A psalm of summer

Originally printed in the Christian Science Sentinel

It's a day full of birdsong and bloomings,

when heat has at last settled in,

reaching the extremities -

some collective, remembered fear of heat lingers -

the locusts are silenced by a low-flying helicopter,

briefly.

I'm sweeping the studio floor

and some poetry in this act turns me home

to the written word:

that is-how this is the time of year

when small ephemeral spiders

scurry away from the broom

on translucent legs with invisible pinpoint bodies,

belying their presence by motion only and sunlight reflected.

To me they are the unexpectedness,

the apparent transience and swift slipping away of summer.

Is it here now? In respect, I put aside the broom,

deserting small gatherings of dirt and powdered clay

and settling dust, to reflect in words.

Can the exquisite beauty of this nowness be forever -

this warmth, this bloom, this light, this room and

all my many loves?

Can I stop time and hold always

the potential of my children, the presence of my parent,

the well-being of my spouse,

the locus of my friends and family?

In the philosophy of sense, change is the only permanence.

But I find in this shimmering moment, the reality of bliss and

Soul eclipsing time.

Today's small domesticities have lent themselves

to healing; prayer quieting stress

in the clarity of Spirit, showing

the human coincident with the divine,

faith-proved, reason-tested;

and in the scripting of words on paper -

in the familiarity of connected letter-symbols -

in the ease of their execution, the beauty of their forms,

the music of their sounds, the meaning of their sequences,

the wonder of their gatherings together,

the transcendence of their power in the Word.

And, for the sculptor in me -

they weigh so very little.

Thank you, Father-Mother, for Your Word

and for all gatherings together

of sounds and substances

in utilities, in orderings,

in meanings and beauties

that assure us of heaven;

of a continuity of relatedness -

a poetry of everlasting peace;

and of the living presence of Your Comforter.

May all that we create irradiate, reflecting golden

summer-harmonies.

In Science, may all arts

subserve Your ends,

healing the sick at heart, and the sick,

raising the deadened hope, and the dead,

and expanding eternity into consciousness

Forever. Amen.

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society