POEMS | Parables 4 the Path

Poems

Icons

Icons

There are icons made by God’s own hand,
Not of gilding laid on wooden planks,
But humbler holy stuff in which
The gold is all concealed, o’er laid with wool
And fish – with flesh and blood.

Well we understand (or should)

That no image ought to hold our gaze

Or admiration but propel them onward
Like an arrow from the string, or rock from sling
Toward the Real invisible.

And so, He fashioned laws and lambs,
Pearls and mustard seeds and blazing sun,
All that we, dull eared and nearly blind
Might see and understand a Truth more
Bright and simple yet.

Pause and contemplate, then, pilgrim,
Revering nothing but the Hand
That made the truth, and is the Truth,
And is and made a lamb.

© 2014 B.K.Wellensiek

Craig

Why should I linger at your grave—this piece of ground

You never visited, your eyes never looked on?

I can mourn you better, deeper, rawer in my room

With your blue bathrobe. Can more nearly touch you

At our table in the diner where we spent so many nights,

A bright, familiar place your eyes knew every inch.

There you held my hands. And there we talked

Of God and life, made jokes and plans.

I can very nearly feel some crackling energy of yours

In things you wrote—down to a scrap of grocery list—the page

So deeply dented by your wild, emphatic scrawl.

All these draw me to you with a pressing gravity

More urgent than a polished piece of stone.

They are still warm to the touch.

But this pretty, grassy patch of sod has only

The thinnest connection with you.

And six thick feet of ground between anything

That once belonged to you—and me.

Not until the sound that splits Earth’s atmosphere

And calls together flesh, will you be here.

And then I doubt that you will linger, either.

But, for now, I bring some flowers to your grave

To show the living you were loved. Not for you.

You already know, and living, told me so.

For then I showed you. Not with flowers

But with my tattered all.

© 2005 B.K.Wellensiek

Craig

Pursuit

Pursuit

Is it wrong to hunt a poem?

To want a verse to call our own

So desperately we wander mythic fields

Beating bushes with a stick or roam

The streets of Dublin like a dogcatcher?

Or should the poem make us her prey?

Should we rather stay aloof the while

She stalks us through the wood then bares

Her teeth and backs away and finally comes to lay

Her silken muzzle in our hand?

Aspiration

Aspiration

To drown in You, O Christ! To be immersed

In Your relentless rising tide of grace

Till lungs and every cell in me should burst

And with sweet living water be replaced!

And yet my carnal self will fight and gasp

For one more worldly, pestilential breath

Till You engulf me wholly, and at last

I’m brought to endless life through waves of death.

Then, sea-changed, born anew, at last I’ll tread

The deep eternal currents, glad and free,

Where crashing surf and gale hold no more dread;

I’ll move with ease between the land and sea,

And bid my fellow sailors, struggling there,

To drown … and breathe You as their native air.

Icons

© 2014 B.K.Wellensiek

Craig

Why should I linger at your grave—this piece of ground

You never visited, your eyes never looked on?

I can mourn you better, deeper, rawer in my room

With your blue bathrobe. Can more nearly touch you

At our table in the diner where we spent so many nights,

A bright, familiar place your eyes knew every inch.

There you held my hands. And there we talked

Of God and life, made jokes and plans.

I can very nearly feel some crackling energy of yours

In things you wrote—down to a scrap of grocery list—the page

So deeply dented by your wild, emphatic scrawl.

All these draw me to you with a pressing gravity

More urgent than a polished piece of stone.

They are still warm to the touch.

But this pretty, grassy patch of sod has only

The thinnest connection with you.

And six thick feet of ground between anything

That once belonged to you—and me.

Not until the sound that splits Earth’s atmosphere

And calls together flesh, will you be here.

And then I doubt that you will linger, either.

But, for now, I bring some flowers to your grave

To show the living you were loved. Not for you.

You already know, and living, told me so.

For then I showed you. Not with flowers

But with my tattered all.

© 2005 B.K.Wellensiek

Pursuit

© 2006 B.K.Wellensiek

Aspiration

© 2004 B.K.Wellensiek

Icons

© 2014 B.K.Wellensiek

Craig

Why should I linger at your grave—this piece of ground

You never visited, your eyes never looked on?

I can mourn you better, deeper, rawer in my room

With your blue bathrobe. Can more nearly touch you

At our table in the diner where we spent so many nights,

A bright, familiar place your eyes knew every inch.

There you held my hands. And there we talked

Of God and life, made jokes and plans.

​

I can very nearly feel some crackling energy of yours

In things you wrote—down to a scrap of grocery list—the page

So deeply dented by your wild, emphatic scrawl.

All these draw me to you with a pressing gravity

More urgent than a polished piece of stone.

They are still warm to the touch.

​

But this pretty, grassy patch of sod has only

The thinnest connection with you.

And six thick feet of ground between anything

That once belonged to you—and me.

Not until the sound that splits Earth’s atmosphere

And calls together flesh, will you be here.

And then I doubt that you will linger, either.

​

But, for now, I bring some flowers to your grave

To show the living you were loved. Not for you.

You already know, and living, told me so.

For then I showed you. Not with flowers

But with my tattered all.

© 2005 B.K.Wellensiek

Pursuit

​

© 2006 B.K.Wellensiek

Aspiration

​

© 2004 B.K.Wellensiek