The Pilgrimage / Phillip Neal Tippin
Part 11
What of life
A snowing offers!
To launch down hill
Time after time and again.
Repeating a line
Over and over again
In my mind, grows
Sometimes stale
Sometimes sublime.
Placed where all is poised
Between the worlds
On a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Fifties meld new streams
Upon the ice caked crust;
Honing their pleated way.
The one who did not believe
Called for deliverance,
While the one who did
Asked to be known,
Taking his cross to follow,
Remaining with the deliverer, delivering.
(Thieves)
The Water came to us,
As we could not get in.
To cease medicating
May be at last to die.
There are those who would not sleep,
But do,
Conceding consciousness back to the giver
To use
Part 12
I look and see
Elegant means.
So consistent is the blessed base
That thanksgiving begins
To ride on the back
Band, man the brink
Of indulgence.
I’m still here
Just not right
Now.
We both know by
What we’ve heard.
Hard done by if I harm
By another’s words.
The fake have looked so real for so long
—I knew not how real,
I disdained the real in my hand as a fake.
There’s a slow becoming
About the place
As some things get done
While others wait
Still, I’m glad to say, evening walks
Stay delightfully the same.
Mental
Provision take,
Contingency at loss
Of the city, a place of peace,
Mistake.
The trees
Fight for head space
To gain a crown
Of light.
Part 13
I must
Fear the passive passage
Or I would pass that way
I would
I am thinking in terms
Of a term
That escapes me.
Always building You temples
In the midst of us
But You built Yourself a Temple
To come among us.
A house of prayer and sacrifice.
Now us Your dwelling place,
Preparing many rooms.
Thanks
For the day
And the joy
Of being
Out in it.
Dabbling may be better
To avoid a deep disconnection.
Break out of kindergarten
With my ADHD friends.
Part 14
Lay aside and listen.
Disheartening to be
Distracted by joy.
I’m a
Farmer
For routine
I’m ashamed of
What my eyes see
To flee
You can hide a lot of ignorance
In a poem, you know.
Without a melody
There is no postage.
In thanks
For space in time
To rest
On the field of work
Bless the hedg-ed edge
And the shaded gate therein.
This is
A notional vocation
A volunteer notion
A notional voluntary
A notal construct
A constructional notary
Maybe.
These are the scenes
Worth dealing.
Part 15
Loosen the straps
To begin to let
Them flap again
This evening needed its naming
I jot a batch of second rate lines
Because I lack a catalog of firsts.
Pushing off cliffs and ledges,
Trying out their airy edges,
Sing until the breezes peter
Boulder floored, meadow moored,
Wait to see the trail leading,
Climb again and feel the heaving.
This paint may not be You, yet,
You do look like something,
You could be painted, recalled.
Ordinary Time
Hardly bides
Hyperbolic lines.
The breathing branch in heat
With breezes did ‘a chesting rise.
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