Category Archives: poetry

Christmas 2014

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Christmas, 2014
By
Joseph Anthony

Christmas, 2014

I.

On this eve of Herod’s wrath
Surround yourself with animals
And shepherds, stars, and fragrant gifts
From the earth; find the lowly places
And give birth to death.

II.

Let the memories of trauma
Sink and sift through root and bone,
Hidden wells and sleeping seeds,
Let them die in silent peace,
And in the holy silence of bearing witness
And affirmation, transformation
And regeneration. Let them die
In the roar of trees trampling through valleys
Of sorrow to lift up the child and adopt the child,
and keep it safe as long as it wants, as long as it needs.

III.

On this eve of Joseph’s dreams
And trudging over roadless sand,
Find the star, any star, and go, Egypt awaits,
Land of Ra and Isis, and sacred geometry
Of hieroglyphs and feather scales.
Go, and hold innocence
As never before—bring a sword and pocketfuls
Of stones, do whatever it takes to say:
Tonight innocence will be
Kept safe and cherished above all things,
And all life will be honored, and all beings
And faiths, all people and creatures,
All elements and angels, devils
And waterfalls, ponds, and lilies,
all stumblings and dancings,
All things seen and unseen,
Will be bathed in starlight and wrapped
In swaddling clothes.

IV.

On this eve of the saddest story ever told
Of a parent sacrificing his only child
To cover up for his own mistakes,
And letting scores of other children die
In its place,
On this eve of nevermore,
The child is king and queen alone
By virtue of its innocence—holy, exalted,
Full of wonder and grace,
Magnified and full of laughter.
The child born tonight shall never know
The pain of being separated from itself
Or the being abandoned to die while living.
It will be whole.
Saving only itself.
And the unity of all things
That echoes as a result
Will ring throughout the inner landscape of the soul
Setting fire to the imagination
And stream out of Egypt like a lion,
not forgetting its heritage and upbringing,
But to embrace the place that kept it safe
And call itself privileged to have been hidden
Those years in the land of pyramids and sphinxes.
And on this silent night, this holy night,
This raging night divine,
The child will be safe and sound,
and sleep in the tree of life,
like a baby owl, waiting to fly.


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In Praise of Trees

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trees friends

In Praise of Trees
By
Joseph Anthony

In Praise of Trees

God is in the trees,
wind-infused, sifting through branches,
whispering eternal solutions to everyday problems,
wholly unafraid, spreading infinite roots,
holding the sun on the tips of his fingers,
cracking new skin making new rings appear rippling forth
and so on and so on unto eternity.
Goddess is in the trees,
elegant and wise,
moon-shawled shoulders,
stars in hair, branches spreading shelter and touches,
and invitations to holy silence:
Come, sit down against me, she says, and rest,
feel what real solidity is, and the strength
I bear in my boughs for you and birds
And climbing children, tree houses,
And nests of eagles and hawks.

God is the trees, shadow-maker verdant green,
Goddess is in the trees, shadow-dappled fire-crowned,
God is in the trees, leaning down to lift the little ones up–squirrels
baby raccoons, cicada nymphs, and wayward snakes and cats,

