Poems, Quips, and Whimsy
by Alan Harris
1994
Selections are arranged in
order of decreasing solemnity.
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Free PDF download of this entire book: Thunderbolt Blooming in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (24 formatted pages including color photos) Free Adobe Acrobat Reader is required. |
Contents
(Click on any divider between selections to return here.)
As Far Beyond As Here
To a Guest Reading by Paul Meier|
Perhaps your mind, when still, has reached a brink Beyond which bottom, top, and sides release Their hold, immersing all you are and think In boundlessly profound, peculiar peace. Set free, aware, and only slightly caught Within the web you've spun of tickling flesh, You feel you understand why you were brought To live within earth's tantalizing mesh. What sage or mystic ever wrote a line Containing more than hints of what you feel And almost know to be the life divine Which tinglings from the vast unknown reveal? Experienced have you this thunderbolt? And savored have you since then every volt? |
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Ventilating the House of Knowing
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Knowing is stowing; unknowing is flowing. Building a house requires intricate knowing; living in it will tap a rich, dangerous stream not charted in the blueprints. To study someone's horoscope numerically builds up a house of concepts; to cry with someone is to surrender to an indescribable flowing. Financial expertise is a product of keen attention and experience; heartfully allocating resources can be done by a three-year-old giving his dog a biscuit. To gather straight A's in college is an obedient harvesting of the known; later upheavings may lead to sleepless, fathomless nights that drain away diplomas but open one's heart to a fresh humility. Knowing is a keen memory of all the chess openings, over a neatly squared chess board, with well-behaved pieces; unknowing brings one to a bewilderment in midgame from which a victory may spring. Knowing within a religion can spawn rickety beliefs, defensive fears, or exclusive duality; to avoid naming the nameless, or believing in the heard, or excluding the "other" can admit a universe into the mind, and release the mind into a universe. Experience leads to knowing; knowing leads to more intense experience; then perhaps to a shambles; from which may emanate a steadying awe of the flowing. The known manifests as forward motion; the unknown as a gentle, inscrutable smile. The knower has developed a system for success, having created a perfect tinker toy windmill; his fragile fabrication already tosses precariously on an unseen boundless sea. Many know their appetites, preferring a certain spice or sugar; the mysterious source of all flavors is unknown to them but controls their dining. Professors in universities want to increase and perpetuate the known; the Perpetual winks. Knowing is to have a well-kept lawn; flowing is to have nothing but everything, to leave it right where it is, and perhaps to care for the lawn too. A brilliant nation converts a billion dollars worth of knowing into a Stealth Bomber; to sit at one's dinner table is to fly imperceptibly fast on a planet, free of charge, without need of a target. Knowers worry about dying, which might destroy their tinker toy windmill; the imponderable is immense and welcomes windmills of all designs. A violinist knows his part; a conductor knows his score; a composer knows how to notate his emotions; in concert all of them yield their knowings to the fountain source of music, with exquisite results. The known is of great price; the unknown is priceless. Assertions have been made herein as if known; a puff of wind from no direction will soon scatter them without loss. |
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Within Our Keep
To a Guest Reading by Paul Meier|
What is this stillness in the stable? What glow is here within our hearts? Who lies so small between us? Far more seems given us in this bed than infant pounds and length-- how weigh, how measure possibilities? Although just now our baby sleeps, his waking eyes reveal an inner light-- some holy mystery within our keep. We bow. We love. We are silent. |
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Above poem is included in the
Christmas Reflections PDF book Holiday poems to print for gifts or for keeps Free PDF Download - 2.0 MB, 18 pages Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (also free) |
Listening to Christmas
To a Reading by Alan Harris
