By The Morning of Our Healing contains poems with passion, depth, sincerity and the stuff of living. They convey honestly and vigorously the joys, pains and rough resolutions of living and loving in the world. The book calls the reader to reflect on that invisible contract we all have with life. Remember that naive and idealistic state of sweet young love, becoming aware for the first time of the immense power of the ocean or the unpredictable impact of growling death? In response, we are all called to show up and participate. These poems convey one man's journey through these unique yet universal experiences. With confusion and anxiety, joy and sudden pleasure, the book takes the reader on a powerful journey through the geography of relationships. The book calls to mind the awareness that suffering does not stop us from succeeding. Healing happens all the time and in quite gentle and subtle ways. The book reaches into scenes and senses of living, loving and loss. It reflects the wisdom, triumphs and tragedies encountered along the way. Expressed here as well, is how we are shaped by the power of the wind, the grandeur of the mountains, the ethereal presence of the ocean and God's subtle voice in all. You will find here an eclectic collection of poems. Some are as serious as leaving home. Others are as carefree as an ice cream sundae. Hopefully you will identify with and hear echoes of your own voice and journey. These friendly poems will take you on a pleasant and challenging ride through living and loving that may get your heart pumping again and remind you that you are still alive and the fat lady hasn't sung yet!.
By the Morning of Our Healing
By Steven C. HouseAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Steven C. House
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-6449-9Contents
On Awakening.....................................1Young Love.......................................17Opening and Closing Doors........................35Ocean Songs, Mountain Verses.....................55Father Stories...................................77Walking the Road.................................93Respite..........................................113A Gathering of Wind..............................137People in Still Life.............................163In Celebration...................................217
Chapter One
On Awakening
Goes the Night
From darkness to light
Goes the night
And being human
We follow the night's lead
So that our inevitable wounds
Are dark with hopelessness
Only to be awakened
By the morning of our healing
Book Bones
I have many stories
My bones are thick with the pain and joy of lives I've seen
My fingers and shoes contain the echoes
Of smiles left behind by others
I move and my muscles squeeze
Words said in passion and in anger
On Awakening
I gather in my thoughts aware of the residue of sleepy emotion
in my lungs
The fresh air is cool, responsive, blowing from the mountain
and into me
The clean sense of alive surrounds me and I breathe it in
A sparkle of stream water, crisp and wet flows within me
Clouds billow above, around and through me, making me
buoyant and light
I am tall, tree top tall, and I feel beyond my vision
The open land contours before me
I can taste the snow upon the peaks I've yet to climb:
My journey has begun
Give Rise to New Beginnings!
Give rise to new beginnings!
Let loose the chains of past mortality with its anchored being
and cloistered experience
This day is like no other
This breath seen never before
Do not mistake me for another
You do not know me
But if you open your eyes I shall greet you with a kiss as sweet
as any you have tasted
I am the chariot that rides to a new day
I am the source where the river leaves the soil
For the first time, rise and greet the new day
I am the first glimpse of tomorrow's sun
Life Abundant
Life abundant, life creative, seeking always a fertile home
A flower blooms delicate and bright
A vacant ground yields wonder to joyful impulse
Sense the spiraling ripples, surrounding in declaration: I am
life, I am new birth, I am irresistible, and I am everywhere
I am God's first thought and his ever present revelation
I am a wise unfolding, a determined fulfillment, and a rich
circle of love
I make fervently alive all the ends of the earth
I fill all with energy, ecstatic, kinetic, and self aware
I make the sound of the universe a small heartbeat, rhythmic and
strong or the whistle of the wind reaching the mountain plateaus
I shake the roots of the world, I crack rocks, and I speed
invisible across miles
I rest only in the knowledge that the world has been conquered
and is green and blue and abundantly alive.
