And because it's just that kind of night....

Another poem.  YAY!

This one has a weird story accompanying it: I wrote it while I was (almost) asleep.  It was one of those long mornings where I had a late class and could lounge around in bed, floating in and out of sleep.  Anyway as seems to often happen to me, upon waking- and here I use the term pretty loosely- I had a song stuck in my head, except that what I had was not exactly a song but that fake interview David Crowder does at the end of his A Collision album with the clueless interviewer.  In it, you hear the violin piece, "The Lark Ascending" (the part Crowder uses comes about 5 min. in) which is based on a poem by George Meredith, which I found online, (or just watch this video of lava lamp and skip to about 7 min in)

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings

Anyway I was kind of thinking about that and how Crowder said he often didn't feel like the lark and how un-larky I myself felt.  I then somehow, and here is where my memory gets a bit hazy, composed a poem in my head about my non-larkishness, thought about it a bit as I lay there, thought it worthwhile enough to write down, got up, wrote it, and promptly fell back asleep.  Weird.  Anyway the poem doesn't really have a title, although I thought about using the horrendously cheesy pun "Birds of Pray".  I ended up not because I thought someone might:

a) think I really thought that was a legitimate title and was myself horrendously cheesy

                          or

b) say to themselves, "Birds of Pray, hmm, you know I like that"

either of which would miss the point. The relation between God and man is at some level comic (and not just in the old Shakespearean sense that it all ends in a wedding).  There is something so incongruous about approaching God in prayer that makes us all seem a bit ridiculous- like being a bit under-dressed somehow (a feeling me and my flip-flops have often experienced), but yet he takes us seriously, helps us in our weakness.  Anyway the poem which shall remain nameless...

It seems prayers not personified

take up alien, avian forms

Some are ascending larks

or wandering woodcocks

strongly winged eagles

or light descending doves

but mine often take the form

of fat, self-satisfied pigeons

squat, couched carriers who've forgotten

their vocation and wander about low,

close to the ground and winging weakly

til fast-rushing Pneuma comes, meets

bears upward to ancient, holy skies.

                                             -1/12/09