Poem: Starholes
One of a triptych of poems written for my Gethsemane station at Opawa Baptist Easter Journey 2007. The theme for the labyrinth as a whole was 'today's news'. Since climate change had burst into the headlines I wanted to do a contemplative station from the viewpoint of Earth as 'a garden under siege'; a whole-systems, God's-eye overview that invited reflection and confrontation, seeking for hope amid the shadow of approaching disaster.
Accompanying photograph: Apollo 8 classic 'Earthrise' shot of Earth from moon, 1968.
I've always felt the Apollo expeditions to have a sort of surreal camping-trip weekend feel to them: transient, temporary, and above all childlike. And we've never been back. There is such wonder and terror captured in that one fragile glimpse of Earth, vulnerable, a glass marble. But I reject utterly the fatalism and despair of materialist science that proclaims 'that's all, there's nothing else, we're completely alone and now even the Earth is doomed'.
And yet. How much more suffering can the Earth endure? How much of that cup dare we ask to be averted? Gethsemane deeply troubles me, both as a symbol and as a question. If the bodies of all creatures die, and yet resurrection is certain, what does extinction of a planetary biosphere mean in the eyes of God who inhabits a glorious multiverse? Does He even see it? In what realm can the flame of life continue if it burns out here?
Yes, I am praying for the very life of Earth itself, and though it seems such a huge and yet simple thing, I am not yet confident that I am heard, or that I even grasp the question.
I weep, I rage against eternal night. I beat my fists on dead lunar stone. Why does God keep smiling?
starholes
this is us in '69:
blue marble
snapshotted
halfway to nowhere
(-- what we did on our
lunar holiday:
scuffed shoes, tossed rocks --)
that's all there is:
one pale blue dot
(-- except, ah, the fire
which burns through
starholes
from the other side --)
it's not like I'm asking
for much, God
just the earth
Poem: Extinction
A poem that didn't make the cut for the 2007 Easter Journey.
I replaced it with the more ambiguous 'Off The Grid'. Perhaps I should have kept it. But the installation already had dark themes and this felt just too despairing. Gethsemane is not about the end of all things, it is just a place we walk through.
extinction
my lips break
when I try to pray
for the world
it spins so fast
the times blow a gale
pain overwhelms me
industrial genocide
garden to necropolis
in my generation
what is there to say
that is not agony?
that is not despair?
we have slept
the night was long
and even our awakening
kills things
Poem: Barometer
A poem that didn't make the cut for the 2007 Easter Journey. I wanted apocalyptic storm imagery, but felt this was too dark, and too abstract.
barometer
trees cramped with pain
a bruised ash sky
moaning of a hot dark wind
storm's coming
sun stains like wine
a bone dust moon
vacuum rips my breath away
storm's coming
I watch alone
under the cyclone's eye
strips me to the truth
storm's coming
no more choices
but to stand
face up
storm's here
Poem: Off The Grid
One of a triptych of poems written for my Gethsemane station at Opawa Baptist Easter Journey 2007. The theme for the labyrinth as a whole was 'today's news'. Since climate change had burst into the headlines I wanted to do a contemplative station from the viewpoint of Earth as 'a garden under siege'; a whole-systems, God's-eye overview that invited reflection and confrontation, seeking for hope amid the shadow of approaching disaster.
Accompanying photograph: the city lights of Earth against a black background
Collapse of the industrial, electrical and communication grid is nearly unthinkable to me, one of my deepest horrors, yet in many places on Earth right now - and everywhere only a few centuries ago - such isolation and self-reliance was the norm, our ancestors perhaps stronger for it. And in contemplative prayer we approach that same void willingly. Jesus in the Garden faces the loss of all supports and yet remains unscathed. How can I detach myself from my cybernetic cocoon and listen for the peace within?
off the grid
no cellphone
no pda
no broadband
no Wurlitzer
no Edison
no Gutenberg
no monk
no crier
no scribe
outside
alone
dark
signal
Poem: Stormwalker
One of a triptych of poems written for my Gethsemane station at Opawa Baptist Easter Journey 2007. The theme for the labyrinth as a whole was 'today's news'. Since climate change had burst into the headlines I wanted to do a contemplative station from the viewpoint of Earth as 'a garden under siege'; a whole-systems, God's-eye overview that invited reflection and confrontation, seeking for hope amid the shadow of approaching disaster.
Accompanying photograph: A hurricane dominates a quarter-Earth from orbit.
This poem is about a personal response to climate change in a New Zealand context. Christchurch is an exposed, swamp-built city. We inhabit an urban environment without immediate danger from weather, but there is always the shadow in the back of the mind, in the cold wet winter days, that the Canterbury river plains are a fundamentally inhospitable place to be should the water rise. On Rapaki Track just up the hills from my childhood home there is a monument to children who died of exposure when the weather turned bad. Some part of me has never quite forgotten the fear as a small child of being lost, displaced, a city kid thrown back to the elements. I wrote this as a challenge to that shadow.
Stormwalker
when the hot nor'wester
scorches tussock up Sugarloaf
I will remember you
on Olivet
when the freezing easterly
drenches Brighton Pier anglers
I will remember you
by Kinnaret
when the winter night
shades westward over Halswell
I will remember you
in Gethsemane
the storm rises
the wind whirls
the wave breaks
it will not touch me
it will not touch me
it will not touch me
