Hello all,

Two poems for you today~ both are the fruit of a class I took back in May with Scott Cairns. The first one is a bit sillier, but still carries something of the midrash-ic in it (which is what the class was all about!), as I really did write it after spending an extended amount of time, Lent & then some, in the book of Ecclesiastes. Here’s how this first poem came to be: Scott made a pun one class about the phrase “coming to terms” as it relates to the life of a poet, and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

A few days later I was sitting near a lovely pond in the Fenway of Boston, working on another poem, when this just spilled out of me. It’s not too refined or edited, it’s more of a momentary, personal reflection, written in tercets. :) I hope it gives you more of a chuckle than a disheartened groan. Maybe a bit of both.

After Reading Ecclesiastes through Lent, I Hear Scott Cairns Make a Pun about Coming to Terms

Suddenly, out of nowhere
I’m 43. And I am afraid
I will write the best poem
I’m capable of
and then…what?
Words on a page, rightly
ordered. Words warm
and surprising and lineations
that could not be
improved. Perfect vocabulary.
Masterful handling of the blesséd
metaphor. A sudden gasp
enlivens each reader’s
lungs—all 100 of them. If I’m lucky.
What will I do then? Look
for shells on the beach?
Shells that speak to me by their
shape or color or wholeness?
Who will I be? Another grey-
haired woman in loose
clothing who wrote a poem. No one
knew the name of it. Or hers.
This is the end? This is
coming to terms?

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It’s rough being a poet, eh?

The second poem is straight up midrash, in my style, I suppose. It is a riff on Exodus 33:11, but lands in imagery based on Exodus 24:9-11, one of the most curious and wonderful passages having to do with Moses and Aaron, in my opinion. I’ve written about this meal on Mt. Sinai elsewhere, in my Overness series (for which you can start here if interested. This is my current longterm midrash poetry project). And yes this poem title begins with an ampersand~

& Gone to Heaven

Exodus 33:11 ~ The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.
The face to face you’re longing for
—beatific wisdom given to Moses
and no other until the Christ came—
It’s not on offer. Not now, not any old
time unless the Father reached through
cloud to set eyes free, in the desert,
On the mountain, free
to perceive light enough to see
and say This might not be blue
(Might be) but I savor the slightest
of You until my sight be true.

Some Notes

This poem is short, but I’ve packed a lot in it. It feels to me like it’s situated in both today and Moses’ day. It used to have a very different ending, that I quite liked. But everyone who read it said it didn’t work, so I let it go, and then stuck with the poem until the music in these last lines began to sing for me. It needed to hold something of that “longing” from the first line, without promising too much, and somehow be well situated within the bigger story of the Scriptures that this little snapshot in Exodus anticipates.

• Looking for the prophet poems? They’re about to be published by Square Halo Books, as Yahweh Loves a Desert ~ Here’s the latest update (with book cover reveal) and here’s the site to keep your eye on to get yourself a copy!

• Coming to Lifting the Veil in Boston in October? Rad. I will be there. Yahweh Loves a Desert will hopefully be on the book table. And I will be reading some poems on stage with Malcolm Guite! WHAT?! Yes, that’s correct. So stoked.

Further up & further in,

Anna