Meditations in Fast Times: 19. Time and again, before and after

Note to Readers: “Meditations in Fast Times” is a devotional writing experiment for the Season of Lent. Each day during the season, I am writing a poem as a meditation on, taking as my inspiration and intertextual basis, T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, as well as incorporating the daily office, current events, and other readings—some the same as those Eliot used while composing his seminal work and others.

                19.

Time and again, before and after,
Time and again, betwixt and between,
Time is eternal witness of timeless now,
a sweet, through-composed music
interwoven through the give and take
of every atom that constitutes here and home.

The part that is singular awareness
may be a guess, but it is a gift,
and nothing mere.

Sadly,
too many moments pass unattended,
too much of the mystery is missed
for the unnatural thrill,
the unfit distraction.

Many who claim to seek the
impossible union
miss the point
entirely.

Naming,
seeing,
practice,
reflection
and action
are, each and all,
the manifest,
vibrant and musical
intersection
of all that is.

Here is the sweet music
that stirs the rose petals
and each blade of grass,
while lulling tired eyes
and sweet dream bliss—
Here and always,
here and now,
and how!

Here and now is,
and is incarnate in everything,
Time and again, betwixt and between,
Time and again, before and after,
timeless here will always be now and home.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 15. Save us! For the waters are rising

                15.

The broadcast news announces:
triumphal cars deployed to the border,
all sabers rattling and threat of sanctions;
echoes of former days,
of charging up an army or two
while the rest of the world wonders
—and all for a spit of land by the seaside.

Save us! For the waters are rising;
we are sinking in the muddy deep,
and under our feet,
there is no firm ground.

Must what was stolen,
time and again, once more
be returned to the hands of thieves,
these soft spoken cult heroes,
offering promises on deceits?

While winds howl
on the raging seas,
one solution is man overboard,
while another will call for peace:
Shut it! one said,
and there was quiet,
while the other fellow got
shut in the belly of the fish;
in the end,
each was a kind of salvation,
though one was more difficult to clean up.

What, then, of this latest
crime over Crimea?

One martyr said,
where the heart longs,
the will cannot fail to choose;
reason, in the end, must justify.

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen