Embodied
This is how it began for me.
God spewed me out of his mouth
and commanded me to howl a cosmos.
All I knew was one sound, not even a word.
But then I found my voice.
Or was it God’s? Neither God nor I
had ever spoken before.
Then I spoke again and could not stop speaking.
The darkness began to roll, swirl and swell.
Then waters gathered,
boundaries fixed.
Circles in the deep layers of crust
were shaved, contours smoothed.
I purred matter into
caressing itself awake.
What came next God called gift.
He molded and branded himself
into a creation with outlines and limits.
God wanted identity.
Or was it identification?
So he asked this of me.
And it was too much to ask.
I had no experience of rejection,
suffering, death or birth.
The closest I had ever come to life
was wind and mist.
Yet, I knew who was asking.
The rhythm of his heartbeat
still lingers in my ears.
So I conformed to the womb
in which he placed me, returned to the darkness.
Once born, I knew I would
have to go there again,
but bellowing as I do with
all of those who need the
plain grace and truth
of a single vowel.
150 years ago, the site of the Big Hole, was a featureless flat-topped hill. When word spread that diamonds had been discovered, thousands of prospectors, armed with nothing more than pick, shovels and hope, descended on Kimberley and created the largest hand-dug excavation in the world.
–From the website The Big Hole.
Mining
I don’t know why I’m here,
walking on fissured tar
bubbled by roots.
Who knows what else
this great disturbance
of earth awoke?
Teenagers snigger,
tired children squeal,
parents reprimand.
The renovated Old Town
are now museums
and family restaurants.
Displays tell how
the diamond gets from the rough
to the exquisite.
I look down at a murky pool
meters below. Rock dust
gleams in the midday sun.
A woman,
also feigns interest
in the water basin.
We are both alone,
which makes us known
to each other.
The cragged redness under
her eyes is so wet.
What a strange place for tears?
She dislodges
a stone with
her nails.
I flinch with each bounce
down chiseled rock,
then, the final pelt to the reservoir.
Natural Position
To Tim Brennan, Susan Chute and Kim Ellis
Glass of shiraz to my right,
a tentacle of judgment
spies my effort to translate
a language spoken only by filament
yielding to a snake-flame.
My hand casts a two-tone
shadow as if to misdirect
aimless scrawl
like a secret.
But the only thing to hide here
is a feeble front for
grunts, groans and moans:
As the deer longs
for flowing streams,[1]
so slurs and drools my soul
for roots and worms in dark nitrogen,
for sediment deposited on
the creek-bank.
With strained eyes from
such little light, I look up.
It seems a natural position
when praying. (So what
if it’s to soil.)
And a stem bends above me,
large droplets of condensation
hanging from its leaf.
I can only be grateful
for scratching across
a grid of graph paper,
sometimes keeping within lines.
The truth of thirst is how
the plasma puddle I can’t finish
slumps in the Murano wineglass.
Even if I tried,
there would still
be residue.
[1] Psalm 42:1, New Revised Standard Version.
for Joseph Wallace Williams
“Instead of defining ultimate reality in theological concepts, the East has relied upon its artists, musicians, and poets to proclaim what can only be understood in the heart.” — Peter Pearson
Writing to Miles
A sax worms
through chord-changes
and I bound upstairs.
You, in shorts and tee-shirt,
swirl a paintbrush in
glistening tempera,
dab gold
onto the nimbus
behind her.
Mary’s consuming eyes glare,
questioning the meaning
of my intrusion.
I say, “Coltrane.”
You say, “Miles.”
I say, “Ah, but Coltrane played with Miles.”
As you return to behold Mary,
a breathy trumpet sounds tentative
from your iPhone
in reverence to what I interrupted.
I turn around
and drop away
down the stairs;
your “thank you”
wends behind.
Photography Credit: Jason Rice
Brother John Forbis, OHC originally from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is an Anglican Benedictine monk of the Order of the Holy Cross living and working at Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York. His return to West Park, New York occurred in July 2016 after 18 years of being at Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery in Grahamstown, South Africa.
His poems have been published in South Africa, United States and the United Kingdom, such as The Christian Century, Dawn Treader, New Contrast and won Third Place in the Dalro Poetry Prize in 2013 for the poem “Only This” published in New Coin magazine. He also appears in three anthologies, The Poet’s Quest for God, Rhino in a Shrinking World and To Breathe into Another Voice: A South African Anthology of Jazz Poetry. His first book, Exposures, was published by Aerial Publishing in 2003.
