Arriving at Central Oak Heights elicits a feeling that the time accrued there becomes “unpaused.” We experience the joy each trip of picking up where we left off. In sight of the tabernacle, and surrounded by artifacts of past generations of my wife’s family, there is a sacredness in this space that engages both a ritual and temporal feel. Like reading a beautiful poem, rich in the anticipation of its approaching end, and carried forward with fleeting recognition of form and rhythm, we engage in our seasonal recitation.

What are we to do with these very real differences in time perception? Are we merely deluded by biochemical responses evolved for survival? Time seems at once materially binding and idealistically arbitrary. We wear watches that count by the piezoelectric “tick” of quartz. We experience biological circadian rhythms and cellular decay bound to the chronicity of sunrises, sunsets, and the passing equinoxes. Yet quantum entanglement tells us that particles can communicate across distances without the need for light speed travel. The further one follows material cause to its foundational minutiae, the more blurred is the relationship of input and output. Ultimately, our only stable manner of understanding these dynamics is mathematical, not of direct observation, and math lives, substantively, in the realm of ideas.

To make this pragmatic, hold the idea of “noon” in your mind. This idea is probably a combination of clock-measurement, mealtime memories, and colloquialisms about the time of day. If I were to ask you, and indeed a crowd of people, to draw a picture of “noon,” I would receive pictures of clocks with the hour- and minute-hands at 12. Now ask yourself what represents best the concept “noon”: the idea in your mind, or the drawing of the clock.

Theistic idealism posits that all of reality is primarily ideas and thoughts, and our active experience is produced by the imagination of God. It is while on retreat, in worship, or engaged in creative acts, that this feels most resonant for me. While at the cottage, I feel a sense of God’s memory beyond my own, and a sense of nostalgia big enough to remember the dividing of land by sea. The writer Madeleine L’Engle has described this feeling of time saturated by the sacred as kairos, or as I like to think of it in more modern terms, focused presence instead of present-focus. This is the Greek word used when Jesus responds to the imprisonment of John the Baptist with announcing that “the time [kairos] has come” for the Kingdom of God to have its way [Mark 1:15.]

May you find time this Sabbath to experience the focused presence of the Divine.

Spring robins
search not rewards;
finches, nor bluebird
a winged sword.

Wingtips spread,
embraced by wind;
acceptance over
pedestrian spin.

Secrets shared
in flock and furrow;
seeds and crawler
for blessed morrow.

Vultures witness
grace in decay;
shading pride, 
heart unpaid.

Sparrows enrobed
colors for flight;
teach men daily
songs of delight.

a poem
is temporary
brief images
imagined spaces

is temporary
the limit of the
imagined spaces
we use?

the limit of the
human
we use
is its nature

human:
a temple of words
is its nature
a space for worship

a temple of words
is longing for
a space for worship -
to feel missed

is longing for
mortality
to feel missed?
is poetry

mortality
in a vise?
is poetry
the end of us?

in a vise
one can find
the end of us-
this is

one can find
form here
this is
a poem

“I have you, Babygirl.” He picked me up like a rag doll, pulled down the attic ladder and tossed me up through the opening. He clambered up, struck open his army Zippo so that his face glowed, and told me to crouch below the roof trusses. Propane tanks and water jugs pinged off each other where they were lashed to the attic like church bells. The house sounded like divorce: pots, pans, and glass crashing, then a gurgling protest from the hallway register below us as water irrigated the ductwork. Firecracker sounds traveled back and forth under us. 

“What is it?” I screamed through my own whirling blond hair. 

“Plaster walls crumbling,” he grumbled. Daddy had shut of the water, power, and stopped our gas line during the previous week. His shotgun and shells were wrapped in plastic underneath him. Outside, our giant Ash tree groaned from its roots. In the distance I heard a dog barking and whimpering, and then silence. As the water filled the second story of the house, the plywood around us jumped from the pressure. We could hear the wind peeling shingles off our roof like stamps. Then a man’s voice bellowing in terror. He sounded like he was in the attic with us, and I pressed my head into Daddy’s armpit, thinking about zombies. His chest shuddered, and I thought he was coughing from his chew he always had tucked in his cheek, but when I glanced up, he was pinching the bridge of his nose between fingers, tears forming almost like he was plucking them out. I fell asleep to the sound of my world ending and the smell of Daddy’s tobacco.  