Goddess is in the trees, lifting the sky, setting out stars,
God is in the trees, stirring the clouds,
weaving constellations of planets and stars,
Goddess is in the trees, mingling roots with earth and singing
Incantations of nourishing wonder,
God is in the trees offering space for ravens to assemble, like
Monks and ministers, where owls can perch, like
Joan of Arc and Sister Odilia after her sight is returned,
Goddess is in the trees, tossing leaves, like
Little ships, each catching a glimpse of the light
As they sail away in streams and rivers,
Carrying holds of gold and hope for tomorrow
And now, there and here, everywhere
Moments are opening to space and time,
That Goddess gives and gives some more,
God is in the trees, seed-sailing, breath-giving
Wanting only the best for you and me
And the giraffe nibbling leaves,
Goddess is in the trees, seed-spiraling, seed-blessing,
Seed sending, each with a message
That says:
Abudance is real
And available
in each and every beat of the heart.
God and Goddess are in the trees,
Intertwined and interwoven, like lyric and song,
And night and day, Lover, Beloved,
Mountain and sky.
God and Goddess are in the trees,
Blanket of leaves and branches of intricate wishes.
Stop a moment,
give yourself over to them,
kneel at their roots,
Sleep in their arms,
Pray to their slow, patient consciousness
Pervading the ground of being with filigrees of earth-touching,
Water-drawing, heart-holding roots,
Pervading the sky with air-climbing tendrils of praise
And praise and praise,
And palms that open in gratitude sweet with tears,
Hear them as they sing:
You have been born
And you have been seen
And you have been carried here
Through our passageways
and intentions and through our conscious
Benevolence and kindly mischievousness,
Through each ring and root and leaf,
Through each swaying in summer storm,
through each autumn when we dress in our finest clothes,
through each standing still in winter, arms outstretched, gathering snow,
and through each spring when we surprise you again and again
with green, sweet green, and blossoms that rain delicate
and heavenly, and fruit, more fruit than you can ever imagine,
it is all for you, breathe it in—breathe it in.
This sky is for you, breathe it in-
We are for you,
Breathe us in—
This earth is for you—
Breathe it in—
This moment in time and space–
Is for you—
Breathe it in—
This song, this fragrance of unity and restfulness—
They are for you—
Breathe them in,
And pray to one another
Compassionate prayers
Let your love spiral through us like
ribboning wind, and know that we hear you
and know that we are you
and know that you’re never alone.
Let every tree, every branch, every root, every leaf, every seed,
And every least bit of kindling and firewood,
Every table and chair, pencil and bookcase,
Let them all be reminders
Of our presence and what we allow
And ache for you to make with us, create with us—
Breathe it all in.
And know that we,
God and Goddess,
Are here
In love
With you.


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You and Our and the Magical Arithmetic of Hope

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You and Our
And the Magical Arithmetic
Of Hope
By
Joseph Anthony

You and Our

And the Magical Arithmetic

of Hope

 

In the shared space pain takes up,
Camaraderie prevails.
And it isn’t so much
That the pain doesn’t matter,
Those partaking of this bitter bread
Give thanks for the nourishment it brings.
And even as they accept me
Into this holy fraternity,
This circle of understanding,
This affiliation of grace,
I stand myself apart and say: Your
Rooms, your fellowship,
My pain, your pain.
One of them brought this
To my attention and I am grateful.
So much depends upon unity,
Upon the shared understanding
That weaves through and through
Each agent of mercy, each emissary that carries
The gifts of sadness and transcendence.
And so I stand and take fledging steps
To the edge and then into
The Community of Our:
Our pain. Our rooms. Our healing.
And as I take my place amidst and among,
I sit neither below nor above,
I am simply one of the many,
One of a band that grows, like
Ripples in a pond,
Like the fragrance of honeysuckle in spring,
Like the good thoughts of forgiveness
And humility, like a song sung by the One
Who is the Ultimate Our and You and I
And We and Every Living Thing,
And on we go,
One tapestry of hope,
One table of plenty shared,
One perpetual thanksgiving
Of you becoming our
And our becoming more
Than the sum of its parts,
And the sum of its parts
Becoming the magical arithmetic
Of hope: things subtracted
Become the variables that give way
To the addition of constants
Like love, understanding, acceptance, humor,
And miracles, yes, miracles
Are a constant,
That when combined
Multiply a thousand fold, pressed down, shaken together,
And running over into a joy that equals
The priceless gift
Of serenity.


 


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12 / 13 / 14

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12 / 13 / 14
by
Joseph Anthony

12 / 13 / 14

The tissue paper wing of the dead cicada,
The dry, decomposing leaf that reveals the hair-thin frame,
The tailspinning snowflake landing on my coat,
The seedling finally threading through the ruckusy goings on of the thick forest floor,
The hatchling robins shaking, blind, void of feathers, hungry,
The surface of the pond as I just lay my hand, like so, upon its face,
My hand as the cool water enfolds it with the darkness of sensation,
The small Christmas present, all crinkles and tape, loosely and lovingly wrapped by a child,
The quavering moon held in the fingertips of the winter branches,
The trembling hand adding the last, tiniest detail to the drawing,
The onion skin paper between the pages of the prayer book from the 1800’s,
This heart, this mind, this fluttering soul,
How does one allow for such vulnerable tenderness?
How does one be in the presence of such beautiful, holy fragility
Without feeling the impulse to crush?
How, dear Lord of sparrows and lilies,
Does one protect such delicate things?





