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The Beginning of Wisdom

sethwieck — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 22:23:00 -0500

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom – Prov. 4:7

I write, so. The wisdom of God avails to

Those who eat its meat; those who drink its wine;

Those who break its bread; listen to its tales.

To the man with crumbs in his beard the wisdom

Of God avails.

Three Things Too Wonderful for Me

sethwieck — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:38:50 -0500

THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND:

The way of a young man with a virgin;
How the sight, the smell, the touch of a girl
Will change a boy from gym shorts to slacks, and his
Punches and high-fives become handshakes and

Pats on the back.

The way that soil beds a seed, softens the
Testa, is metabolized and changed into
Thousands of pounds of wood, grained and branching;
A living thing from the disint’rested dirt,

Weather, and element.

The way a man whose heart is dark
(Don’t be fooled: dark as the dark of darkest men’s hearts)
In one breath, will be blameless in the next;
Exhaling to death. Inhaling new air

Through new lungs,

Beating a new pulse through new veins.

The Mistaken Gardener

sethwieck — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:00:05 -0500

by Seth Wieck

John 20 - Genesis 3

There was reclamation to be done;
the path being overrun with runners
and having caught my foot in the matrix
of vines did I skin my palms in the thorns that received me.

The bedolach boughs hung lynched by their own
sinuous bark. The timber broken in winter.
Limb wounds blackening with sap
invigorated by Spring - place my wounded hands
there to regain my feet - the scent and tack
of the granular bdellium gum
flexing in my fingers,
adherent over the abrasion;
narrative in sediment.

There must be a handprint on the
frame of the door where I rested. There must
be a handprint on his robes where I clutched
at him to stay.

See, even now by the lamps of our dinner,
here in the coated creases of my hands
is the soil from which we draw this bread.
And here are the thorns and the thistles,
Red and infected are the prints that bear them.

In the sweat of my face you can see
How I hid the tears of my weeping.

Blood Will Pursue You

sethwieck — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:08:11 -0500

On a Sunday when it is snowing
for the first time this year,
The ground is gleaming;
Forget the red leaves I didn’t rake
That rot beneath the flakes,
For the flakes that swirl, tumb-
ling off the pitch of roof.

Cup of coffee grown cold by my side
is now warming on the wood-burning stove
glowing with coals to stave off the cold
I’m watching through the glass.

I’m reading a book;
it might be a book of love songs;
it might be a book of lustful songs,
either way, my back is warm against my chair,
And I am warm within my chest,
And my lips are warm upon my jaws,
but my voice is cold from my sleep,
And my tongue sticks with
the bitter of the coffee
and decay,

So the words upon the page
stay upon the page
As I watch the world fill up with white:

Blank upon the gray
Blank upon the black
Blank upon the day
Blank upon the tracks
Blank upon the leaves
that I forgot to rake
Blank upon

The cup that shatters on the stove;
Coffee burns to residue and vapor;
The book falls to the floor
As I hobble on sleeping feet to grab a towel.

Ezekiel 35:6

Scars

sethwieck — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:00:07 -0600

This scar on my hand is almost twenty,
and the one on my knee.
The former was a fight with my sister,
the latter a misjudged hurdle at Easter.

The one on my finger was hot wax
In art class. My buddy said it was paybacks
as he poured the spoonful of liquid,
Bubbling my skin. I don’t remember what I did.

The one in my scalp was a refrigerator
And linoleum and socked feet and a corner.
The one on my back was a plow;
Balance beam, slipped and fell. I think that’s how.

The one on my chin was a chicken
(But its scar is much deeper than mine).
The one in my spine,
Winding it tight? That is time.

The one on my lip was my knee
chasing a ground ball
Which goes to show I cause my own injury.

So you know,
dear boy,
I will cause you
Some, too.

So maybe you’ll grow up to see
That I am meant to be
A scar,

Reminding you of a Father
Who will heal every scar

I cause.

Rudimentary Scale (Acrostic)

sethwieck — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:00:06 -0600

Facsimile: this moon ascending like
Soft whole notes glowing up the clef of these
Radiating electrical lines showing
Me the city skyline in melody.

Laughable: that I should notate this because
Tears aren’t streaming down my cheeks at the sight.
Do I make music, or do I just
Fake it?

Photo

sethwieck — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:00:06 -0600

Son, Son, Son

sethwieck — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:50:08 -0600

Son, son, son, I’ve seen your life from beginning, when you blinked to life and that bundle of cells took charge and blinked. Oh, son, son, son, I’ve seen your life in sound like a person describing your features while you both stand in another room, they tell me shapes, circles and ovals, they tell me that you looked at the sound of their voice, their voice singing to you in the water, in the river, and then you blinked and went back to sleep. They say you kept your hands folded like you were praying. They say and I saw. Son, son, I saw you son when I kept my hands folded. I saw your life from beginning when I sat at the kitchen table, your mother’s hand in mine, and said that you would know God. I said and I saw. I saw you there with your hands folded while you were praying. I saw you there in the water, in the river, baptizing and then I blinked and went back to sleep. In my sleep, in my dream I saw your mother coming down the aisle, down the aisle to the song they sang, the song, and the light coming down the aisle, here she comes son, son, son, here comes the sun.

Advent Sonnet #2 - Romans 1

sethwieck — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:36:00 -0600

Romans 1:3-4

O Messiah, Your prism mysteries
Have scattered the light ‘cross my feeble eyes.
In my blinking, I’ve seen the strange stories
Of how one man born can be fathered twice.

Son of Man, son of Adam, David’s son:
Death spread to all men because we all sinned.
You, grafted in, donned our skin to be undone
Like the oven-fired grasses just de-stemmed.

Son of God, declared by resurrection:
The Glory of Your heavenly Father
Breathed new life into fallen creation
With the same Spirit that hovered o’er waters.

By that Spirit do we call out, “Father!”,
Having been dead, now raised His sons and daughters.

Here.

sethwieck — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 23:25:00 -0500

Here.

One step after
from whence I came,
treading loudly on the million dying
steps still trembling in the
layers and layers of
seeds of trees
fallen in the
spring.
v

Photo

sethwieck — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:30:00 -0500

Fallen Dish

sethwieck — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:22:00 -0500

YOU. THE BOWL SPINS A LITTLE, A LOPSIDED CENTRIFUGE,as it leaves your fingers. The slick smooth of the china grasped a bit on the friction of your fingertips, on the oil and the fingerprints. And the bowl floats a moment, floats from that friction with just a little loft hanging there as your brain understands how it must maneuver your hand to catch it, but your body won’t move. The anticipation.

The bowl is your parents’. A gift for their wedding; for their commitment to one another. White with a platinum lip, white that is like a mirror it is so smooth reflecting the room in a convex ghostly hue. You are there in the spinning hub, and so is the kitchen table, and the globe with the three 60-watts, and the melted ice cream residue, and the spoon, and the dishwasher which contains all of the everyday bowls which you would normally use. And so is the tile floor, and so is your look of anticipation.

The bowl is gone even as it hangs there. You understand this. The china, the baked mud, the mud drawn from the earth same as you, is still there and will always be, most likely, but that craftsmanship is unsalvageable. The fine-spun platinum wire will remain intact proving that there once was something there, even hinting at the shape intended.

You reach and grab, once even twice, but you don’t even touch the dish.

You will pick up the bigger pieces, and then you will see the sharp shards of dust buried in the grout of the tile. You will run through the list of possibilities: glue, sculptors, there are only so many ways to fix a dish.

You sit on the floor, like a hurdler pressed down on the tile in your child-only flexibility, and you pull the pieces together in a pile. What is there left you can do? It’s broke.