Today
In hope, I rise to greet the sun
With anticipation, I take on another day
I gently open my life to its unfocused opportunities
Aware of the greatness that can be achieved
And aware of the baseness that can be encountered
I stand perhaps shaky, perhaps smugly, perhaps saintly
And walk into the gust of my life, the heat of the raw and
unpredictable encounter
The holy and tenacious ride that my steps will uncover
Something will happen today
Something will come about today
Something will transpire
And I will be different
So hope and anticipation and gentleness and veracity and
courage and foolishness and holiness:
Come with me
Let us discover what there is to be
Today
Millennium
In the dawning of the new age, one's dreams take flight and
scarce do they touch the ground
In the crisp morning of our hope, with eyes ablaze we look to
the new tomorrow, clothed in radiant expectancy
So dazzling it is, we can hardly look for fear of being blinded
But look we must, as it calls out for our compulsory presence
In the spirit's awakening, coming as it does, in the collective
turning of our lives
We seek a fresh chance at forgiveness, redemption from past woes
A cleansing of all that draws us down
We turn from the pits of despair and pain, which have too long
trapped our innocent vulnerabilities
With heads upward, we open ourselves to the new winds of time
The warm winds that will touch the depth and breadth of our searching
We look to the sky with praise and prayer as the new creation
overcomes us
We do not know what will come from the fearful opening of the
door, the opening of our hearts
We sit in curious trepidation holding on to one another in the
best of our humanity
Time clicks slowly toward the inevitable discovery of our soul's desire
In the east arise the stars of our expectant salvation
In their growing light, in the safety of their illumination
We welcome the new day and all that its good rhythms move
us to feel
The Turns in the Road
Do not look to where you've been
It's done and spent, old paths, used steps
If it brings joy than all the better
To have it once and again to remember
Instead look forward to turns in the road
To where your path meets open sky
The dips and rises in days to come
A friendly wind in your face to guide
And place your hope and direction there
The past a comfort can only be
For truth be known and truth be said
Challenge comes from future's promise
And future's gifts all lie ahead
The Dawning Morn
In the dawning morn and the effusive silence of the tree's love
with the wind, they murmur to each other
They speak about birds and the sun
You can hear the rustling vibrations of life, a new day familiar
yet somehow virgin: dawn, enlightenment, birth
The world rebounds and the sleep of night is broken
The day blooms with its many voices in harmony, a joyous harmony
A spider on the tall grass working his web, hums along
A pale red Cardinal clicks and pauses, listening for her mate
A caterpillar rumbles to his destination on a green leaf
With each leafy moment a little more is discovered and known
Its legs are surefooted, pressing the truth out of the earth
And it is beyond time: in its breast, its womb, laughs a butterfly
one with the new born green earth
The day laughs and laughs
The day laughs and laughs
The Smiling Sun Notwithstanding
It is not in the morning with its dew coat and smiling sun
The birds awake, conversing, are not its reason
Awakening from sleep, cleansed by pure dreams offering the
silence of words, melodic and spoken gently: these things do
not explain it
The warm protection of the bed, like a hug wrapped around me
The clarity of dream vision acute with rich color
The cool air that moves so slowly, you can hear it dancing with
the curtains: these are not what immerse me
Greeting the chair and sleepy lamp, the lazy rug laying still, the
dresser standing tall
The flowers on the night stand fill the room with freshness
It is not these that touch me though each a gift enjoyed
My time, quietly filled and softly felt is full because of you
The morning would be immeasurably less if I were alone.
Touching Souls
Touching souls quickly, a millionth part of eternity, a flash in the
eye of time, entering one's eternal conversation with life, we sit.
Time has quickly learned and quickly forgotten us
A blue drop of ocean, we are, for a second glistening in the sun
For that second, that half second, let us glisten and rejoice
Sing to Me
So sing to me of summertime when life, like rivers, flow
So quick and sure, abounding down in joyful dance with stone
They giggle and they gurgle, no bound to their own glee
So summertime, make us alive and like the rivers be
Life Is
Life is laughter
And smiles and turtles
And people crying out for love
And me and you
And universities, manhole covers and hatred
Don't be surprised when
Two of these randomly come together
To Adventure!
To adventure!
To escape!
To enthusiasm's keeper!
To release from the forgone, to jump out of frame, glance the
ordinary, foreclose on the usual thing
Be time unlimited and vision unreflected
Dance the unheard tune: sing wild, exotic and loud
Carry your bones to a different stance
To hypnotism that reaches the corners of your lungs
Rejoice!
Adventure comes to bargain your quietude, put rings on
different fingers, and tilt your hat on your nose
Open those eyes grown restless, the voice that quivers in
renunciation
Stand up and shake off the residue of yesterday's convictions
The mountains approach to grab the dullness that has slept too
long in your guts
Grab the wine, yes the opportunity, and embrace the breaking
of the crocks
Adventure has no patience: throw it in the fire
Plunge the gorge with one hand waving free, till your mind
and body are out of balance:
To adventure!
