~

Something We Don’t Pray For

Posted on by stephen t berg / 10 Comments

 

And standing on the rim of the new year
with, undoubtedly, too much hope,
and at the same moment, too much worry,
like middle managers returning from a monastic retreat,
we gather at the mouth of this first Monday and genuflect
a kind of benediction over the months ahead, Keep them, we pray,
from the fox shark dimension of the human condition.

Perhaps this year someone siting up late arranging the clauses
of complex sentences, will stumble
upon a working description of the soul,
leading to an adequate unpacking of the heart, such that,
nothing of the self would stay hidden from the self.

It wouldn’t be pretty.
There’d be howls of, My God, so that’s what I’ve been doing!
There’d be a lot of journalling, stuff you wouldn’t want to read;
but then, we’d all be in it together.

There’d be a rush on white orchids, Etsy jewelry,
elephant plush cuddle buddies, wrapping paper,
and actual postage stamps.

Both Christianity Today and Psychological Review would publish
retractions on the functions of forgiveness.
Fox News and CNN would stop masturbating.

Presidents, four-star generals, chief officers,
would meet with committees of plants and animals
to tear up Exclusive Rights documents.

Narrative therapy counsellors would be in demand, a demand
exacerbated by said counsellors seeking their own counsellors
before re-hanging their shingles.

Where I am going, you cannot come, said Christ,
and true to his word, he left us
                                                          here,
then sent his ethereal partner, also a counsellor,
to keep us off bridges, or give us floaties.

Rumours persist she occasionally whispers
to midnight scribblers.
Then again, persistence is in the nature of rumours.

But apparently, so I’ve heard, there’s a painter who’s been listening,
who’s painting with gesticulating sweeps,
and grand flurries of colour,
a diptych:
It’s what we don’t pray for that breaks us.
It’s what we can’t pay for that saves us.

 

New Year

Not Far Off – Something Bright

Posted on by stephen t berg / 12 Comments

 

Perhaps the old year will pull away like a train,
leave us standing on the platform
under an oleander dawn,
wanting to bloom.

And not far off, as close as January,
something bright, coming down the tracks,
new but recognizable,
like a garden on wheels.

Those colours and tastes of childhood,
no matter how much gloss we add,
no matter how many brands we buy,
don’t happen anymore.
And to try for auld lang syne is to toy with madness.

That small craze of clearing out our closets was a good thing.
Look what we’ve kept.
Even here, in this sprawling city, are ponds,
left to the ducks, and green ribbons
left to themselves, connecting the divisions.
And that’s something.

But why stop there, we’ve got this new year.
Let it all grow wild, let the heart walk free
of the need to master our tears,
to curb our burgeoning love, for fear
of being sentimental,
even rejecting the surprises of kindness,
because we weren’t prepared.

Let it all grow.
We know we want to.
It’s permaculture.
Let it grow in the sun and the wind and even the storms,
this tangle, even if we could, doesn’t need undoing.

Let us rejoice in the confusion
of these vines running through us, connecting us,
suddenly blooming.

 

Wishing you a beautiful New Year!

In Memoriam

In Honour of Millie Glick: Accidental Theologian, Natural Scholar, Grace-full Soul

Posted on by stephen t berg / 12 Comments

 

Today I write to commemorate
the little-known work of a woman,
a maker, an artist, a seer, and as life demanded, a marksman.

And a mother who lived, for a time, in a cabin in northern Alberta,
raising five children,
her husband, as required, drawn away flying bush plane.

And now you have the basic framework,
except to say it gets cold there, in deep winter,
the kind of cold that splits trees and makes flesh black in short minutes.

And in a cabin chinked with mud and straw and raw hope,
you need a good hot stove to last the dark hours.

But on this withering night,
cold came like a moon-white crystal vice,
pressed on the walls of rough timber,
gripped the cast-metal stove, crushed
ember to cinder.

And on this weathered dawn, came the fateful constellation,
the morning fire lit, the rime on the roof, thick and slick,
the wind-driven chimney cowl caught by frost,
the smoke forced back down, the cabin clouding in, 
the children waking, coughing, and the woman,
seven months pregnant, alarmed,
pacing, now running
toward a rifle and a single bullet in a box,

the woman outside, sleepwear under parka,
felt-lined boots, bare head, bare hands, aiming,
steadying, sighting the chimney’s iced up cap —

this is a woman who writes poetry, who loves deeply,
her husband and her family, who befriends, who mentors,
who believes the scripture, believes hearts can change,
believes peace will come,
a woman long acquainted with the work of mindfulness,
of planting herself, and being open, at any moment, to conversion,

a woman who died peacefully, says her husband, full of age and readiness,
who found her hymn in bird song, who sang while gardening,
whose church was the cathedral of trees and sky,
robin nocturne, woodpecker staccato, pine speech,
swish of owl wing, hummingbird at delphinium, and wood ducks
in the dugout, and the openness of a wild rose to heal
the fragmentation of life, with its mishmash of this and that — *

this is a woman, who, full of adrenaline, breathed, prayed,
stood and occupied the telling moment as sparrows occupy willows,
who gently drew the hammer back, like she was thinning carrots,
squeezed the trigger, as though testing ripeness of wild strawberries,

saw the ice shatter,
the tin chimney swivel break free,
watched the smoke, surge in big round waves
above the birch and poplar and conifer,
watched the cabin clear itself,
called for her children,
and went about her day.

* Taken from Millie’s poem, In a Place Apart

Our lovely friend died serenely, December 11, 2021, in the presence of all her children and her husband, Ike.

~

For Those Finding Christmas Hard

Posted on by stephen t berg / 8 Comments

 

The light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not.  – Gospel of John 

Something human,
something we all comprehend,
namely, the dark incomprehension of sorrow.

Which comes thicker, darker, under the coloured lights,
and the seasonal sounds of Mariah Carey.

There’s enough grief in any one life,
to ice over an average ocean.

We see it in relief, on these,
our extraordinary faces.

Pain,
scrolled on brows,
pain,
chiseled on cheeks,
heartache,
inexhaustible,
etched over entire bodies.

And absence,
the last casual wave of a son,
a daughter abused by a man.

And loneliness,
an airport, a partner, a parting,
a friendship worn thin by distance.

And death,
the death of a life mate,
soul mate, who made life worth it
(and now what).

And faith, like plastic ferns in funeral homes.
And hope, overplaying its hand, often bluffing.
And God, just us pleading with the sky.

And all this restless atrophy,
underneath our oh-so-human plaster casts of happiness,
sponsored by a myriad of indispensable addictions.

And still we cling, in this dark,
to any whisper of light,
make it dark,

dark enough that a wavering star,
a burned-out bedside lamp,
a cauterized memory,
can bring us this

big story of a Saviour’s birth,
so ancient, so miraculous,
it has to be true,
even if it’s not.