love, devotion, surrender, and forgiveness

[gurdonark]

Thank you to the many people who joined the "100 poems" project. I like it when journals that I already read join in with my journal.

As May ends, I'm facing a quite busy June and July. I'm eager to get things done, and take names, and organize, and solve.
But I stop this morning to reflect on things I could do better, and could have done better. Rather than putting together yet another gurdondark post about my manifold sins and wickedness, which I mostly humbly do confess (the memory of them being grievous unto me), I thought I'd play with the idea of sin and forgiveness in a rather lightweight poll. I am never certain if the words in this context really capture the idea:"sin", "mistake", "error", "right", "wrong", "forgiveness". The various overlays of differing religious/non-religious perspectives and the fact that no two people seem to use the words in the same way always throw me a bit. But I think that it's a good thing to focus on how to improve, and in particular, how to forgive. I don't have any words of wisdom on this, really, but I do have a poll. I'm not after any dire revelations, here, but I think sometimes it's good to think about what happened, and how to remedy what happened.

[Poll #139543]

Meanwhile, I've begun my 100 poems project, and share here my

Finding Metal Rungs

Kids climb a forbidden water tower,
an appealing round structure,
accessible by forbidden metal rungs.
They wander around the top, thirty feet from the ground
looking at the drainage ditch and weeds that
they see every day from ground level.
Men from the water company
summon them down eventually,
calling out “be careful on the steps”.

When he left her for his secretary,
leaving one domesticity and kids
for another domesticity,
did he feel the juvenile risk and danger
of scaling rusted metal rungs?

Comments

[missprune.livejournal.com]

Very ingenious image, the scaling rusted metal rungs. I can practically feel them in my hands, or against a bare sole. Meanwhile, I find i cannot face the mounting panic of the guilt poll (note which aspect leaps to my attention) at least not before coffee. Something in your style makes me suspect you are a devotee of PGW. If you don't get my meaning in a flash, count me mistaken. Salut!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I'm a HUGE fan of PGW,and was amused in my 20s to find that a man I'd never met had taken my writing style years before I adopted it, and that I did not even learn he existed until years later. Ah well, the best laid plans of mice and men thingummy thingummy la la.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

oh, the manifold sins and wickedness, which i from time to time most grievously have committed! (have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me etc.) whew, that brought back the strongest rush of Rite I piety. man.

great poll. i like the poem too. what an intriguing segue!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Every time you post a picture, that, too, is a poem.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Guilt and forgiveness, virtue and sin, it all seems so complicated sometimes.

I wonder, though, if liaison as rusty rung climb really captures the image best :).

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I loved the old Methodist communion service, as out of a liturgy which is largely reasonably modern, suddenly plops this bit of flowery writing which is now burnished in my mind.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i grew up methodist, but in the sunday school, not upstairs in grown-ups' church, so i wasn't aware until recently of how much of the Methodist Book of Order (or whatever it's called) is drawn directly from the old BCP. i love the cadences of that outdated english. it used to feed my soul.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

The BCP is cool, but I keep meaning to go to a 1923 BCP service, as I've not been to an Episcopal one. I did go to Wakefield Cathedral years ago, very high, and I am curious, in retro, whether their BCP was quite up to date :).

[missprune.livejournal.com]

Ah! Your "Rem acu tetigisti" has made my day!

[microbie.livejournal.com]

Spontaneously written poem, on listening to Eva Cassidy sing Berlin's "Blue Skies":
blue skies
green leaves
white

[orbasm.livejournal.com]

hello.. i was Poll Surfing and came across this excellent poll. thought i'd let you know that i found it very interesting. thanks!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

great minimalist feel to that one. 99 to go!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

thanks for stopping in and polling!

[blue-by-you.livejournal.com]

I love your journal. You ask the deepest and most interesting and soul-serching of questions.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thank you for such kind words!