When He Comes to Them....

When He comes to them,

oh, when He plunges into earth-life, blood-begotten, 

amnion-soaked, it is in the open rawness

of a stable. A cave, perhaps. The shuffle of sheep,

their dense pelts reeking. A sift of hay-dust floating

on the raw air. The sound of human pain . . . .

                                          ~

Shadowed by the orbit of the rising moon,

the man kneels anxiously beside his wife. She wraps

and soothes her boy-child. His puckered mouth,

his eyes screwed shut, his feeble bleating . . .

a Lamb newborn indeed. The ewes turn and

cock their raggedy heads, their nostrils quivering. 

                                     ~

The shepherds crowd the entry, their clumsy

shuffle announcing them. The mother wakes

to apprehensive faces peering down. Their first

words sparse, garbled—constrained by incongruity. 

Shaped and shaken by unutterable mystery:

The great heart of Heaven in-born, earth-bound,

bundled and sheltered in a hard-worn cloth.

For knowing it, they dare to come, to worship.

And yes, there’s this . . . oh, this: the rupture

and unbidden rapture of the night sky! The ecstasy

of a timeless canticle, images and echoes

that will never end. An eternal diorama—this gift

they frame forever and carry in their empty hands:

the hill, the sky, a multitude of angels. 

          Maybe we may find ourselves beside them,

                    in an unexpected moment.

             Wishing you a very special Christmas!

                             ~Judith 

Poem: "The Way the Soul Arcs"

Delphiniums courtesy of Pixabay

This poem was first published in living with what remains:

THE WAY THE SOUL ARCS

              Judith Deem Dupree

A bee has come

to harvest my delphiniums --

circling them,

leaving a halo only I can see.

The blooms are potted

on the sun-streaked deck --

in clay flared slightly

by the hands that held it to the wheel.

Its shape reminds me

of the way my hands cup, rising,

opening in praise

when Grace is nearly palpable.

Blossoms spill in tangled glory

down the earthen jar,

too much glory to define as *blue*.

They break with logic,

with its need for category --

the prompting

to explain, to clarify, compare...

Like the way the soul arcs around

our shaped theology,

searching for that unseen radius

where Glory spills --

as indefinable, as prescient,

as honeyed as the aura of delphinium.

Poem: "One Day"

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. In the public domain.

One Day

One day, before the earth grew old

and mostly bald and full of stink,

one day I woke to music, to a chirrup

in the trees that rose and fell

like exhalations of the earth itself―

a gargling of the morning air

in bright polyphony, in crisp staccato.

And I knew the birds were prophesying―

knew I heard the voice of God,

sweeter than the earth itself,

rising like a counterpoint, an arching,

aching tremolo―

heard the wild of Him that we have tamed

come bursting forth in feathers

and arpeggios and yearnings inexpressible,

too large and small for syllables that slip

into our narrow ears;

and so I stood and listened to the world

as He described it, listened to the reveling,

and knew that I was born for this―knew

that doves, that sparrows sing epiphany

at dawn each day, and breathe

the earth’s core in and out, and feather

all that breathes and flies and sings,

and I must sing, must sing, must sing,

and this is my arpeggio, my only syllable.

Amen.

© Judith Deem Dupree 2017

                        

Poem: Road out of Aleppo

Photo of Aleppo courtesy of Asia News

Road out of Aleppo

Watching the evening news

He trudges along in broken step, pale

face frozen in a blank stare,

and all the long, long river of moving

bodies pass him by. Even the frail move

faster, framing him against their blur

of anguish, like a film that runs slow

motion, etching one small centerpiece

against the screen of the unwilling eye.

Upon his back―as if coupled there,

ribs fused to ribs—rides an ancient man,

more skeletal than fleshed, skull

rocking gently, rhythmically, arms

crooked absurdly over the hard-set

slope of shoulders, hands snatching at

the brittle air. Thin-stick shanks dangle

loosely over the young man’s arms,

bob against the plunge and stagger

of his legs—like metronomes that pace

the broken angle of each step.

Still they come, he comes—like a crab

caught in an unremitting tide—

this strange, two-headed creature

all its own, with its four unseeing eyes,

its single haunted soul. An awful

metamorphosis, a horror that we cannot

look upon, nor speak of, nor forget.

And still they come, inseparable,

inexorable, the dying and the young―

a ghost that rides the shoulders of the world.

© 2017 Judith Deem Dupree 

A Christmas Poem

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

There is a star above us,

merely one of a million-million glories

that absorb our awed perception.

But it flowers on our soul’s horizon

like a new-made moon, or the

primal  dawn of Truth—a singularity 

we may abandon all to follow.

We may camp here, shivering at the

edge of our heart’s own minor galaxy—

huddled suddenly against a star-strewn

hillside, lambs curled silently around

our feet. We will be shepherded;

we will hear the unvoiced universe

burst open and regather, singing

out—a counterpoint, a psalming.

A compline. Oh, an ecstasy of angels!

Some Likeness Unforeseen: A Poem

This poem was published in living with what remains, a collection of poetry published in 2004 that is available on Amazon here: living with what remains.

Some Likeness Unforeseen

Nature listens--hearing  ever that cell-voice
which breathes its silent syllables
through each tiny universe,

and studies it covertly there, this hidden marrow--
studies its likeness and its endless variance,
with thought of molecule, of phylum
and of husk and fur, of stamen, semen, zygote--
thought coaxing life to rest, to build
and build again some likeness unforeseen.

The elm lifts its solemn face upward,
begging light, breaking light into prisms
with its slanted arms. Does it remember,
cell-bound, how the earth first broke its life
to shimmering replication
from a million broken faces of the sun?

And far beyond these shaggy fields
(these honest homilies of faith), the cougar crouches
low against a rock-bound peak
and paces where his tendons flex to tell him so;

and on beyond, at the stubborn jaw
of this great crouch of land--upon its lip,
between its jagged teeth,
the seaweed swirls and is spit back endlessly;
fish explore it with their great, globed eyes.

All these are likeness, and each, each,
is alone within that whisper which bequeaths them.

Beneath and above it all,
the earth swirls on its great, gray bath of mist,
on, on, and on--containing all--cell-bound
in the splendor and purity of light.

And you and I,
dependents in a breathless universe,
defendants of the heart's internal entropy,
of the way time sucks our cells dry
and draws the circling marrow from our bones . . .

We lay our weary head against our wary soul,
its hidden universe, and beg for rest there--
hearing but a syllable beyond our own,
finding there a Likeness long foreseen.


~Judith Deem Dupree