 

Truer Than True, A Poem For the Earth

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Truer Than True
A Poem for the Earth
By
Joseph Anthony

Truer Than True

Roots are upside down trees
Spreading into vast, dark sky.
A sky thick with loam
That loves to give way to shovels and tillers,
A sky packed with clumps
Of cumulous clay,
A sky studded with the constellations
Of rocks and bone,
A sky woven with hidden rivers
And jubilant, Gordian worms,
A sky populated by sleeping cicada nymphs,
Burrowing rabbits, and moles
That tunnel blindly with dirt in their whiskers,
A sky punctuated with light-hearted seeds
And heavy, densely packed bulbs and tubers.
Yet, in the end, what is
This terra firma sky?
What is this rich, moist soil
That smells so heavenly?
What is it the roots grasp and let go of
Simultaneously?
Stories.
The earth, the soil, this stuff the rocks and bones,
Rivers and creatures all subsist in stories. It’s all stories
Building up over scrolls of millennia,
Libraries of centuries, composing,
Revisioning, edited by graves
And buried treasures, frackers,
And coal mines, wells and chasms
Of underground mountains yet to be born,
Only to dissolve again into
Infinitesimal grains, like
So many syllables dropped
From the whispered lips
Of bards, minstrels, and children,
And those who die face down
In the mud. Stories.
That’s what roots are surrounded by
And nibble on and assimilate.
And all of them truer than true.
Like flakes of mica, snowflake obsidian,
Fossils and caskets, tears and keys, arrowheads
And shards of pottery. True like rivers
That astonish us for finding ways
To flow underground and soak roots
With slathering kisses. True, like
Underground lakes surrounded
By rainbow-tinted cathedrals.
True like blood slowly seeping
Into cool, autumn leaves.
Stories are the soul of the earth,
The soul of sod and the ground of being,
Stories are the stuff of earth,
The very ground that lifts us through
Our every step and sorrow, our every
Joy and blunder, our every wandering
And seeking, our every discovery
And revelation. And they nourish
And compose us, form and speak us,
Sing and cry us, lament and celebrate us.
And each one of us, each and every
One of us, born from the soil,
Born from the ground,
This endlessly mothering earth,
Is a walking story, a living, breathing,
Story, stumbling, dancing, rising
And falling, and each one of us,
Each and every one,
Is truer than true.


 

It All Started With a Box of Darkness

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It All Started With a Box of Darkness

by

Joseph Anthony

Last night my dear friend Mindy sent me a quote by Mary Oliver (the best poet in America of the last 100 years, maybe even ever):

 

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

 

I read that and as so often happens, words and images started flowing. Sometimes they come like a flood, right away, rushing and gushing–exploding all over the page; other times it’s a more gradual build, images and words finding their way into me slowly, like the dawn. Last night it was the former. It all came out in one brief, satisfying, healing torrent of images, words, and insights.

 
I went with the current on Twitter. Sometimes the constraints of the 140 spaces is a perfect discipline to channel the flow. Other times it’s silly to even try. Last night, the Twitter format worked fine.

 
So thank you Mindy for the initial share; thank you Mary Oliver for writing your wildly luminous poetry; thank you Muse for coming to me in the form of Mindy and Mary; and thank you also, Dear Darkness, of whom I am learning so much from, thank you for being full of light. So many times the depression feels only like utter and complete blackness. I am learning, little by little, the more I simply keep walking, that as soon as the darkness begins to feel overwhelmingly isolative (isolate=from the Latin: to become an island), that exact moment—if I tell someone, find a way to share the hidden pain, the secret suffering, then the darkness blooms into light, into lessons, into invaluable help for myself and others, and I can breathe again. For deep depression is nothing more than the suffocation of the soul.

