These are not in the order I wrote them in exactly, rather they are in the order I posted them in (the order they were posted on the site, since I cannot easily look through my old Facebook posts). I shall point out ones that I actually like particularly. Let me know which ones are your favorites!

Fall or Shine (I dislike this title, perhaps simply “Shining” would be better)

Midday sunlight falls
Sunset and sunrise sideways
Never falls, but shines

The Soldier and a Child

I am a weary soldier, cold and bent,
A dark and heavy cloud bends down my head.
A child I passed who called before I went:
I halted, breathless, held by what she said.
As light, unbreaking chains her words had shone;
As calling me from hard and blackened sleep,
It taught me that I should not walk alone;
I drew my heart from shadow dank and deep
And gave it in an answer to her there.

A moving mask my face with trouble lined
Spilled death stained breath that mingled with the air,
And gladness sprang of love and likeness kind.
Her glistening hair, my thornwood stick, we talked
A while in quiet thoughts of burning truth:
Our family fighting fear where slaves had walked,
Friends kept in shining eyes with humble ruth.
And long we stood and spoke of good that war
Cannot defeat while soldiers meet it more.

The Moment Thought

A hand
On the shoulder
Laid in purposeful rest
Says a word in silent fullness
And peace.

Foam and Dust

Welcome to our home,
Soft, passing sea foam.
Dust breathed in God’s Breath
Which leaves it in Death,
Yet rightly are we
Likened to the Sea.

A Wind in the Heart

A Wind in the Heart
Breathes a token of Fear,
Darkness builds his Art
And lays foundations here.
While hopeless in strife
He has wounded me sore,
In the Light of Life
There is opened a Door.

Nightly Cry The Beasts

Nightly cry the beasts
Close your doors before your eyes
Sleep through the huntings

A Sapling

A rod of fineness and fertile worth
Pointing by feet the center of earth,
Questing downward and into the light
A rising spear for darkening fight.
A wrist’s girth, fitting grip for the hand,
Prepares to glory over the land.
Yet now between two stakes bending hard
Beneath a rough sky blank and unstarred,
Smooth as the sprig a straight standing staff
Threaded by a high, strengthening laugh;
Its sap rises from the horizon,
Star like, in the face of Time’s poison,
Yet now weary for but the grace to live.
God’s blessing then for any that give
Guiding skill to bend this thrashing rod
Along the upward path to our God.

Colours On The Brown

Leaves are coming down:
They come to meet the dark brown,
And show it colours.

To Ash

Will ash
Be sifted through
To raise the shaking sparks
And burn the fields and forests all
To ash?

A Bird in the Heart

A bird in the hand
Its feet rest lightly, I long
For one in my heart

So Glory Springs

This is the sound that brings to a halt
My wandering mind, and sends a calm
To put to sleep the wild, crying night.
Haunting heat vanishes in a sigh.
Yawning breaches close, and the floods dry.
Strident alarms break to dim pieces.
Feeling returns: my soul can face grief.
Designs of perversion are unframed,
Every shade returns where it came:
Destroyed by this sound are flames untamed.
When violent clamour lays peace low
It splits the thundering cumuli
And quenches the searing ejecta,
Casting beneath a veil the pyrrhic
War cries, that the seed of life may grow.
Small is the humble sound as it rings,
Yet tears the tangled rage easily,
For smallest roots raise the highest leaf:
Smallest flames burn the highest fortress.
Anthems mount from an unseen idea,
Every thunder from a mist has come,
And in quiet springs begins the sea.
Ground a rock for a foundation strong
Before the wall can thicken and climb;
Before Glory’s voice can shake the tomb
Glory is the sound of a child’s song.

This was written for a challenge in which every line had to begin and end with the same letter.

This Our Race

Now on the five wheels of this race
Turning to this distant place;
Four below touch, cast back the ground,
Whose hands that touch the one are found?
All the world lightly is the load,
The course of every heart the road;
Without a pause to stay the run,
To the stop when the world is done.
“Now” is the key to seal the mind,
“Then” is safely sealed and left behind;
In death and life one line for all,
That all may hear a single call:
The end of the road still unseen,
Unfeared by one whose hands are clean.
Oblivion’s fog shuts in our sight:
Our end is nearing through the night,
The judgment hasting to perfect;
Arriving bright, our God’s elect.
All flight is stripped from every crime
For all within the car of Time.

