Five Lines / Issue 20
Oliver's sun, Ray's lovesickness, Jackson's unknown thresholds, and Sze's owl sighting. Also, a cardinal.
Hello friends. This is the Five Lines curated poetry letter, in which I share poetic stuff I’ve discovered and why it matters to me. Five Lines is, like everything else here at Tethered Letters, AI-free.
1. “best preacher that ever was”
“Why I Wake Early”
Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early: New Poems
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety—
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
In returning to this well-known poem from Mary, I’m warmed all over again by her openness as a poet — open to the world around her, open to her readers. She operates on the level of receiving things, of a common grace (not the theological version, unless you want it to be I suppose). I want to look out my window more. And spring has so many glories in it. Our daffodils have already been and gone, but now there’s two magnificent vermilion tulips just hanging out in our tree row. Linnea planted those bulbs a few years ago and now, bloop. There they are!
There is such surprise in spring, this sense of some cosmic hilarity brimming over the edge of all things, and Mary sees it and knows it and wants it. What if we were to consider the sun rising, this sun which is exactly far enough away from us that we don’t freeze or burn to death, this sun which is fixed like the moon in an orbit so that it fits exactly behind it during an eclipse — as the miracle it really is, on a daily basis? The Person behind all this is kind. He’s not a gaseous star in the black of space. He has walked among us. He is alive. He offers daily grace to us miserable and crotchety sinners.
Open your hands. Rejoice!
2. “It speaks when it should be silent.”
and still, we sing
Chris Wheeler
Maybe it doesn't have to mean something,
or even be said,
like the cardinal perched
atop the pear tree, at the highest point he can reach,
who sang
and my daughter wanted to write a poem
about him, king of the backyard, royally red
and full-throated to the wind,
but she said it wouldn't do to write one.
She said it wouldn't be the same
as standing there, side by side,
our ears as open as our eyes,
as wide as the sky behind him.
And she was right. This paltry verse
you're reading doesn't do. It barely sees.
It speaks when it should be silent.
It cannot fathom the spaces cleft open in my heart
as she leaned against me, so tall
and wise, like a rooted tree. It doesn't know the silence
split by the cardinal's song.
You must find your own
silence. You must sing.
In one sense, all poems are signposts pointing to the real locations we’re trying to get to and remember. It bears repeating that this is how this all works. I experienced this with my daughter. I wrote it down. I shared it with my wife. I’m sharing it with you. But it is not the experience I had. That has passed and will never be repeated, but this poem will help me to remember it.
Remembrance is a different priority than repetition, that maniacal urge we all get to drive an experience into the ground in hopes we would feel the way we did then, whenever we want to. The difference is control. Remembrance acknowledges that our experience is past and unrepeatable. Remembrance accepts the grace of that one time. Repetition claws the past back into the present and ties it down.
I want to be where I am, in this particular silence, in this particular song. And I want to remember it. So I write about it.
3. “you are sick with love for us”
Jess Ray, “Deserve”
from Sentimental Creatures
I don't treat you as you deserve
You don't treat me as I deserve
You don't treat me as I deserveMy life is a breath
My life is a passing shadow
It sways and it bends with the windBut I am a spirit
I am more than flesh and blood
And when it is time I will leave this behindOutside we are dust
Inside something's hidden in us
And you, you are sick with love for us
For a treasure in dust
That you would go in your joy
And sell all that you have
And buy the field
And buy the pearl
You don't treat me as I deserve
I don't treat you as you deserve
But I want to, oh and I will
Jess Ray is doing these really wonderful morning worship sets of her past songs called Matins, and I commend them to you.
Something I love about Jess’s work is that she carries the sensibility of someone who writes for congregations into her more personal devotional music. You see it when she switches to “we” and “us” in the fourth, longer stanza. You see it in the simple reminders of truth, the echo of Scripture through the song, the Psalmic tone she sets. All of this makes the more striking lyrics pop out, like the juxtaposition of how we treat God vs. how He treats us, or how God is sick with love for us (Song of Solomon 5:8). It becomes sermon, prayer, an embrace from a friend, a revelation all at once.
St. Augustine said, “The happy life is this — to rejoice to You, in You, and for You. That is it and there is no other.” And I think the songs Jess writes are about the realization that we already have what we truly want and need, right now, in Christ. The trick is to accept it, and by accepting it, be transformed.
