The Milanese Rose Garden

I'm thinking
Now
Just thinking, how clever you were,
So young
To relish the music of a word in your own way.
Well, nothing really.
Yet all that needed to be said, was said
As a silent prayer.
Roses freshly dewed and a child's insistent voice
Answered indecision:
A burning love and pure resolve
Was born
In a walled garden.

(The story of Augustine of Hippo's conversion to Christianity when hearing a child chanting scripture in a rose garden in Milan, is part of Augustine's book, "Confessions"). 

Somewhere

Remember all the disarray

Of cobweb years,

Time too heavy with discontent?

Try rather think

Of those whose prayers,
Fragile fragments

Swept aloft,

Feathers caught in upward currents

Time and place unbound.

Not surprising

That a million memories,
Still survive

Although none worthy
To represent the years

With dignity.

Perhaps, or not at all,
Mere monuments to struggle

Suspended between between fence and tree

I saw again this morning

Dew-laden gossamer
A million jewels;

How fragile, how pure!

By evening, blown away.

All those yesterdays are no more?
I beg to differ!

Time past coalesces with time future

At a still point

Between thought and no thought, action and inaction.

All deeds are now.

Voices from another room have little impact here:

Bees swarm instinctively, obediently,

Mists soon evaporate and they are driven home.

I longed for you so long ago,

Before intervening years silenced your voice

And poverty of memory veiled your face.

Fast memories, yours and mine,

Appear again but not the same.

I wonder.

Time does not heal the wounds you left behind,

But that's irrelevant.

Except now, as then,

I see the wood, the sacred wood called trust.

Somewhere:

I know somewhere,

Or, perhaps not all; yet in some lonely place,

A bottom drawer

Or on a rubbish heap,

Could there be thngs left behind

Sacred to you and me?

I wonder.

Somewhere, insistent and too beautiful to fear,

Your face will tell it all,

And having seen that Resurrection Morn,

Only dimly now, but then, face to face . . .

Just you and me.

The Fountain of Life

For with Thee is the fountain of life: Psalm 36: 9

 
Passions adrift! Replete,
Soul's harvest of desire,
Spirit's high faculty, abandon base use
Diffuse affection;
Wishing's aura fades as fantasy:
Memory stirs.
Blind feeling within:
Faith's way of knowing
Infinite Wisdom, unreckoned,
All things bear your trace.
Beloved 'Thou', shy Presence of mystery
Come closer.
Dawn nears and dreams die:
He comes, Transcendent Joy!
Promise wills to promise more,

Grief's bitter cup,

Foamed draught full-drained,

Fragmented passions banished.

Not "I", Another lives,
Deposed defiant will: A sweeter love prevails:
Crystal Stream,
Full torrent of delight
Your tree-lined way is fountain-sourced,
Spirit Blessed!

Fountain of Life:
Fond destiny bids welcome, cool canopy
Of measured yield, carried aloft
In whispered breezes:
Leaves scattered in Autumn,
Faith's harvest.

Geoff Wellings (1996)