Fall Issue 6
Poetry Travels: “Retreating Light”
By Jolene Nolte
Poetry has helped me affirm that life brims over with more than I can ever understand. Take, for instance, the absence of God. Yes, I know theologically that God is with us, will never leave or forsake us. And yet, I often experience God as absent. So, too, does Job, the psalmist, Christ himself, saints and mystics. Rather than avoid this state of affairs, some of my favourite poetry meets it head on.
I recently read Louise Glück’s The Wild Iris—a collection that both grabs me by the gut and gets me thinking. Written over the course of a summer, the collection alternates voices between plants in a garden, a human gardener, and God. One of the threads that weaves throughout is the sense of God’s absence. I’ve been ruminating on “Retreating Light” in particular:
You were like very young children,
always waiting for a story.
And I’d been through it all too many times;
I was tired of telling stories.
So I gave you the pencil and paper.
I gave you pens made of reeds
I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense meadows.
I told you, write your own story.
After all those years of listening
I thought you’d know
what a story was.
All you could do was weep.
You wanted everything told to you
and nothing thought through yourselves.
Then I realized you couldn’t think
with any real boldness or passion;
you hadn’t had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,
because apparently tools alone weren’t enough.
You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.
Creation has brought you
great excitement, as I knew it would,
as it does in the beginning.
And I am free to do as I please now,
to attend to other things, in confidence
you have no need of me anymore.
(From The Wild Iris, published by Ecco Press, 1992)
The poem explores God’s side of the absence, and in doing so, reframes it. The God-like persona who is the poem’s speaker actually furnishes the addressees with what they need to grow, to write their own stories. What if, instead of abandonment, God’s absence and the ensuing pain of that absence is an empowering act of love?
My meditation on this poem centres around this pair of lines: “I thought you’d know / what a story was.” Those words repeat in my mind like a phrase of music. Have you ever tried writing a story? For the thousands—or would it be millions?—of stories we hear in our lives, why is it so hard to write a story? Nothing is determinative; it’s not an equation. Sure, there are plotlines and conventions, but nothing is forcing you. Where do you begin? Once you’ve begun, what next? The indeterminate nature of writing a story is linked directly in the poem to that of living one’s life. Yes, there are contingencies and necessities, but for the choices we do have, how on earth do we make them? How do we find meaning?
Well, in the space of the poem, these beginning writers are furnished with what they need: They’re given pencils, papers, pens, lives, tragedies—all prerequisite to the thrill of creation.
Just as the speaker’s absence was reframed, so, too, is the childlike writers’ independence. The speaker expresses pleasure in watching the nascent writers sitting “like independent beings” (emphasis mine). That “like” alerts us we’re encountering a simile. The new writers are analogous to but not the same as “independent beings” any more than children who can read and write being left alone all morning are. Lost in their own thoughts, they likely don’t realize all the ways in which they are dependent on the parent for the house in which they sit, for the pen and paper, and, in a way, their lives. The raw materials are all given. And yet what they make of this material, how they fill those pages over the course of a summer morning—that is theirs.
The phrase “the summer morning disappears into writing” recalls and informs the poem’s title. Just as the God-like speaker retreats (think here of the trope of God as light) to give room for the others to come into their own, so the morning light “disappears” into the page.
Maybe God’s given us all we need to write our stories; maybe God, like a mother of young children, steps back, then delights to see us “like independent beings”—watching us discover the angst and thrill of making. I do believe our stories are part of a larger Story, but given that God lets us face the emptiness of a blank page, what will we write?
Battery Life
By Tyler Lynch
He withdraws it from his pocket. It is never off his body. The sheen of its sleek silver frame and the pure straight lines belong in someone else's hands. Turning it over, he stares at his own haggard reflection in the finger-smudged black mirror. It gleams in his hands, pregnant with power. It's time again. He held them off as long as possible. But again they have adorned him with a headdress of green feathers and painted his aching body with red clay. Exalted by bead necklaces and a loincloth of shells, he is alone in the small grass hut, ecstasy in his palm.
