Sorrow is one of my favorite themes, perhaps because it is such a pervasive feeling, and one which is a close companion to all of us "sensitive" types. You know who you are!!! It has a profound mystical dimension because it directs us away from triviality and toward the essential; away from the ephemeral and toward the eternal. I would go so far as to say that sorrow is a true friend and that only shallowness, evasion and denial can do without her. I'll go even further and assert that sorrow is, in this world, the handmaid of Wisdom. Here is another Poetic offering: a prose poem.
TO MELANCHOLY
O Melancholy, who can ever love enough those eyes of yours, remote and intimate, which hold each votary without exclusion in their unsullied and compassionate gaze? Or your flawless and sapiential brow which soars upward like a pure cloud of marble - cool, serene and smoothe - and leaves us alone with the breadth of your diffused and muted light...
Your sighs settle like pale, golden leaves which fall and sink in reflecting pools of pearl, or spill whispering down the slopes of abandoned parks, or drift against the lips of empty fountains...
You are the dim, translucent veil which time drapes over childhood's pure and radiant delights. O how you teach us to despise vulgarity, distraction! And how your virginal alchemy transmutes our failures into hushed, sustaining music!
Lots of times when I write a poem I have no idea what it "means". Lots of times I have no idea where the poem came from, what little cranny of my imagination it was hiding in, but I do get the feeling sometimes that I don't make the poem so much as find it. Here is something I "found".
I have no doubt that more than a few people on this site are involved in some sort of serious quest for intimacy with the Divine, however you may envision and symbolize that. There is a lot of joy and fulfillment in this quest and, if we are honest, a lot of profound sorrow during those times we feel we are standing still or going in circles or distracted by trivialities. When one sees that one has the same faults one had twenty years ago in spite of one's best efforts, it is a humbling experience.
There is a passionate longing to participate in the Divine directly, to behold, to feel, to know the Beloved face to face with no shadow of separation, and anything short of that is painful exile. This is a poem about that pain of longing. (Note: Perenelle was the wife of the legendary alchemist, Nicholas Flamel, who reputedly helped him to transmute base metals into gold.)
I was visiting yesterday afternoon with a dear friend of mine who is a hermit. That is to say, she is a dear old lady who was a nun and now lives a solitary life of prayer outside her community, but still under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. I very much doubt if I've ever in my life set eyes on a happier, more contented human being. We used to be next door neighbors and I popped by her new digs to wish her a Merry Christmas.
We got to talking about the deep affection we share for trees and the sense of connection we feel with them. There is something so soothing, grounding and benevolent about trees. Once the fury of day#1 of Christmas is over, I love to spend the next 11 quieter days of the season contemplating the tree. I remember so clearly as a young boy growing up in New York City how the tree filled me with awe and how I could smell it's resinous sweetness all through our apartment. It's not always easy to recapture those overwhelming feelings of childhood wonder in the midst of stupid adult busyness, but that sense of awe did fill me again as I gazed at the tree one Twelfth Night and I wrote this poem about it.
TWELFTH NIGHT: THE CHRISTMAS TREE
A rumor of angelic trees
Stirs in the sentimental blood;
Enchanted watchers in the wood
Of half-remembered Paradise:
Stirs in the blood, beguiling sense
With childhood's all-engrossing joy;
These glittering boughs in bright array
Carry the heart into the dance.
Brilliant, beneficent and calm
Amid the unavailing gloom,
A verdant spirit from the realm
Of unseen guardians spreads his hands...
Absolves adulthood. Now resume
Strict fealty to delight's demands!
- Tod Jones
A Blessed, Joyous, Holy and Merry Christmas to all my dear Faerie-Friends!!!
There's a wonderful emptiness and silence in certain winter days; a particular light and openness. Everything is resting; waiting. On such a day, the hour before sundown is, for me, the most beautiful time. Here is a poem I wrote on the winter solstice on just such a day a few years ago.
