Dear Reader,
Sometimes I like to wander the city with no particular destination in mind and with no goal but to enjoy the afternoon sun and read a bit of Dostoyevsky. Every so often something interesting catches my eye—a couple arguing, an empty church, cars moving round a roundabout—and inspires a poem or two.
It is also my habit to pray the daily office, the set hours of prayer of the Christian church. Ordering one’s day with prayer brings a sense of attentiveness to how one moves through the hours of the day. It’s this attentiveness that allows us to see beneath the strata of the common and into the heart of mystery—this is the stuff of poetry.
The poet’s eye learns to admire what other’s overlook. Prayer. Poetry. Both work the same. Each is an invitation to consider the source of all created things, the miracle of the incarnation at work in the seemingly happenstance and ordinary. Without paying attention we overlook the divine littered throughout our day. This of course is normal, our lives are chaotic, fraught with their own concerns. It’s why we need poetry, poetry like prayer, teaches us to see, to look with new eyes—eyes open to the shy and subtle work of the transcendent.
So here it is, an afternoon in poetry, the beauty hidden in the details, the diamonds we leave rotting in the rough uncovered and laid bare. I wonder what you’ll see.
Enjoy!
-Ryan
AN AFTERNOON IN POETRY
Sunlight like gold-dust
settles on the skyline.
How many men died
to lay the base of Babel?
***
Bitter lovers
make for better rivals.
She wears scorn
like a death mask:
all tender beauty
and timid rage.
***
Halfway through a good book
the sunset takes its time.
On a winter day like this
one hardly misses spring.
***
In the distance,
the sound of passing cars—
headlights in the night
like prayers round her crown.