cathedral

after the past few days of sylvia's incisive and insightful words i feel a compulsion to return to the soft comfy down bedspread that e.e. cummings threw across the bed of my emerging self at the age of seventeen when i first received the revelation that it was very alright to crack the hardened spine of the book of poetry.

i was writing my own at the time and harbouring wishes to become famous and read by everyone and most especially to be one of the black mountain poets who were being read by the cool english teachers to their students and the even more famous writers who were signing record contracts and who of course

were always surrounded by long haired sweet-eyed girls!

now my wish is much simpler and then also much greater in its scope.

to bring goodness through whatever means i can in whatever time i am given to as many as i am intended to.

i am a little church (no great cathedral)

far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities

-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,

i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving

(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children

whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing

birth and glory and death and resurrection:

over my sleeping self float flaming symbols

of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church (far from the frantic

world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature

-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to

merciful Him whose only now is forever:

standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

e.e. cummings

verdell primeaux and johnny mike cathedral