cloud and sun

POEMS BY DANIEL WILCOX: Way Light, Present Moment, Discarding

Last updated: November 8th, 2018

Way Light

Dropping doctrinal delusions,
Secular political ire,
Finite angled loss

And way too much historical
Backpack weighted-
Warring, dropped tonnage
Of endless weigh-lied ‘syn’onymed
Carnaged Earth.

Leaving the fallen past
Travelling instead up across
The light-weighed, heaven-reaching,
Ever rising,
Ascending

Spiraling
Upward
Burnished
Jesus-following
Daybreak-lightning
Dawned
Skywalk.

 

Discarding

On the way to the town dump
The junk in the back jostles in the turn.
Dark blue clouds curtain rain down.

I pull onto the miry dirt road
Past the leaning one-story screens
Where dark birds and wrens perch

But launch to flight as I pass and reverse.
Backing up the Sienna to the trash heap
I get out and step in the hogged mud,

Throw out the old bed banisters
A rusted bike, worn shirts and ‘genes,’
All my grouchy frustration;

Yes and my enlarged head tilted
With church dogma, loads of heavy fact,
And too many years of clouded regret.

Driving home—so empty and satisfied.

 

Four-Letter Praise

While the high-tech media, low-minded men
Cuss you out
Let us sing to you Love of All Being/Becoming
Personal
Beyond all temporary selfishness
Exalted
Higher above than the highest high
Lowliest
Born a despised infant in a barn trough
Rejected
A reviled criminal executed and buried
Abandoned
So many tragic events and centuries past
Everlasting
One now present in all beings and things
Indwelling
Finite, erring beings so ever inadequate yet
Ultimate
But not scientifically evident
Incomprehensible
Incarnated in men’s spiritual acts
Compassionate
Giving, peaceful, patient, joyous
True
Four-letter
Word

Present Moment

Come into the holy temple
Of this precious moment
In the ‘pure-suit’ of worship.

When seeking the Ultimate One,
Wear your coat of many colours
Gifted to you by his dying love.

Be mindful with gracious mercy,
Aware in compassion and kindness
To each needful person you meet.

Speak to every inner self
To the child lost to ambition
And the surface crest of lust.

Lay aside incessant doing
And the constant tomorrow—
Find God’s Being in this moment.

 

Retina Shadow

The blinding resplendent brilliant blaze of sunfiring
In the translucent window at the top of our old stairs,
Lighting to my eyes glaring defects
In the polished stairstep well-walls.

And afterward, for an hourglass,
The irised rectangle of remembered light

Luminous shining
Like an euclidic spirit in front of my vision.

The ‘optic mystic’ nerve gleam
Of photoreceptors

Turned into images in my mind
As I trudge about the hectic scurry of my day,

That brilliance of aperture at the centre
Blaze-blinding
Me

(In this pit-caved depression
Of emptiness, and not.)

Now allegorizing—

Yes,
The after-shadowed light of One
Far brighter
Than nature’s harsh survivored death glare
Or the gray-dusted rituals of this culture of shame;

Look, not to this dark cavern,
But to the sun-resplendence,

Oh, the after-glowed radiance!

 

Outside the Limit

Working the Thursday graveyard shift

At 7-11, I stock cold shelves of ‘cours’
Then write a college essay on Dreiser
Of how all is thin surface, all negation;

But alert in the night, I pray in the stillness
While beyond the glass, the parking lot lies
Vacant, lit by the neon signs and street lights–
When so unexpected my mind transports.

I rise outside of self, see far beyondness,
Perceive myself sitting between the rows,
Observe the little ego in the skin and skull
My bodied self finite with the staid cans and jars.

But now awash drowned in awe, the Personal
Luminousness aware beyond words vivid bliss
Blessed all-encompassing exalting surpassing
Great parabled One Pearl of Being.

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Daniel Wilcox’s poems have appeared in many magazines including The Danforth Review, outwardlink.net, and Enhance. Two collections of his poetry are in print—Dark Energy and Psalms, Yawps, and Howls. He now lives with his wife on the central coast of California.

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