A Hymn of Trees (poetry by an orthdoox rebel)

And now a return to calmer waters, as well as a return to something I haven't posted for a while. Enjoy.

 

I see shaggy cypress, hard-hided oak,

Smooth-skinned maple, silver or red,

With timid poplar resting in between.

Leaves folded over one-by-one,

Laying like coats of emerald armor,

Rattling their scales and sabres

As the wind winds through them

Like threaded needle through a cloth.

The fabric of forestry, woven tightly together

By the unseen force and feeling

Of the wind.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Crazy Things (poetry by an orthodox rebel)

Out on the ocean
Walking on the shore,
I found some crazy things,
Metal shapes and rings,
And I wondered what they're for.

I tried to put them together
The best that I can.
They all fell apart,
Mirror of my heart:
I'm my own biggest fan.

Other shapes on the shoreline.
Lots of crazy things.
The hipsters of the cool,
Dirty crazy fools.
They burn my soul. It stings!

They take away our heroes.
Don't give us a cause.
They spit on virtue's grave.
Hear what I say:
Nothing ever gives them pause.

Fretting about nothing.
Nothing's all they got.
Telling me their lies
With their plastic eyes,
Being what I'd rather not.

Old men had religion.
Fathers got their spite.
The children eat their hate.
Oh, such bitter grapes.
Now their teeth, their set to bite.

The Cross went commercial.
Bought into the bling.
They take the worthwhile,
Mix it with the bile.
They hardly write and hardly sing.

There's a fire in the heavens.
Holiness and blood.
It mixed with the dust.
Its ministry a bust.
We killed it with planks of wood.

Now we give it nothing.
No life left to die.
Our parting lent
Is a circus tent
Where we go to kiss the sky.

I wanna kiss the holy
With my face to the floor.
Let Him come and bring
All those crazy things
And show me what they're for.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Desolation and Glory (words of wisdom and whimsy from an original brit)

The following is the first two stanza's from Matthew Arnold's poem "Morality":

"We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight will'd
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.

"With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern."

I Built a Little Snowman (a snow-day poem by an orthodox rebel)

It snowed today, about six or so inches deep. I love snow, and as I busied myself with my outdoor merriment, I took to making little snowmen (maybe ten inches tall) and setting them around the edge of our frozen pool. As I made them, I started saying this little poem over each one, like a  blessing or something. Poetry and snow: it was all magic and fun!

"I built a little snowman.

He stood so white and tall.

I fear the sun will show its face,

And I will see him fall.

Stand tall, my little snowman.

Hold off your melting tears.

And I will build you yet again

Through all the frozen years."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Child of the Star (a Christmastide poem by an orthodox rebel)

"And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin." I John 3:5

"Into the depths and the deep degrees.
Into the flesh with its feeble knees.
From Light of lights into darkest stain.
From divine delights to a world of pain.

Into the coal came the burning spark.
Into the night came a thund'ring heart.
From out of the crib and the cattle smell,
Child of the star walked into our hell.

Shining star with it growing light.
Shepherd's hill where they felt the fright.
The angel's song did yet surmise
This night of nights was the dark's demise.

Little cry from the manger hay.
Thirty years is all that He could stay.
The darkest day where the pain was long
Where the cross crescendoed the angel's song.

Into the pits of our despair.
Into the teeth of the demon's lair.
Into the wound only He could heal.
Into the hearts only He could steal.

Out of the depths and the deep degrees.
Still in the flesh without feeble knees.
We are His and He is ours.
Sons of God and children of the Star."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

Chesterton, Colebatch, and the Glastonbury Thorn (Christmastide news and thoughts by an aussie author)

The following is an article written for The American Spectator by Hal G.P. Colebatch. He is writing in reference to the Glastonbury Thorn tree and the most recent vandalism against it. I found Dr. Colebatch's thoughts (and Chesterton's sayings) to be quite moving and encouraging.

The other week in Britain the Glastonbury Thorn Tree was destroyed by persons unknown. It was a scrubby, undistinguished-looking tree. Few trees have had such links with high religious mystery.

It is said to be in its origins 2,000 years old and to have direct links with Christ. According to legend it is either sprung from the Crown of Thorns or from seeds planted by Joseph of Arimathea, who, according to the Gospel, gave his tomb to hold Christ's body.

In fact it is historically possibly, if not particularly likely, that Joseph of Arimathea visited England. Archeological evidence shows that England had considerable trade with Europe before being absorbed into the Roman Empire after 43 A.D. and travel in the Roman World was relatively easy.

Although the story of Joseph of Arimathea is encrusted with legends, he is described by St. Mark as an "honorable counselor" in Judea and may have been a wealthy merchant.

Whether or not there is any truth in any of the many legends that have grown about the tree is in a sense unimportant. It has been at the very least a place of contemplation.

The important fact is that the Glastonbury Thorn, like Glastonbury itself (Glastonbury Abbey is one reputed burial-place of King Arthur), has been a focus for Christian beliefs in England since ancient times. It had, over the centuries, become a site of pilgrimage, and a cutting from the tree was sent to the Queen to decorate her Christmas dinner table every year.

Glastonbury is also a seat of the legend of the Holy Grail. Many have remarked on a feeling of uncanniness about it.

The thorn tree is said to have flowered on Christmas Day every year for the last two millennia.

G. K. Chesterton, in "The Ballad of the White Horse," telling of Alfred the Great's defense against the marauding and destroying Viking barbarians, referred to:

The Earls of the Great Army
That no men born could tire,

Whose flames anear him or aloof

Took hold of towers and walls of proof,

Fire over Glastonbury roof

And out on Ely, fire …

The fires of the Great Army

That was made of iron men,

Whose lights of sacrilege and scorn

Ran around England red as morn,
Fire over Glastonbury Thorn--

Fire out on Ely Fen.

