by Alan Harris
1982
Dedication
To all who search and question:may they find and know.
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Free PDF download of this entire book: Poems That Search and Poems That Question in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (21 formatted pages including color photos) Free Adobe Acrobat Reader is required. |
Contents
(Click on any divider between poems to return here.)
The Other Door
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To take a perfect bolt and start the nut awry and twist it with a jolt is like a lie. To grab a kiss or touch without her matching mood won't gratify as much as tasteless food. To batter down a door whose fault is being locked won't satisfy us more than having knocked. For every door locked tight a second unlocked door will open with no fight and please us more. The one who knocks and waits, then seeks an unlocked way, transcends life's petty hates and learns to pray. |
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To Rolla Swanson
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Our charming corner church fills and drains each week like a religious rain barrel, housing harmonious humans an hour or two, who then flow out into the rivers and gutters of living, bouncing and banking, filing to the fullness of the sky-sucked sea for relief, and relife. Numb need flows along these sine-wave streams. The men need the women need the children need the future. This needful flow of living winds through a riverbed of love, which was and will be, with wax and wane, as long and long as water will be wet. |
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What the Pencil Says
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A dull red pencil, lowly servant, spreads lead onto a scrappable page. Spirit writes through low clay to spread high hope. The pencil says: An era of peace, now within the reach of human minds, is a magnificent certainty which will receive us as an angel receives a departed saint. The world will be true unity-- No nations, no empires, no strife. God will rule and humans will work, and praise, and create, and sometimes die. War will be a historical word. May we hear the pencil which announces these blessings, and in our hearts may God's will prevail. |
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Continuity
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Yesterday the sun went down; this morning it came up-- as it has, as it will. A nagging question plagues philosophers: why does the sun rise in the East at dawn instead of rising in the West at eve? They meant to solve this problem yesterday; they met with failure once again today-- as they have, as they will. While one wise solver contemplates, twelve folks toil to fill their plates. Some produce, some sell their wares; all seek exit from their cares-- one of which is not the sun (save that their day's work is done). West or East or Dawn or Eve to philosophers they leave-- as they have, as they will. |
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Divine Priorities
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Why build the Church cathedrals? Just pile up grains of sand if you've a mind to do some thing to occupy your hand. Why dress up for the service? Why serve the holy stuff in gold and silver chalices? An old tin cup's enough. If quality's in rareness, as silver's hard to find, how great then must be humble folks who've cleared doubt from their mind. If every brick in every church were mortared end to end, that row would never leave the earth, but we could still pretend. If God wants us to dress up, let's save fine clothes until the day we give this mortal place up, then in them lie quite still. But if God does want cathedrals, let's hurry and get more made. Let's build them fine, but keep in mind the inner ones, homemade. |
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Symposium
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I sing a song of joyous life, Tra-lee, tra-la, tra-lee; I dance about my dainty wife and tip a glassful of glee. I tell a tale of mine olden age, and there, and so, and thus; life's wisdom is my single wage, and I can't see who's driving the bus. |
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Three Gingerbread Men
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Three gingerbread men had a talk in which they searched each other's souls. The first one stated frankly that he had no soul, the second that his soul was pure goat's milk. The third gingerbread man had no bones to pick nor any goats to milk. He said his soul was pure gingerbread. The others laughed and ate him up. |
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Two Songs
Song of Doubting Logic|
What an incongruity that in this flesh a soul can be! |
Song of Spiritual Revelation
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What an incongruity that in this flesh a soul can be! |
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The Only Christian
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He went to church one cloudy morn, somewhat forlorn. He was the first one there, he guessed, and sat to rest. He studied all the stained-glass art; soon church would start. The clock swung round to half past eight-- the folks were late. No organist was there to play, no preacher to pray; no choir stirred the air with song-- what could be wrong? Twelve worn-out candles stood unlit (this wasn't fit), and Bibles, hymnals, all were closed in silent rows. A full half-hour he waited there, then said a prayer. He prayed that God would gird his heart to do his part and asked forgiveness for us all-- then felt his call. He took his Bible from his pew, for now he knew the only Christian left was he; he held God's key. His work now would be hard and long, but he'd be strong. He prayed that Christ would live again in hearts of men, then opened wide the large front door and stayed no more. He stepped outside without remorse; he knew his course. The door through which crowds once had flocked he left unlocked. Then, "Wait!" he spoke out with a start, "I'm not so smart." Today, to his profound dismay, was Saturday. |
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The Tortured Joy
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The company had sent its pamphlets on ahead, so everyone in town knew of that spring's event. The drift in barber shops and telephones foretold a green success. That night a grandstandful looked on as marching marchers marched in song onto the field. Speculators in the stands kept up a wide-eyed buzz, out-answering each other. "My God, look what they're doing now, Ethel! They're going to raise the cross that man brought in. It must have been about like this last year-- I hope he has the same amount of luck." They nailed him to the cross, each hammer-stroke inviting groans and shrieks from lookers-on. The band was playing the national anthem, keeping time with the pound--pound--pound. At his last words (picked up by microphones) each person fell down on his knees and bowed his head--but most eyes peeked to see the rest. Crews dimmed, then doused the floodlights--all was still. They let him down and locked him in a room behind the grandstand for a mournful hour. Then Jove (the stadium's janitor) unlocked the door to get a broom--and let him out. Darkness enabled him to cross the field and shinny up the cross, but now, instead of hanging by his nails, he stood with one foot on each side of the crossbar, arms raised. They switched the floodlights on and aimed some searchlights deep into the spangled sky; the band broke into stirring patriotic tunes, and the crowd let forth a cheer of tortured joy. The marching marchers marched back whence they came and everyone filed out, remarking how it was the best they'd ever seen or how they thought it might have been a bit improved. |