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Have you ever heard snow? Not the howling wind of a blizzard, not the crackling of snow underfoot, but the actual falling of snow? We heard it one night in Wisconsin quite unexpectedly while walking up a hill toward our cabin in the woods, a soft whisper between footsteps. We stopped, switched off our flashlights, and just listened. All around us in the darkness we heard the gentle fall of snow on snow. No wind, no sound but the snow. Have you ever heard Christmas? Not the traffic noises in the city, not the bells and hymns and carols, beautiful as they are, not even the laughter of your children as they open their presents-- but Christmas itself? Have you been by yourself and just sat and listened to the silence within, patiently, without letting the mind race to the next Christmas chore? Perhaps if you have, you felt the pulse of all humanity beating in your own heart. Perhaps you noticed an outflowing of love for all your brothers and sisters on the earth, a soft sense of Oneness with all that lives. In the silence of a snowy night, listen intently, holding your breath, and you may hear snow on snow. Serene, alone, undisturbed by thought, listen to the silence in your heart, and you may hear Christmas. |
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Above poem is included in the
Christmas Reflections PDF book Holiday poems to print for gifts or for keeps Free PDF Download - 2.0 MB, 18 pages Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (also free) |
Deep Coffee, Alone
To a Reading by Alan Harris|
Today a female heart has gone funny— funny like the strangest way a heart can feel and still beat. Quiet on her white couch, drinking gourmet coffee, she wrestles with inner intrusions not covered by her insurance— uninvited bass notes are troubling her treble reality. All is in place outdoors— sunshine properly warming her acre, fertile lawn greenly framing her sporty car aglitter in the driveway, white patio furniture gleaming from acceptably jaunty angles. But indoors, wallpaper blurs near the couch. She cries—longly, profoundly cries. Her architected home has no ears for such snappings of heart, nor is her healthy lawn in sympathy wilting. Her white couch, red car, green lawn, and petite palace of prepared comfort seem like checkers, smart but alien on a board whose game has fallen deep into chess for keeps. Coffee and courage by now cool, she meekly questions the silence: "What is happening to me?" Body, calm. Mind, thoughtless. Heart, electric. Silence, holy. (Cup needs rinsing.) |
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Another Dance
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Where are all the little nothings I spoke to you when we were young? I want them back. You were so precious, sitting there on the porch swing, letting me put my hand up under the back of your blouse to feel the smoothness of female skin. Where is the femininity that I gave you through my fingers? I want it back. Where is the bitchy grouchiness that I gave you? I want it back. Give me it. I gave you my tools and now you do all the work and give me your laziness and bitch at me for it with the bitchiness I gave you. Take your laziness back. Give me back my tools, and go get your own. This is a dance we are dancing, and I don't want to have to step on your feet, so watch carefully as I lead you into leading me to lead you. This is a dance we are dancing. Oh, now it's over. Clap, clap, clap. But there'll be another. |
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Electric Heart
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Wherein does the heart get its authority to pick up the mind and take it for a rolling ride through a countryside of gallant impossibilities?
My heart has leapt me
My heart, no longer
Nothing is left me but to thunder |
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Feathered Ephemera
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After I had set up the bird feeder and filled it with seeds, the past entered into my lungs like an old friend in a gray overcoat coming into the house out of November. For a few moments I (not seemed) was an earlier adult, vibrant with hints and smells, living younger in this aging body as forgotten feelings blazed up in the tangy wind. Today, sparrows are flitting about the feeder enjoying seedy morsels that heat them against crackling winter mornings. Cheerio, sparrows! Each wiggly one of you betokens a forgotten coloration in the cup of my soul. Cheerio! Eat your fill before the neighbor's cat eats his. |
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It All Rises
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Slicing the mountain with a cool silence you can smell, slivers of pink light rub and brush the crags. My ribs thrill out past the horizon. Weaving this sunrise of mind, heart, spirit, we immortally must kiss from across a smiling distance. The euphoria I feel embracing your possibilities proves underneath all doubt there is a yes of stranger stronger scentedness (sleeping fifty million winks a second) than possibly any manufactured no. |
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A Retreat Ahead
