VARIATIONS IN VOICING
A sycamore (yet again), tall grasses, the tug of the apophatic
The resonant hum of God, perhaps once a glorious clamor, retreats and quiets just below the threshold of everyday appeal in order to draw us back from the glamor of the surface and into depth. This happens incrementally throughout life within the continuity of our willingness to chase it, never retreating so much that we cannot desire it but also never still enough to stall us toward stagnation. And so we grow toward wisdom and rootedness and connection with Divine ground.
This though is at the expense of the cataracted haze of the familiar, a catastrophe of the every day, the demolition of affirmation. This is the necessary negation of God in God’s willingness to fill anything whatsoever.
VARIATIONS Easy to see in the splay of the hundred year old sycamore guardian of this creek more hidden in matted grasses, tall but low-folded in the stalk the shape of the memory of deer even less in the clinging froth of spittlebug nymphs the slender hour glasses between glossed spheres late overcast sky darkens openings in the thicket confused by the garble I lean close and as still as possible something nearly frightening, nearly familiar in the murmur
How good does “spittlebug nymphs” sound?!
'the slender hour glasses between glossed spheres'
cannot possibly articulate how beautiful and unique that line is (and the whole thing!)
also found the Wiman poem it reminds me of! https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poetry-eight-distillations