4. “I am glad the good and ill / By changeless law are ordered still”
“Not As I Will”
Helen Hunt Jackson
Blindfolded and alone I stand
With unknown thresholds on each hand;
The darkness deepens as I grope,
Afraid to fear, afraid to hope:
Yet this one thing I learn to know
Each day more surely as I go,
That doors are opened, ways are made,
Burdens are lifted or are laid,
By some great law unseen and still,
Unfathomed purpose to fulfill,
"Not as I will. "Blindfolded and alone I wait;
Loss seems too bitter, gain too late;
Too heavy burdens in the load
And too few helpers on the road;
And joy is weak and grief is strong,
And years and days so long, so long:
Yet this one thing I learn to know
Each day more surely as I go,
That I am glad the good and ill
By changeless law are ordered still,
"Not as I will.""Not as I will": the sound grows sweet
Each time my lips the words repeat.
"Not as I will": the darkness feels
More safe than light when this thought steals
Like whispered voice to calm and bless
All unrest and all loneliness.
"Not as I will," because the One
Who loved us first and best has gone
Before us on the road, and still
For us must all his love fulfill,
"Not as we will."
There’s something rightly ordered about this poem from Helen, who was no stranger to trouble in her own life. She lost her husband and both sons before she even started writing poetry. We see her familiarity with sorrow in her repetition of phrases like “blindfolded and alone,” or her admission that she is “afraid to fear, afraid to hope,” or that “Loss seems too bitter, gain too late.” The troubles — loss, grief, fear, blindness, loneliness, uncertainty, etc. — are gathered up throughout the poem, to be released in the refrain of “Not as I will.”
This lived experience is probably why this poem is so effective, why lines like “the darkness feels / More safe than light when this thought steals…” don’t ring hollow. And like Jess, Helen roots her hope not in anything of this world, but in He “Who loved us first and best.”
5. “I was / silent then. And felt / the owl quaver”
“The Owl”, from The Glass Constellation
Arthur Sze
The path was purple in the dusk.
I saw an owl, perched,
on a branch.And when the owl stirred, a fine dust
fell from its wings. I was
silent then. And feltthe owl quaver. And at dawn, waking,
the path was green in the
May light.
Arthur’s poetry is keenly observational and always restrained. He does not offer us in-depth descriptions of the emotions we are supposed to feel, he offers us images of the things which will evoke something more. Sure, it could be that this is saying little beyond the beauty of an encounter with an owl (I mean, when does an encounter with an owl ever not feel like some sort of miracle?) The image is placed, physical, simple — no million-dollar words here, no grandiose statements. But it carries layers of meaning if we spend a little time with it.
The owl is a symbol in many cultures and mythologies of things like wisdom or transformation. It also is often seen as an omen of death. The poet places himself and the owl along a path that changes with time — from purple at dusk to green at dawn. The owl perches, stirs, quavers. The poet sees, falls silent, feels, and wakes. The movement is not along the path itself, but through time. And when we emerge, it’s spring.
Far be it from me to draw conclusions on a piece of poetry I did not write. Arthur himself has said that this poem was rooted in a dream, and that he still doesn’t understand it fully himself — that it carries mystery for him. So what follows is not an authoritative interpretation, merely something I think about when I read this poem.
Isn’t it interesting that in this poem the approaching night, a dusty harbinger of death, and the poet’s silence all give way to the awakening of dawn? Isn’t it telling that the path is then green — the color of life and growth — on the other end of this encounter? Isn’t it amazing that the time is now spring?
I’m challenged by this poem, by how the things left unsaid are often more powerful than the things that are said. This is the kind of plain and hearty poetry that taps into deeper wells of meaning and mystery than the poet even realizes.
Isn’t it incredible that the owl quavers?
That’s all for today, friends. Thoughts? Any lines you’ve loved lately? Send them my way. — Chris
Your poem about the Cardinal and remembering/repetition was a needed reminder for me. :) Thank you.
It also reminded me of a favorite scene from Secret Life of Walter Mitty: https://youtu.be/EMqcgkoQARU?si=agrexpsjB-Gc0A4I
We have all we need, right here, right now.
My 3 year old is currently fascinated by outer space. It is a constant reminder of this wondrous world God has lovingly created for us.