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Here's to Blaine and Jean Harker, those lovable two, with joy so contagious and counseling so true. A mourner in grief is a magnet to Jean, since few are the pains she's not suffered or seen. At the parties they give there is greatness of table, and every last diner eats more than he's able. Jean's food pantry likewise, for the hungry and poor, was much like her heart--a wide open door. Their lives are committed to lifting the fallen, through talkin' and workin' and sweatin' and bawlin'. An unspoken concern here is needful of saying-- for Jean's own self-healing we are fervently praying. While Blaine may have yet to get milk from a cow, in spite of the Amish folks showing him how, he's mastered the art of infectious laughter that shatters the silence from floor-joist to rafter. They've moved to the country near Old Shipshewana, but they can't quite move in yet, as much as they wanna-- while waiting for lodgers to kindly dislodge they have set up their home in a large upper garage. We honor the Harkers today, Blaine and Jean, and the Power behind them, so strong yet unseen. May God bless their home, the retreat of their dreams, granting laughter which heals, and the grace which redeems. |
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Aroma of Duty
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Easter lilies gladden (and teasingly madden) the kitchen atmosphere as I perform and pay income tax duties on vocational gettings (because everybody needs some of what I never quite received). Gifting, I notice, pleases the law and reduces the obligation. "Give and thou shalt deduct." As a man receives for himself, so must he give to us all. Around Easter tide we set right every least account with the mighty US and hope no mistake will cloud our reputation or shrink our havings. IRS laws embody a sprawling neo-Bible, rife with moral assumptions (teeth implicit and feared) about divorce, child support, medical expenses, the rich man's burden-- tradition all hard-wired. Inexorably the Old Covenant is infiltrating my Easter as potted lilies perfume my reluctance. As for Christ, how often I am invoking him as these tedious tax forms dance about under my fragrant lilies! |
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No Darkness, No Diamonds
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If life is going well, don't write. Know why? 'Cause you can't. Know why? 'Cause your creativity is all clogged up with contentment. Writing amidst blessings is bleeding without wounds. Why even read? Blow a tin whistle or talk to your uncle. It's OK. Very OK. |
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Sutra Salad
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Music from Hannah
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When Hannah comes over to visit our place, She fetches our old violin from its case And places it under her chin to be played With its missing E-string and its horsehair all frayed. Under Hannah Moore's unafraid, amateur touch, The violin squeals and scratches so much That sooner or later some listener will say, "Oh, Hannah, let's please put the violin away." Pretty soon she snaps open the old trumpet case, Tries out the three valves, puts the mouthpiece in place, And blows such a blast for a trumpeter's call That the pictures all rattle and sway on the wall. When Hannah brings over her flute, however, We can sit here and listen for nearly forever To her musical phrases both smooth and staccato Which pleasantly shimmer with a heartfelt vibrato. She has listened to Mozart from A to Z, And she loves any Beethoven symphony; Carmina Burana, the Nutcracker Suite-- The best compositions to her are a treat. Our piano's been host to her musical fingers Playing Mozart sonatas with feeling that lingers. Just give her an instrument, fancy or poor, And you'll soon hear some music from Hannah Paige Moore. |
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18 Rules
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Free of Verse
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jet lag of the soul
as free as habitual wishes cosmic popcorn for the mind brushes my cheek executives at pomp in the pompground whisper while you whisk bless this up until now pagan food that we may remain asleep in holiness billions of internal collisions today, and the city burps in the dark help reduce the national debt--buy US Savings Bonds politician without a tongue, please--rare wolf and fox a-smile sweet encrypted mummies smelling a buxom face |
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Messages from Beyond
(Deceased persons have somehow carved their own epitaphs onto their gravestones.)
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I like it here. Nobody ever telephones to sell me siding or insurance.
Why did my nurse let in that old-timer with the scythe? There were errors in my life review. Why me? I'm suing. Wow! Great near-death experience. Let's go back now.... Hello? Hell isn't so bad. It may need work, but it's better than Chicago. My life was a waste, but I did donate my ashes to science. Harps sound pretty, but not a billion harps at once. I'll take hell. Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. Some idiot ahead of me in the tunnel turned off the white light. |
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Short & Sour
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