turn your eyes…

By John Blase | July 5, 2011 |

Our gathered hope would rise

to the same note x3 for effect:

and the things of earth.

But we’d sung it too many times,

we knew those notes black

with wax-winged pride.

So we’d surrender all,

turn our eyes, then obediently

fall to that other note x3,

the one humbler, bordered

by fear’s glory and grace:

will grow strangely dim.

When I was a child I sang as a child.

But that was moons ago,

days of scaled theology.

I am older now,

my vision blinded by

the full and wonderful –

the back of a woman’s knee,

the brief summer laughter of children,

the smell of cinnamon,

reading Stafford through bifocals,

and the grave’s temporary victory.

Things of earth.