Darkly Bright Press presents a new poetic odyssey from Phillip Neal Tippin, the author of Ordinary Time. According to the poet:
This series traces the path to Mystery. The lines, while carrying the hope of the “through-ness” of space, frequently align with the fractious flagstones on which tread the day. Their ways and turnings followed where I went, because I go where they are heading. They have yet to come to their end.
The Pilgrimage / Phillip Neal Tippin
Part 1
I hear a sheaved wind,
A wind that haws,
Furrows heaven’s row.
Big Dipper banners the sky
Before the reading porch
Orion lifts bow above the walk
To Ladder’s prayer door
I appreciate not growing more
If only to get to know my clothes.
Tailing winds rail this airy space
Place of passage, rutted through
The trees grow by reaching.
Leaf through a thought as on a walk
With the mind boughed aloft.
Midst cold and cloud,
Life burrows.
Attent I follow with vision alight,
Seccant I follow slinking askance,
Alas, twain I follow, begging
Bind up what lags behind!
If waters of the mind’s day are foul, brackish
So to oily, myriad will be its film, foam, froth
Nativity restored,
Integrated, First Person
So second person, we
The spoke, may speak
Not so much when as why
Now?
Dancing in Your art,
Under Your song—
Elation of concert.
Lord, let me be
Glad to rest, rejoice
In second person.
Part 2
Historical scientism
Beguiles, dreams subjugate
Fallen reason, fallow imaginations
Of future, project.
To delight in the face of it
Take to the oak hills partridged aloft
For there are quiet sounds to enjoy
Ruminating floor and walls
Which grant my passing frame.
Noble blendings
I fish, follow, reflect in
The streams of
Persons and place.
Avail myself of this wind
To sail past the point
I meant to make in turn.
The soft green scene
Is no careworn thing.
I had morn’d the dead-end
Trodden sod, which is lost
Upon the all-willing Spring.
I have received that cup
Of cold water as one
Of the least of these
By one who would ask
When?
Diviner of feeling, so gives
Both air and skin
Takes up the gift to bear
Both lash and tear
If hands are left the crust of the day
And with that lay a table for two
What does one expect
But to mumble
At best
Part 3
Living the tech throws of engine
Mistake made, confusion of birth
Labor missed by trying to enter again
Pain gained not a winded wisp worth,
Nicodem us.
Reinventing the wheel is abasing, futile
Rediscovering the wheel is world’s apart
Child’s wonder in a father’s affirming
No rebuttal, nor worthless, amateur muse
Each may delight to find out the marvelous
At April’s Pitch,
Daffodil and hyacinth spring
As also the softwooded do,
Beguiling even a maple or two,
Yet, I wonder if it’s too good
To be true.
April is the snowiest month
For it blows and blooms in white.
May upon April
The year grows
And finds its life
On the bud of the fore.
Whetted thrum of a rain finch dart.
April weighs winter wanting.
From winter day, May
Jumped straight to summer
With only spring in the eves.
Part 4
To survey my Babel, Babylon
To be scattered, dew’d
Fleeing Forward
Hounded and harried
From behind the time
June sallies forth
Humid helmed and swarthy
To meet the heat
Of a beast belly’s riven flame
A strawberry moon
And Saturn to boot.
I should speak rather than write
Unless writing is speaking.
I must live into some things
Quite extensively,
Quite
Science tyrannized
By Language
Language tyrannized
By science
Nobody wins this time.
When eyes are drawn
To the brink dark ink-well
Drink blackness peering
Back flows the seeping tears
That would smear the pane.
For the light looking out
Is also looking in, through.
Part 5
For want of words
To write the line
Bounding beyond me
The bells of St Mary
Ford the river, toll
The gifting sound.
The little lane’s lithe quietude
You are like a pebble tossed midstream,
Passage, water over passed, more or less
Yet, as the source roles the weaving shore
Feeds the flow of our known, shaping stones.
When one wakes past changing
Wakes at last to a growing
That which is born to me
Is born to thee
By being born of thee.
The Poet’s rhymed lines
Their texture rising to a sign
Of nature in the brailled eye.
Go out into the neighborways
Compelled, compelling
Hoist the sap sodden section of
Fir so to foist upon the sod stack.
Sleep, futile, toil.
The mourning dew
Glimpses the Morn
The Maiden Voyage
Upon the shore
Flies to Him from sea
To hear the call
“Feed my sheep.”
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