 
Last night, I didn’t drown in the darkness. I was able to swim. Thank you everyone who helps me to do this. The trinity of diseases: addiction, depression, and isolation, often go hand in hand and can lead to the final darkness. I needn’t go through anything alone again, ever. You don’t either. May my journey through the heart of darkness bear witness to this truth: bring others with you—not dragging them into the chaos, no, bring them with you into your heart, invite them—the safe ones into where the secret hurts live, and the burdens, whatever they are, will become light, the yoke becomes easy (easier). For wherever two or more are gathered–there, in the midst of them, is salvation from the fears of being vulnerable, of showing one’s weaknesses, of being so-called-perfect. There, in this place, this holy space of breath and of embracing–the common experiences, the threads of compassion, identification, love, and eventually ultimately wonder, creativity, and dancing, weave us together into the shared fabric of humanity.

 
Thank you all.

 
The Poems in order of their appearance:

 
Wherever I go, I carry a box of darkness handed down by generations. Inside are echoes of sorrows; and light, beautiful, hidden light.

 
***

 
I speak, the box of darkness closes; I am silent, the box opens. I weep, the box closes, I sleep, the box opens; I sing the box disappears.

 
***

 
I reach inside the box of darkness and find a key. A door appears. I stand, set the box down, and go, go to fall into the shimmering light.

 
***

 
Three words: “Box of darkness,” open secret passageways to the soul. I’m going, take my hand, let’s go find the way back to now.

 
***

 
Where are you? I cry. Here, says the Beloved. Where? I demand. Here, says the Beloved, Where you left me, inside this box of darkness.

 
***

 
One day, I slipped the box of darkness under my bed, not wanting to see it again. When I got home that night, my room had become the box.

 
***

 
I never know when it’s going to come, this rush of images. I only know to slip into it and allow it to river through me to wherever it goes.

 
***

 
Goodnight. I open the box of darkness, slip inside with a blanket. I close the lid. And when I open my eyes to the darkness, I see light.

 

 


 

 


Rituals Shared, a New Poem by Joseph Anthony

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Rituals Shared

By

Joseph Anthony

 

Sweeping the stoop of the shop with quick,
brisk motions,

Scattering maple tree seeds into helicoptering
swirls,

Pausing to look at the rising spring sun, he
removes his hat,

Wipes his brow, squints at the sky, hears the
distant,

Early morning train, then thanks God for
another day

Of doing what he loves. 

 

Slowly he resumes his dance with the broom,
breathing in

Images of his children and grandchildren,
breathing out

Whispered apologies for losing his patience
the day before,

Resolving to remember he was young once too.

 

He turns, pushes open the screen door that
rings the little 

Bells at the top of the frame, enters the shop,
turns the 

“Come in We’re Open/Sorry We’re Closed” sign to 

“Come
in We’re Open.” 

 

Brewing coffee aroma winds its way into his
widening 

Nostrils as he breathes deeply possibilities and 

Remembrances, he ties the white apron around his waist, 

Thanks God for another day of doing
what he loves, 

And then begins,

First pausing to look down at the
bread board,

He then sweeps his hand across the cool
surface

With the same tenderness he has used for half
a century.

 

He takes out the silver bowl of dough from the
gleaming, 

Silver refrigerator, lifts the white cloth that
covers the bowl,

Folds it neatly into a square and places it
nearby. 

 

He then tosses three handfuls of flour across 

The bread board, lifts the dough allowing it to exhale 

And
spread, and as he begins kneading he sings, 

Sings morning prayers, filling his lungs with the fragrance 

Of baking bread, 

And his
heart with devotion to Saint Elizabeth, 

And for a moment he is
transported to the Basilica 

Of Santa Maria in ancient Rome; 

He kneels before the infant, folds his hands
to pray,

And as he does loaves of bread spill from his
arms,

Turning into heaps of roses, and he weeps,

Weeps knowing he saw the infant nod,

And then he rises, rises and smiles, thanking
God 

For another day of doing what he loves, 

And as he rises the
little bells ring,

Ring at the opening of the door to the shop,
bringing him 

Back to the kneading, back to his hands, and he
beams,

Beams a greeting to the customer who has come
as he does

Every morning for coffee, for bread, and for
the humanity

Of rituals shared.