We woke up drenched with sweat, steam wafting into attic where we were being baked like lobsters under the tarred roof that held. The attic ladder and trap door were gone as well as the hallway floor, so Daddy searched through the loose shingles littering the attic and found his rolled-up rope ladder. He knocked out the window, hammered two spikes into the frame, and dropped the ladder down three stories to the wasteland of our yard. When we stepped off, our legs sank at least six inches into the black, oily silt. The wet ground glistened through haze in the burning sun, shiny with broken glass, pieces of cars, and daggers of splintered wood. Green chunks of weatherization foam were littered around us, and plastic from the house’s vapor barrier hung like streamers from its walls. The giant Ash tree was coated with mud and filled with aluminum siding and garbage. The sand dunes beyond our property were gone, and a boat I’ve never seen lay on its side where the marsh used to be. Gone were the spiky clumps of vermillion where the frogs jabbered at night. I tried to walk, but the mud sucked my Velcro sneakers right off and I fell backward flinging mud.  Daddy laughed, then started back up the ladder to bring down provisions.  

Everything was upside down during those first days. The Waveland police ended up stranded on a gas station pavilion, their guns washed away. A local pastor had taken refuge in an Adult Video store. A nine-foot marlin was found in a hotel pool downtown. Alligators had been washed out of the swamps and into suburban culs-de-sac. A bank safe was sitting smack in the middle of Main Street baking in the sun. Daddy turned the attic into his own crow’s nest, firing shotgun bursts when he thought passing folks were up to looting. All kinds of do-gooders from different organizations and religions poured into the Red Cross checkpoints; even Brad Pitt would end up in the paper for building some homes, though I never saw them. Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard, and army copters flew over the shoreline every day, mingling with air traffic of news reporters and oil company lawyers. On the third day, word got out that Pepsi had sent a shipment of sodas and Lays. After I had begged for an hour, Daddy turned off his propane stove, grabbed a wheelbarrow and extra shotgun shells, and headed to town alone. 

A couple hours after he left, I heard a scraping sound, coming from up the big Ash tree. Twigs, sand, and mud clods fell from the branches, and then a bloodied foot appeared, searching for purchase on the lower trunk. Soon two legs were like a spider dancing, and eventually a large man wriggled down the bark like a caterpillar. He was caked with mud on his legs, back, and hair. At first, I thought he had tattoos, but then I realized the symmetrical pink lines were lacerations and weals from sliding down the bark. I tried to think of the last black man I had seen, maybe down at the pier when Daddy and I go fishing in the catamaran he bought after he discharged home from the army. I remembered the Creole men who passed below us in boats with little outboarders, tending shrimping pots. I remembered there were different words for hello depending on time of day. 

“Bonswa,” I greeted him, glancing at the afternoon sun and hoping I got it right.  His weepy eyes looked at me, and he clutched his throat, and a deep, guttural tone emerged. 

“Bendye beni ou,” he managed, but I stared dumbly and tried to think what I could give him from the cellar. He was my zombie, screaming during that long night before. He pointed to the water jugs, then to his lips. Before I could move, we both the sound of shells being racked. Daddy was crouched behind a wheelbarrow of soda and chips, aiming for our guest’s gut. I almost shouted what mama might have said, something about being nice to our company, but suddenly it felt like the rules were different, or that Daddy knew the rules and was refusing to follow them. The man fell to his knees, hands up like shields in front of him, and tried to form words with his swollen tongue.  

“Souple,” he managed to articulate while spraying some foam. I smiled, proud that I had guessed his language right and hoping he could tell me how the shrimping pots worked, and if the shrimp try to escape. Then Daddy spat a word Mama always said was a bad word for blacks. He pitched a can of soda at the man, which thudded off his chest and fell to the mud. Daddy flicked his head toward the road, eyes slitted. Looking faint, the man picked up his prize and slouched off toward town. As I watched him go, I felt a tingle in my legs, a desire to run after him. He was headed where Mama had gone. I followed out to where our mailbox used to be, our gravel driveway and the street just an undefined washout, watching him until he dissipated into the haze. I refused to look back at Daddy, knowing he was still watching, and his gun was still loaded. 

YHWH and his songs are my essential substance.
I will sing to my neighbors, kin, and strangers.
We drape our neighborhood with electrical wires
and fill the air with radiowaves;
He tunes the stringed spectra of galaxies
like a mandolin.