The destruction of the tree may have been mindless vandalism or a deliberate attack on a symbol of, and aid to, Christian faith -- and there are plenty of anti-Christian fanatics in Britain today (when both convicts and police, as well as members of the remaining armed forces, are, in the name of political correctness, given time off to observe pagan rituals). Or possibly the target was British history and identity, which has been under attack from many quarters, including official ones, in recent times.

Whoever did it went to a good deal of trouble because the tree was protected by a wire fence. Further, the fact that the destruction took place on December 8 suggests those responsible were well aware of the significance of the tree. This has traditionally been the date on which a sprig was cut from it to present to the Queen.

Whatever the motive behind the destruction was, if the tree is lost then something at the core of Western civilization has been diminished. In "The Ballad of the White Horse," Alfred, looking at the senseless destruction and waste caused by the barbarians, tells them:

Therefore your end is on you,
Is on you and your kings,
Not for a fire in Ely fen,
Not that your gods are nine or ten,
But because it is only Christian men
Guard even heathen things.

The branches were sawn off the tree and piled nearby but a six-foot stump remains. There is apparently some hope the tree may be saved. Tree-surgeons have dressed the tree's wounds in pine resin and beeswax and it has been wrapped up to protect it from the frost. Arborist Peter Wood Frearson was quoted as saying: "I am 75 per cent sure the tree will survive."

Religious fanatics have attacked the tree previously, but it has proved very hard to kill. During the English Civil War Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Roundheads felled the tree. However locals salvaged the roots of the original tree, hiding them in secret locations around Glastonbury.

Various shoots of it were raised and tended over several centuries and it was replanted on the hill in 1951.

Many people have been distressed by the destruction of the tree. However in "The Ballad of the White Horse" Chesterton had Alfred give an answer to the barbarians' destruction:

For our God hath blessed creation,
Calling it good. I know
The spirit with whom you blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with his hand;
Yet by God's death the stars still stand
And the small apples grow.

And, after all, he did win the final battle.

The Moonlit Statues on a Winter's Eve (a Christmastide poem by an orthodox rebel)

"The criss-crossed frost can etch its way
Under shadow of the sky that escaped the day.

On the grim-cracked faces of the iron men
It covers o'er their fingers and fills each grin.

Ne'er ever was there an air so nice
As the night death-throes and the burning ice."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

As Kingfishers Catch Fire (poetry from an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Though classified as a Victorian poet, many people see Hopkins as a proto-modernist poet, and he served as an inspiration for the likes of Yeats, Auden, and Eliot. The following poem shows not only his unique and beautiful use of rhyme and structure but also displays his notion of "inscape," a Psalm 19-esque philosophy that seeks to see and capture the glory of God that is inherent (and buried) within His creation.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--

Christ--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

You Tell Me (poetry of an orthodox rebel)

"I hate the auto dripping drag that cuts across the grind
To where I see at the typing tree some fellows, friends of mine.
I do not like them, Sam I am, said Fred whose family flocks
To see the sightly tripping tree and laugh at all the locks.

The doors are barred and drapes are pulled across the eerie eye
Of precious fiendish peeping toms who love their wheat and rye.
Drinks dull and dowdy pout the pull of waves that wipe the shore,
And ere we glint the air a hint, we wonder what they're for.

My friend right there with the fishbowl face, he smiles a sickly frown
Found only in the friar's den on the other side of town.
And if we grip our pick-up-sticks and shuffle out the side,
We'll crash into our comely crew and there we will have lied.

And up and out and over still the showers of the main
Will pierce our polly-crackered heads with heaps of it again.
Until the tow'ring tide and sun surrender us their skins,
I'll never cross the drag or grind and go and see my friends."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

A Hymn

"Advance against the actors
of lame audacity,
The amiable arbiters
of every atrocity
Allied against the ache of Adam.

Their altruistic assault aggravates
their own arteries, accomplished
self-suicide of the armies of irony.

Their avarice acquires the all-consuming
abnegation of attacking and avoiding
the absolute alchemy of ourselves and
Alacrity divine."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

C Hymn

"Kaleidoscope cascade of
Contradictions and conclusions,
Consorting their conundrums in a
Coalescence of confusion and clarity.
The call cuts the corraded clogs
Of klutzes and cranks who
Cue their clues from the
Collapsed crutches of killers
And creeps."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

B Hymn

"The belief that brokenness
Can break the barrenness bends
The borders of brains and balances
Bent over backwards to beseech
The bigots and barons of
Bloated blight."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

She's a Fighter Girl

"Somewhere between hither and thither, someone start the seance

Here and now and summon to us this girl:

Embattled since birth; bleeding from conception.

Inception of the morning star that sent her to us

Shooting up and out like a flare screaming against the night,

A heavy burden of burning placed in her heart.

False fathers and foes seek to make her fire a prey

In their schemes of sadness. She flutters and fights,

Girl, like a mad one. Sorrow on sorrow makes

Her happiness a vapor: floating, fleeting, failing.

Tethered to pain like a ball and chain. Can't see the forest for the mysteries

Etched in her mind by the hard hand of the mourning star.

Read her lips and longing as she strolls away like a rolling wave,

Girl. She rises and crashes like a rolling wave, beat down by the moon's

Invisible pulse pounding her back against the rocks and rocks and

Rocks while she rises still; she rages still against the night

Like a candle, like a flare, like the morning star."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010