My iPad Doodles: February 2012

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Into the woods

A Ballad of Trees and the Master

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him -- last
When out of the woods He came.

--Sidney Lanier

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Blue Moon

Monday, February 27, 2012

The peace of wild things

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

--Wendell Berry

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Trust

Trust

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

--Thomas R. Smith

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Sunday, February 26, 2012

The imperfect paradise

The Imperfect Paradise

If God had stopped work after the third day
With Eden full of vegetables and fruit,
If oak and lilac held exclusive sway
Over the kingdom made of stems and roots,
If landscapes were the genius of creation
And neither man nor serpent played a role
And God must look to wind for lamentations
And not to picture postcards of the soul,
Would he have rested on his bank of cloud
With nothing in the universe to lose,
Or would he hunger for a human crowd?
Which would a wise and just creator choose:
The green hosannas of a budding leaf
Or the strict contract between love and grief?

---Linda Pastan

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

The perfect day

The Perfect Day

You wake with
no aches
in the arms
of your beloved
to the smell of fresh coffee
you eat a giant breakfast
with no thought
of carbs
there is time to read
with a purring cat on your lap
later you walk by the ocean
with your dog
on this cut crystal day
your favorite music and the sun
fill the house
a short delicious nap
under a fleece throw
comes later
and the phone doesn't ring
at dusk you roast a chicken,
bake bread, make an exquisite
chocolate cake
for some friends
you've been missing
someone brings you an
unexpected present
and the wine is just right with the food
after a wonderful party
you sink into sleep
in a clean nightgown
in fresh sheets
your sweetheart doesn't snore
and in your dreams
and old piece of sadness
lifts away

--Alice N. Persons

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

The pathway

The Pathway Finally Opened

When my heart came to rule
in the world of love,
it was freed
from both belief
and from disbelief.

On this journey,
I found the problem
to be myself.

When I went beyond myself,
the pathway finally opened.

--Mahsati Ganjavi (12th Century)
Trans. David and Sabrineh Fideler

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Friday, February 24, 2012

Lines written

Lines Written During A Period Of Insanity

Hatred and vengence—my eternal portion
Scarce can endure delay of execution—
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my
Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.

Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
I'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram's.

Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice
Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb am
Buried above ground.

---William Cowper

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Primary Wonder

Primary Wonder

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
ther own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; caps and bells,

And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

---Denise Levertov

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Here hangs a man discarded

Here Hangs a Man Discarded

Here hangs a man discarded,
a scarecrow hoisted high,
a nonsense pointing nowhere
to all who hurry by.

Can such a clown of sorrows
still bring a useful word
where faith and love seem phantoms
and every hope absurd?

Yet here is help and comfort
to lives by comfort bound
where drums of dazzling progress
give strangely hollow sound:

Life emptied of all meaning,
drained out in bleak distress,
can share in broken silence
our deepest emptiness;

And love that freely entered
the pit of life's despair
can name our hidden darkness
and suffer with us there.

Lord, if you now are risen,
help all who long for light
to hold the hand of promise
till faith receives its sight.

---Brian wren, 1973

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Sin

Happy is the man whose only problem worth
complaining about is love's audacious schemes,
since they alone can never destroy his dreams
of finding some contentment here on earth.
Happy is he, who, far from home, embraces,
sadly, only his fondest memories
because, despite his isolations, he sees
and clearly comprehends the sorrow he faces.
Happy is he who lives in any state
where only fraud and love's deceits and doubt
are able to torture his heart from within.
But tragic is he who lives beneath the weight
of some unforgivable act, living without
consciousness of the damage of his sin.

--Luis de Camoes
(trans. Willima Baer)

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

Now forty winters have besieged this brow
that bears the mark of ashes once again,
its shallow furrows yielding time's plow
as, on command, I turn and turn again.
With every year the mark goes deeper still
and stays there longer than the year before,
reminding me, despite my flesh's will,
there comes a spring when I'll be marked no more.

Yet still I bow and part my graying hair
to make way for the dust that makes us all,
the mortal touch, the cross traced in the air,
the voice that tells me to regard the fall
that each of us must know before we rise
and raise unwrinkled brows to greet God's eyes.

---Angela O'Donnell

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo

Monday, February 20, 2012

Suspended

Suspended

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.

--Denise Levertov

Copyright (c) 2012, Israel Galindo