Poetry by Howard Marosi ©
my communion
It is Sunday. Carlton meditates in its own peaceful reverie
When summer is over the sun shines lower, Rays lie, like through the window of a cathedral
Some days still have the warmth of heaven on your bones
The mind becomes dreamy and fuzzy in its meditation.
The birds are cheeping,
A choir tweeting sweet praise of their airy existence,
The occasional engine of a passing car, throaty whir of a light plane is the bass to their soprano notes.
I walk the nature strip
the aisle to the bright blue distance stretching upwards to infinity
The green carpet lines my path up the middle of the road
My destination is my altar
The terraces the empty pews on either side
Autumn leaves yellow and brown,
shimmering decorations in the gentle sun.
By May, the trees hang, their heads lean to one side out of view,
Bare arms outstretched from trunks
like rows of Christs in infinite poses of stark crucifixion Sacrifice their Life
so that by springtime they burst forth into a pageant of new life,
the birth and resurrection
The warm fragrances of the flowers The dirt itself arouses the soul
I feel
I feel alive
Holy at one
My Cathedral is inside me and
My cathedral is outside here in Carlton.
shadows from the midnight oil
The scholars,
hunched over weighty tomes through the night.
Immersed in currents of their chosen streams of learning.
Eyes, seeing through the page:
Pictures of growth and decline,
Of dimensions of Life, Birth, Death, Decay, Regeneration.
Driving out the primitive emotions.
Intoxicated by the spirit which arises
when experience is fermented by the germ of an idea.
Collective experience humbling the concerns of the individual.
Yet, the scholars are divided.
Attracted by the delight of their own insight
and driven by burning desire for recognition.
Doing battle with like minded peers for the triumph of their ideas
and the hegemony of their particular discipline.
Isolated from those whose lives are not built
upon the foundation of books,
Spurning the common talk,
the bridge over which all can walk and look.
Preferring to pontificate about those on the other side
and their inability to understand.
But no matter how loud their voices
even they cannot avoid the clash of
flesh and spirit
inside every woman and man.
Another millennium –
another messiah
As the new millennium approached
The signs were there
All the sages knew
The world would be turned upside down
And begun anew.
And heroes came to be-
One was more selfless than the rest
And the people called him the Sacred One
Because he spoke the truest.
They asked him “What is God?”
And he replied, “God is everything, you see,
And God is you and God is me”
So the people cried
“He thinks he is God,
Let us see if he speaks the truth-
God is not mortal like man.
So they pierced his heart
And with his last breath he sighed
“Only the body dies,
The Spirit lives on”
And the people felt his presence,
even though he did depart
So they proclaimed him God.
They had forgotten he had said
“God is everything, you see,
And God is you, and God is me”.
the event
Above the mild and fuzzy
Above the daily hum the “event” suddenly appears
Dazzlingly, alarmingly. Unexpected. Shocking us.
A public figure, a contest, a victory, a defeat, a resignation, a death. Killings.
An “event”.
Making us stop and take notice.
Suspended midair, hovering there,
by our disbelief and wonder.
Chilling.
A big change is up there.
Hovering-Between past and present-
Hovering-us and the event-
Past certainty becomes memory,
a mere ghost of a possibility now is shocking reality.
Until we gradually come to-
Our life stream begins to flow again and washes over
the event’s mysterious aura
And relegates it
To the pages of history.
Now it is something that once happened
And our eyes grow accustomed again
To the mild and fuzzy, the daily hum.
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By Howard Marosi ©
Image of Carlton courtesy Google Earth.
Howard welcomes anyone interested in putting music and song to his poetry. He has composed instrumental music, independently of his poetry. Send a personal message and it’ll reach Howard.
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