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My Soul Is Something
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My soul is something like a train, switching, speeding, crawling, switching back. It backs up sometimes to remind itself of forwardness. My soul is something like a prism, bending God's light in a billion-colored spectral show. Choose your color and live with me in a rainbow. My soul is something like a bucket, collecting fluidities of thought, holding the heavier, splashing out the light. My soul is something like nothing, appears invisible, absent, no-where, but these thoughts form in its shadow, now-here. |
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God's Spirit Dwells
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God's spirit dwells in private hells where broken dreams cause curdling screams. Our souls God lifts, and of His gifts the most obscure cause cleanest cure. We rant, we rave for God to save, but God saves all who prostrate fall. Away by Christ our sins were sliced; now His great reign rids Death's domain. Dear God, we pray that all we say and all we pen be Thine. Amen. |
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To a Telephone Pole
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You, sir, with triangular brace, have more common sense than the whole human race. |
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Excuse Me, God
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Excuse me, God, I didn't see you there. To my nearsighted eyes you looked like air. You cleared your throat with jarring thunderbolt, but I heard nothing deep, just felt a jolt. I built my house with quite a clever plan, but didn't see the sign that said, "God's land." I walked through woods and thought the cool smell was only natural, from trees that fell. I thought it quaint, the orange western stain; I thought it nice that clouds wrung out their rain. I saw the stars through shallow telescope, and saw eternity as just a hope. I meant no harm-- I had my glasses off; so next time, if I'm near, please cough. |
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I, Not It
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"It makes me sad, or mad, or glad," says my friend Marge. "This It is all in life I've had, and It's quite large. "My It brings in my every mood and guides my thoughts. It even guides my choice of food, makes shoulds and oughts. "This It is pulling all of me down toward the ground with unrelenting gravity as if I'm bound." Then one tells Marge to take the "t" away from "It"-- that Christ expired on the "t" to make us fit. When all that's left of "It" is "I," there's no excuse to blame an "It" or question why you get abuse. The "I" is God as much as you and is pristine. Your freedom all to God is due, serene, unseen. |
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These Scales Tell Tales
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These scales tell tales of gravity against our mortal frames. They weigh who choose to step on them and have no use for names. But let us weigh the scales themselves against more subtle things. Is heavier or lighter weight the chief divide life brings? Do souls have weight? Do angels fall? Will goodness tip the scales a little more than ill repute? Just here gravity fails. |
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Hope and Love
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As the earth spins into day and night, so the human soul basks in light and quivers in darkness. And as the earth sometimes has foul weather, the soul too has it hurricanes and rains. Hope and love are, were, will be. Hope is God's eternal nudge in our ribs. Something is ahead and, knowing not its shape, we push toward it nonetheless. Hope pulls us. Love is everywhere, and always has been. Love existed before we came to join it. Love made us. Love makes us make more of us. Love is God's radiant comfort in our souls. Love binds us. With hope to pull and love to bind, we need not fear. When all is seemingly lost, when it is nighttime in the soul, when there is wind and rain, there are yet two forces to sustain us. Hope. Love. |
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To Sister Marjorie
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For this may God be praised: our Christ was raised, the temple is secure, we shall endure. The fellow with the tail can make us fail, can give us loneliness, grief, shame, and stress. There will be sobs and tears and barren years and prayers that won't take wing and stares that sting. The Father sees it all and hears our call. He sees our sorest needs, our hunger feeds. Since food and clothes are sure, since love is pure, since prayers are always heard, trust in the Word. |
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Mary and the Moderns
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Her name was Mary and she was regional and regal, and Gabriel whispered to her, beautifully— swift Gabriel, God's holy messenger. Reconvening CongressmenAnd hearing the prophecy of Jesus, she began to prepare her heart and mind and immaculate body for holy duty. Oklahoma will do, said one.In a mystery of Divinity Mary was allowed to conceive from far within and far above a Being who would teach and heal. Catch any fish? Well, notShe murmured hymns thoughtfully to herself during the growing of all that was in her. Around by the back fence—She prayed calmly during the months of warm weather in her region. Truly, friends, the Lord shallAnd by the time the welling was large enough to attract innocuous attention and friendly suspicion, she was in love with her own womb and what it contained, so that no calumny could burden her conscience and no suspicion her calmness. Found this little restaurantThe sun shone upon her and the son grew within her and she was with joy and without pride. Jenny will be a seniorShe bore an infinite rebel from her bone cage and sent him into the torn world to mend and heal it before it should devour itself in greed and fear and sloth. When speaking in public, oneAnd respect for him was not there, but since he was a truly vibrating human with a divine mission, he asserted and healed and eventually brought stones down upon him which had been reserved for such a rebel and messenger, and he ascended with a brilliant aura about him and without tears and with love. It is my firm opinion |
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