Yosano

How would I feel
if he should say:
“Three hundred miles
have I come–
this loneliness too much to bear”?

Akiko Yosano
tanka #42 in Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami
translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seisha Shinoda

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A PURE HEART

Now available from Lulu Press:

Preview A PURE HEART

“With A Pure Heart, Jane Beal invites her readers into a world of vivid observations, lush images, poignant allusions, and stirring emotions. In this world, we are invited to embrace the beauties of nature, the mysteries of God, and the realities of human experience as we reflect on both the joy and the heartache that links our souls with the poet’s.”

~ Dr. Christine A. Colón, author of Singled Out and Joanna Baillie and the Art of Moral Influence.

“My love is everything,” Jane Beal writes in a stunning poem from her collection, A Pure Heart. The tender and vivid poems in this collection brim with joy for the gift of life and bring tears of recognition to anyone who has lost, at least for a time, one they love. To experience the world through Beal’s lyrical poetry is to grieve the profound tears of a motherless child and to know heaven’s steady touch in the fiery color of opals, an infant’s wail, and the bridal chamber. Beal’s poetic genius lies in the life she draws from biblical imagery and the bonds of profound affection, especially the marriage bond, as expression of divine love pouring itself out from above and from within.”

~ Dr. Jane Marie Pinzino, editor of The 1431 Trial of Joan of Arc (from the Orleans MS)

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A Celtic Blessing Song

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you

wherever he may send you;

may he guide you through the wilderness,

protect you through the storm.

May he bring you home rejoicing

at the wonders he has shown you;

may he bring you home rejoicing

once again into our doors!

~ Northumbria Community

“CelticBlessingSong3” sung by Jane Beal

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“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer

I think I shall never see
a poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;

a tree that looks at God all day,
and lifts her leafy arms to pray;

a tree that may in summer wear
a nest of robins in her hair;

upon whose bosom snow has lain;
who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me
but only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

 

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Blue Pomegranates

“Christians, for example, ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. Great painting is not “photographic” in the poor sense of photographic. The Old Testament art commanded by God was not always photographic. There were blue pomegranates on the robes of the priest when he went into the Holy of Holies. In nature there are no blue pomegranates. Christian artists do not need to be threatened by fantasy and imagination for they have a basis for knowing the difference between them and the real world “out there” …  The Christian is really the free man — he is free to have imagination. This too is our heritage. The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond stars.” Francis A. Schaeffer,  Art and the Bible 

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