 

 


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Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

Be Amazed, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

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Be Amazed

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

 

I am.

I woke this morning

To riotous birdsong.

As I listened, letting the staccato melodies

Sink in, I became increasingly amazed.

 

Think about it:

We are awakened

By singing.

 

Now, before you think about it too hard,

Let the truth of that statement be.

Hold it there for a few seconds,

And then go ahead and travel the winding road

Of questions and temporary answers

As to why birds sing—if you need to.

You can do that and have fun doing that.

You could also simply relish the reality—

Whatever divine randomness is out there

And in here, it chose to wake us up by singing—

By birds singing.

 

It could have chosen to wake us up

 

With construction rigging every day.

It could have chosen to wake us up

To thunderous, monotonous silence.

It could have chosen not to wake us up at all.

But it didn’t.  The divine chose to wake us up

To singing.

 

Keep that in mind–uppermost in mind

When you begin to doubt hope, beauty,

And the purpose of things,

Remember this truth

And allow yourself to be amazed.

 

Once you are good and awake

Join the chorus–let your life sing,

Everywhere you rush and run, dart and soar,

Bank and circle, glide and flutter–

May your song awaken someone–anyone

Who simply hears the song of your life—

The overarching beauty and music of who you are

And how you choose to live.

 

 


 

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Copyright Jennifer Angelina Petro of the Wonder Child Blog

Who Is Speaking This Hymn of Woven Moon Light?

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Who Is
Speaking This Hymn of Woven Moon Light?

A Poem of Desire

by

Joseph Anthony

 

Dear
Wonder Child Blog Readers,

 

When I
first wrote a draft for this poem a couple years ago, I thought it was my soul
speaking to the Divine coming in the form of a Moon Goddess.  After revising it though I realize I am no
longer sure if it is my soul addressing the Divine or the soul of the Divine
addressing me.

 

What do
you think?

 

From
behind a veil of shadow and drifting darkness you appear,

dressed
in robes of luminous white.

The dark
waters of my soul

carries pieces
of my broken heart into your lap.

You gather
them in your skirts, move silently to the river’s edge 

and spill them in.  And where once there lived fires of grieving 

and mountains of suffering,

now the
mountains turn into wild horses, shimmering towards the horizon as 

an unfolding
scroll of revelations and new testaments; and the fires become   

flocks of
angels swirling in song.

Every
night you whisper: I ache to hear your every word, and when you finally 

break into
whatever it is you long to be, you will see me moving

towards you
like wild horses and a flock of angels, and I will lift you up

into
myself and hold you as the sky holds the moon,

and we
will dream as one as the dawn slowly bathes us

in
dazzling light.







Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

Letting Go Into the Wind: Autumn Haiku and Other Poems

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Autumn
Haiku and Other Poems

By

Joseph
Anthony

 

“What will people
think?” says the Autumn, “that’s a question I never ask.


 

This fear of change / can be
cured if one would but look  / into
autumn’s eyes


 

Autumn’s crimson gold /
rivers within you and me / and so does the spring


 

I take autumn’s hand / I
think we might go dancing / into the blue sky


 

This dance of letting go /
this parading of change / these tears will not stop


 

Wishing means nothing / when
autumn pulls you away / into crimson streams


 

Dear Autumn Crickets /
you’re breaking my fragile heart / my prayers are with you


 

Warm apple cider / streaming
its way within me / filling me with Fall


 

Autumn leaves me drunk / its
deep red and golden wine / how can I not swoon?

 

 

The autumn whispers: / release
yourself into me / and find your way home


 

Who can blame me now? /
autumn in her golden dress / makes me want to dance


 

The truth within autumn’s
beauty: We must all let go into the wind.

 

 

 

 





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Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog