The Pilgrimage / Phillip Neal Tippin
Part 31
To cite meanings in rhyme.
Written for myself and for those others
Who have not read ahead
And so have not yet
Fled in their dread.
The richness of the forms
The poverty of the forms
Look long for the richness
In poverty.
The Medusa of looking
My sin in the face.
The Communion chorus,
Brings us back in refrain.
Things to take
By ear and eye
When I come to die,
Slake now my thirst,
Die as I might.
Part 32
In the lukewarm weather
Of our time,
Together we’ve forgotten
How to bide.
What do I know of thee
Except what I have heard and seen
And tasted and touched, and,
Yes, in the touching touched.
Seem to spend my spontaneity on sin
Rather than on Form’s long obedience.
Abashed to spread things
So unasked, presume
To poor out the unpopular
Upon the mass praxis.
Getting above myself
Trying to go beyond the garden
Where the gift of fruit
Is something only to be imagined.
Part 33
The premature verse
Of our hearts part grown.
The snow blew as smoke
Off the blackened hedgerows
Around the festal table sits
An every eye for an every you
And the wealth of joy that lies between—
Savorings of the richest gift,
The means of being together!
Upon my word
They’re nothing but stick figures!
Drawn by a moored
Foreshortened hand
Marking in the mead
The gated field to cross
And, in its crossing, wheat
To pick and crush and eat
And with that sustained.
Part 34
You thought the whole thing through, and
When you left, left it shot-riddled through,
A bit less whole, less from the holes
Than for want of you.
I’m tired of the time that bides,
Tired of the time that lies in wait,
The time that leads from Goliath to Uriah—
That grace and bane in the way of the saints.
What kind of love
Would make this
Look like hate?
You did not feed before the hunger pain,
Desiccating on the desert plain, they’ll
Feel the pangs before they stumble, guess
Humble wants the children to look and ask—
Where is the sacrifice, Father,
The stone or snake when I ask?
Part 35
Lord, I know you hear my mind,
But, I need to hear You hearing it sometimes—
To scream out-loud my blind cries.
March winds
Along the duck bob, goose roll,
Coot float, tongue-lick’d creak,
Laps its morning drink,
And rattles the rails of dawn.
In Kansas, we only speak in primary colors,
Leaving noble blendings to the sky.
A self center bend
The prospect made manifold
In the dark wooded ways
Of holding the folds of abundance close.
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