Young Love
A Morning Poem
The air is fresh around her, it's proud to be near
The wind dances with her hair slowly
You touch her skin, it is ethereal: you touch the light
She is too much to gather up, emotion dances inside you
It, like her, can't be caught
And laughs her escape
A Love Poem
So quickly did she come that scarce did I hear her feet upon the stairs
So quickly did I fall to her lips and arms that I felt pulled as if
by some magnetism or force
So enthralled am I now that when I close my eyes I feel her face
and touch her presence
She, like the wind, blows my hair with her voice of sweet soft fingers
I am enveloped by her love, entranced by her eye (it like the sun
to me)
How deep I feel for this woman thin
How hot my blood
How quick my heart that I believe her to be more than human
But mortals are we, to live and die, touch and love
And just how quickly do these things come and are gone
That we were gods, I wish, and to forever love
When I See Not Your Eyes
When I see not your eyes, I want to think your eyes
When I hear not your voice, I want to have it echo
When I feel not your skin, I want to remember your touch
For when our voices together are not, our spirits must be
When your warmth does not complement mine, the memory of
our warmth still must be
The world is cold and easily forgets the love of today and the
dreams of tomorrow
When alone, the world gives permanence and shadow
But when in love's affections, it gives the presence of the sun
Softly
So softly did her touch impress me that its subtlety went almost
missed till gone she was
So quietly did her words enter my brain that the silence of our
being was scarce broken till gone she was
So complimentary were our worlds, natural was I with her and
dying was I without her
Our love became more that mere feeling, more than words
dropped from smiling and tender lips
We merged yet in some mysterious way, cosmic or religious (I
know not)
Upon the plains of a universal land two people met, faced with
infinity between, they touched their lives
They overcame and conquered their separation and fulfilled the
will of their nature
Together we rose above our aloneness, together our height
reached the sky
She Disliked the City
She said she disliked the city and it was the city that made her flee
Not the streets and bricks nor the noise and stale overhanging air
It was the feel of it, a sense, no more, of loss and lost
I remember when we came, her and I to this city a long time
ago it seems
Smiles were everywhere
The air was fragrant with hope but pregnant with doom
She said she disliked the city
I couldn't stop her, I loved her
She stood up at the table, pushed back her hair, looked to the
window, pointed
I looked deep into her eyes and felt alone
A young frightened woman sat behind those eyes
She said she disliked the city and now she is gone
And left it behind
The Gone Woman
And you know its going to be the last time you're going to see
her for a while
But still forever
She has that wet twinkle in her eye, that funny angle of her head
She waves that goodbye wave
Turns
Steps briskly away
Into a wall of loneliness you cry, inside
You yell something, inside
She hears but her feet—those shoes won't let her turn
Then you can't see her anymore
Alone, the friend, lover, the woman has gone
And everything is so quiet.
The Spell
The word made her weep
It was some powerful antidote
An ancient ritual unleashed
The crystal jewel, its power unspent and locked in
Sprang forth with the word that fell
Flippant from your lips
Here I Sit
Here I sit (my mind a boggle)
Trying to quiet the shouting of my soul
To listen to my heart
Crying that it is happy
My mind is running through fields of green and brown
I am overtaken by figures gracefully moving with the wind
Pushed by its feather fingers
I am, yet more
We are
In Passing
Her song is sad and mourns from the deep
She does not cry, her tears are held so few can see
She is a rock that overhangs the hills
Standing against the rains, she falters not and aggresses at no
one
A gentlewoman, strong and upright
She has no flaw but that which needs for her to be in love's
embrace
In return she only demands you love yourself to give to her
But perhaps demand is too strong, it does not fit her
She makes a request and nothing she expects
But firmly down her road she walks
To ask to walk with her alone goes beyond what one could want
She walks with reflection and patience and with feeling, her
deepest friend
That she allowed for you to taste her friendship and her care is
delight enough to have
And you weep as faint it grows, her image down the road
Alone
Again
Again I saw your face in the clouds, the sky
Looking up, I thought, crazy? Not I
But your face lingered about the mist,
Reflected on the dew like a kiss
And again they pointed and laughed
And I hearing the sound just scoffed
It is a shame everyone's not in love
It Doesn't Matter
You can tell it doesn't matter if you stand or if you sit
Your hands are in your pockets
Your fingers, to her, are of no interest
Her tears are not for you
They are as the mission of mist: all show
Her body's been captured by a cruel mind or was it her body
that lied?
No good times no bad times, corner smiles, paper tears, a face
of evasion
You can tell it doesn't matter
The Unsought Man
To bring a smile or a tear, elicit a word, gentler, quieter, to have
need and be needed
To sit beside, lie beside, shout beside; to be living next to,
breathing and knowing that you're next to
There when the hand comes searching and be the goal of its search
This makes bearing, bearable, living, livable, caring
—-worthwhile
For the world lay crushing the bones of the unsought man
The Dream
And she comes to you
Smiling
You laugh and she
Always seems to fade
Leaving her smell in the air
And you
Trembling
To Drown Slowly
I am drowning, I am drowning
Please kind sir, the ruby bottle, away
Stop me, kind sir,
I am drowning, I am drowning
Tired
I am tired
The heavy lifting of my troubles has worn me down, like the
abrasion of rain washing away my soil
It goes to puddle, into creeks, into rivers, into gulfs, into oceans
I am tired land exhausted by the loss of my vitality
I can't grow a single green shoot of generosity
I can not sustain in spring, a single leaf of loving
I am a barren and desolate scenery
A stark place where warmth is winter forgotten
And the sun only falls in shadow
Let Us Be Lovers
Let us be lovers: the world will quickly go on without us
You and I will change
Like chameleons, in a second we are forever changing
Why not, before our hearts turn grey as the rock beneath us
While we are close
Love each other
Touch our hair to the wind, let us it caress
Let us be one
For the wind will just as quickly separate us and woo other lovers
(Continues...)
Excerpted from By the Morning of Our Healingby Steven C. House Copyright © 2010 by Steven C. House. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
