Welcome to our 44th Poetry Party!
I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your poems or other reflections. Add your responses in the comments section. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you have one) and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post)
Poetry Party Theme: Entering the Desert’s Fire
This week the Christian liturgical season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. For 40 days we are invited on an inner pilgrimage which parallels the desert journey Jesus made before he began his public ministry. In the Hebrew and Christian scriptures the desert is a place of preparing our hearts, of stripping away of false securities, of radical surrender, and of invitation to transformation. The Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert for 40 years and the early Christian monks went out into the desert to find a place of profound solitude and silence. The desert is an archetypal place where we confront our inner demons and are purified and transformed by the its heat.
I invite you this week to write a poem about your own invitation to enter the refiner’s fire – in alchemy lead is transformed into gold through heat and this becomes a metaphor for the human soul. What is the lead within you ready to be transformed into something treasured?
The poem could be a blessing for the journey ahead or an invocation of your deepest longings for this sacred time. Allow yourself to feel the desert heat as you write and invite in its power to spark, ignite, and illuminate the world.
50 Responses
Object of Slumber
Was the ladder Jacob dreamed
Admissible outside his sleep state?
Rung
By
Rung
Up
A cedar post to retrieve his future.
A crow’s nest of possibilities
To look
Into his cistern memory
That needed healing.
Would he have thought
Of scaling such a ladder
To reconcile with brother Esau?
A ladder in the desert is as good
As a rock for a pillow. Besides
He had his family and belongings
To keep a distance for such reunion.
painter of blue – thanks for that link to the Dorothy Walters poem – it grabs my heart!
Four Journeys
Into the desert – into the furnace
I hesitate to step
The heat seems oppressive
No cool water is there
Am I burned for a witch
Or burned as heretic
Or just worthless yard waste
Will I die of great thirst
Parched beyond human bound
Dessicated mummy
******************************************
Into the desert – into the furnace
I hesitantly step
I know it is needful
I know the commandment
See the lonely wasteland
Eliot saw it also
A place of hollow men
Can I obey the writ
Submission trumping fear
Can that really work
******************************************
Into the desert – into the furnace
I joyfully advance
I see a treasure there
My goal before my eyes
I have company out here
Three young Jewish captives
Fallen prince turned shepherd
I see a fourth person
I see a burning bush
I see my own demise
******************************************
Out from the desert – out from the furnace
A remade person steps
A new perspective held
The small contains the great
Power through a weakling
Glory through the common
Not contained, but displayed
I decrease, He expands
He expands, I display
He expands … He expands
The bush is burning
but is not consumed
yes the great I Am
is present not only
in the Sinai
but in our Lent
Forty days
and we are afire
but not consumed
instead
the fire comes
and changes
each step,
each turn
and the flames leap
licking at our lives
ridding us
of our sins
and purifying
bringing to us
holiness
sacred paths
the great I AM
in our forty days
our burning path
our Lent
Pure gold
flows free,
clean,
refined,
perfected,
emptied of
dross,
transformed…
This gift
freed
by flame
is received,
beheld
as precious
dross
transformed…
…by fire!
Conflicting Desires: Alden E. Sproull
Arising in me
are the voices
of two different
worlds.
One calls for closeness_____
with
its rise of
passion and gentle decline.
The other calls for
distance
without voices clamoring
for attention.
Ears that are yet
weary of
human sounds
and physical closeness.
Distancing from vespers,
It calls up pain________
not understanding____to
weary to ask.
Just needing space
to heal,
Space that honors
what is!
resurrection in the desert
the air
shimmers
in the final
movements
of agony
slaying
the
ego
Maureen – I bet you are up to the challenge!
painter of blue – thank you for the link to this beautiful poem, I had never heard of her so discovering a new poet is always a great joy. A great example of the theme and I’d love to see how you respond too! :-)
Lisa – this is such a palpable poem and I love the effect of the repetition. Thank you for this offering!
Fire in the Desert
A furnace burns
In the red desert.
My feet are hot;
My heart yearns
For gold.
My hands are dry;
My lips thirst
For gold.
My back is scorched;
My eyes search
For gold.
My skin is black;
My flesh melts.
My insides sweat;
And are formed
Into gold.
A furnace burns
In the red desert.
Checkout this poem by Dorothy Walters (maybe my favorite poet), I think it’s exactly what you are looking for http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/W/WaltersDorot/AClothofFine.htm
Quite a challenge!