The Fallen Tower

To know a human tongue from first to last,
To trace a trail of words into the past,
This mystery the blessed end to find,
The pure endeavor of the holy mind.
The gift of God at Babel when begun
Is set until the human course is run.
In this am I more joyful than to end
The work and see that tower reascend.
So on in work divine to gladly strive,
And seek the symboled line while yet alive.

The Old Wild

A whole and harsh note in the hedges
Of winds that wind from the wilderness
Sounds and scatters in the stems and sticks.
The thistles and thickets of thin sprigs
In tough, tufted patches tangle all.
Full and finishing flights of gusts groan
In and over every ancient roll
Of a land lean and leaning backward
Above an abyss of years below
That rise in ragged rocks and ridges
Throughout a waste and wandering Wild.

~

In the dim winter
Water hides in hardened forms
With the dimness gone.

An Old House

Welcome to a house of stone
Here to live with you alone,
Its building long, slow to waste,
Its dust pure, its chambers chaste.
The pattern you well will know,
The deep wall, and doorway low.

~

Keep the hand comely
In bloom as the flower, but
Hard in work as wood.

In Us

In the summer I am light,
In winter I am the snow.
In your heart I am your might,
In my soul are seeds to sow.
In my hand is living thought,
In the ways ill ways to bar.
In times now and past am sought
Where the wise and willing are.

~

The feet of the child
Or the childlike man, falter
But always are clean.

One Body

A will
To do the thing
That opens all the mind
Can only open all the heart
As well.

Lying Thankfulness

Inside
The doorless walls
Of false content and peace
A soul in truth is not a soul
But lies

~

Let eyes be opened in this world, truth taught by truth, and the thoughts of many generations weighed in the balances that are dusty and unused.

~

At the Temple of Truth in the glory of your Name I will worship the King of Peace.

Enlarge My Steps

A Star,
A King enthroned,
A Light in glory raised;
A glint, a song, its pureness praised,
And lost.

~

Rise with the rosy light, right your way,
Clothe yourself in craft and fiercely cry;
The world, the watching, the ways of them,
Nay, the never-ending sound of night;
They force offense on the friends of law:
The crooked colour of the high cloud
Shall judge their injustice with fell joy.

~

My Grief is hidden in the ground out of sight,
As the Thunderclap forms the crooked Fulgurite.

~

The Rod

Raise the Rod of the Ruler of wild things
Worthy of waking the waste to his will;
Even the ash will answer to aid the Otherworldly.

Where will the Cry in the way take the wakeful?
To hidden, hoary teachers of high tokens,
To loose their lines into the unlocked lands.

~

Willing hands will do
What wilful ones will never
And receive their rest.

~

Lights alight on noisome Night
And kindle a Fire it cannot fight.

Who Can Know

Who has glimpsed the hidden glories of this earth of God’s?
Who can see what caverns spread beneath unsullied night,
Which lie decked with prisms with no light to scatter where
No one has gone or can go, for no man knows to seek?
It lies rich in gloom and greater than the garnished grave
Of the city it might swallow up with every spire.

Swift and Dim

Feather footed, swift and dim,
There are the Faery gentry, you see them.

They down the gutter go, their voices hid by melting snow.
On unto the dark, unto the night they hearken;
The light of the streets is a creek in a cave;
They came, their small brown hands in light to lave.
But silently down the fading street they wend their way:
Beneath the burning lantern light: for there is no day.
They pass the stable, where straw is sweet,
The Stable Dark they seek to find their meat.
Far below the window white with morning light, for there is no door,
Their whispering feet stray into silence, before the light lies on the floor.
Their sterny faces know the light; now clad they in faint mail,
Yet in the shadow they embark, as under the dock, while the water knocks,
They set their sail.
Now take you care, as when you walk and live,
For they will give you naught but woe, if naught but woe you give.

~

Will light wash the mind?
When its beams hover lowly
Wakeful senses rise.

~

Cut, crushed, swallowed up;
Beauty dismembered, dissolved:
God’s bounty of food.

~

Full language of time:
For every manifold line
An eternal rhyme.

~

The light leaf fell far
In that wood the trees were tall
And the ground was low

~

Beetles fly, dancing
In the air of a frog’s skin
Like grazing oil wells

There you are! And A Servant of The Author was active for only part of last year.

My favorites are Foam and Dust, Enlarge My Steps, Lights alight, Who can Know, and Swift and Dim. What are yours?

God bless you and his grace be on you!

— Patrick