God forbears the rent of nations,
permits our politics like a lion
gifts a rotting corpse to vultures.
His Spirit hovers on thermals above
Beauty, hidden and advertised,
diving and rolling through cities,
over mountains, their unseen dimensions
beyond our estimation.

Every artist echoes the boundless
ecstasy and tragedy of not-yet, here-now.
Awe is the vertigo of invisible heights.
YHWH keeps my mind from unpairing with brain,
offers me the concept of self.
The grammar of DNA is parsed to all creation;
cause and effect lead us to the crucible of love.

God sends angelic drones to circle the globe,
witnesses upon His grace-swaddled world.
Nothing surprises him on the day of court.

The sun radiates His smile, and megafauna
purr, stretch, hatch, yawn, and reanimate.
Biological systems are sacred rhetoric;
behaviors are worshipful stageplay.
Oceans hum with choirs of mollusk and cetacean continuo.
Storms rumble the timpani of His steppes and plains.
Forests of oaken marimba serenade.

The equator is our yoke, we beasts
ignorant of the physics of rest.
Creation cries for a green-thumbed remnant;
Jesus gathers gardeners to himself.

YHWH takes up the case of Sabbath-keepers,
who served others with God’s mercy and love.

soil, anointing oil,

green pasture, quiet

stream, body redeemed.

You are tastes of what

grace inclines:

Rapture, creation,

fruit, vine, grafted root.

You are sounds of joy,

womb of hope and bloom;

ploys of holiness:

wounds, and empty tombs.

You are pleasing senses

on skin: teeth

alighting, biting

making ears ring.

You are aromas

on my hands, upon

my lips, like prayer;

replete, like washed feet.

You are bride, mother,

protected, neglected;

my confession,

my blessings collected.

You are my body,

my bird and lily;

Solomon never clothed

a life so fully.

crushes me with hope.

Truth escapes my lips:

I will fail you 

it will happen like this: 

lies and ignorance, rebuking  

you in times of need, my needs. 

A splinter smarts the eye, 

and a log leaves you blind; 

an alibi, at least. 

You will be cursed by me, 

put down, emasculated, 

treated like an embarrassment, 

a shoddy first draft. 

Gray hair is a crown of wisdom;

sometimes just an old hat. 

A son reckons back grace, cold 

grace, like holstering a gun. 

A star does not revile gravity 

for impacts from other bodies 

or time in neglected space. 

Love, our severe constant,

distorted across our history,

like a proud hand pushing away,

like the first animating wind

cursing fondly at our backs.

I take your hand and a knife

looking for interstellar lambs

caught in our gravity well.

We promised sons will spin 

along our elliptical fatherings 

to our constellated inheritance. 

We once spoke of splendid things:

A van-full of kids, an artist’s flat, a ranch,

carrying grain to a village, or praying

with disaffected intellectuals in Berlin.

Seasons tumbled around us

like boulders to a rockfall.

Each anniversary celebrating

a mountain we claimed for ourselves.

Tarnishment brings silence

in scarred wombs, whispers

of termites in the cupola;

self-quarantined prodigals.

Stillness and time allow

for excavation and refinement.

Our expectations eroded by wind

and shattering footfalls of ancient beasts.

I imagine us as lichen, clung together

under ice or the scorching sun,

not knowing where you end or I begin; 

content if our mountain is thrown into the sea.

We have found a fifth season,

contrapuntal, forgiving,

like rain polishing sandstone

or frost preserving a rose.

To love you I don’t need reason

or your devotion in every instant.

We are content in our valley,

tended by a Gardener on whom

no limits we could impose.

planets of the Cygnus Constellation

two thousand light years

from my porch.

“Einstein’s Planet” rages

with tidal forces, stretching

it’s beleaguered host, the sun 

Kepler-76b should have been.

Conscious photons refract

through raining diamonds,

the Spirit hovering over

the face of non-Newtonian waters.

Wavelengths find agency,

a Mind translogically present

yet entangled with all matter,

Whose Kind will outlive the stars.

Answers shine from Cygnus

captured by radio telescopes

and spectrometry artists:

What happens now?

Citation: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/250/einsteins-planet-kepler-76b/

© 2023 by Steven McQue

What forms could I use

to write a poem for you?

No secrets to you, my schemes

tropes, rhymes and dreams.

Your glory indwells my pen

and I write again.

You are the form I’m given:

creativity, unleavened.