Outside they gather, hushed in anticipation, silent as fish. Breathing deeply, he exits the hut. The crowd, foreign and brooding, kneels in reverence. He raises his hand to the sky, the black thing in his palm sparkling in the summer sun. An awed whisper snakes through the crowd; Apo, Apo, Apo. He lowers his arm, gesturing with a flourish to what he holds in his hand, as a magician would, demonstrating his trick. Facing the black screen, his thumb rests on the power button. The whisper has grown to a staccato chant. Apo! Apo! Apo! Apo! Apo! Apo! Apo! Resigned, he presses down his thumb. His skin glows with heavenly light. He finds the in-facing camera, and turns it to the crowd.
They erupt into a frenzy, screaming with ecstatic jubilence. APO! APO! APO! Their souls live, ever present, in full colour and splendour within her face! The essence of everything finds itself transcended of this material world within Apo. Why should death be feared when Apo contained all, infinite and perfect, within herself? The brethren jostle for space to glimpse their everlasting brothertwins and sistertwins within Apo's face, crying with terror and awe. And then, as soon as it came, it is over. Apo's face is extinguished, discreetly clicked into nothingness.
The man takes a step backwards, attempting to retreat into the safety of the sacred hut, holding his hand in front of him to ward off the crowd. None dare touch what he holds. The people, painted and dancing, continue to scream, regret and love shredding their voices. APO! APO! They want her back.
Hidden from the chaos and the pleas of the congregation, the tired man brings light to the screen of the phone again. The little hairs of his neck stand in dread. The battery of the iPhone hovers at seven percent.
The Body of Christ
By Amos Bohoussou
We are a mind - analyzing, thinking, discerning, judging righteously, gaining wisdom from the King, using rationality to do things that are pleasing to him and that demonstrate practicality.
We are a heart - having feelings; being passionate; being compassionate; being sensitive to the Spirit's leading; hopefully trusting in him who never perverts the way to life everlasting.
We are eyes - naturally and supernaturally seeing, looking at God's beauty in awe and finding it inspiring, breathtaking; perceiving wrongly, but with the Lord's help we perceive rightly; observing the Lord's teachings; distinguishing between those who's good or bad fruit they are bearing; seeking understanding and keeping watch for the Lord's returning.
We are a voice - for those who are deaf; for those who are penalized for an unjust death. We cry out, we petition, we pray without ceasing; imploring the Lord with our prayers that rise up to him like incense...mmmm pleasing.
We are ears - prepositions of the world are tickling, very vibrant and noisy; noisy…NOISY! Yet when we are still, we are listening to the Lord's calling, hearing what he is saying and obeying; being attentive, by waiting expectantly.
We are hands - helping the sickly, tired and weary; giving food to the hungry, money to the needy; building and repairing homes; lending aid to the suffering; hugging those who are crying and hurting.
We are feet - walking on ground that is moving, standing on the solid Rock who is always steady; ready to move when the commander says, "Move"; ready to stop when he says "Stop". Ready to run when he says, "Run".
We are a mind. We are a heart. We are eyes. We are a voice. We are ears. We are hands. We are feet.
We are the body.
We are the body.
We...are the body of Christ.
The Apostate’s Library
By Alice Hodgkins
When all is said and done the books must be dealt with.
There are many ways to go about it.
Some people sell them
Or donate them
Or leave them on the shelf and willfully ignore
Them as they would an autistic child
Having a meltdown on the city bus.
And some put them in a box, away:
Macabre curiosities to bare like scars,
Proving to friends they have travelled
Not only the circular breadth of the globe
But the whole harsh gamut of transcendent belief—
Then there are the ones who say, and say loud,
I’m done with all these books telling me
How it is, how I am—
Thank Bejeezus—
I want to learn grace and love
On my own please,
Away from the weight of all
That drags me down to dusty earth
And drags me up to misty heavens
Till I’m stretched out on the rack of both/and,
Bones popping out of joint.
Screw all that.
These are the ones who buy lighter fluid,
Invite the friends they know will bring a six pack,
The ones who stand just outside the circle of light
To celebrate the roar, watch ash
Fragments of inky insufficient answers
Float obediently upward into velvet night
Till they are indistinguishable from stars,
Then find that they are weeping
And have no words to say why.