Imagine
                    creation—

          See as though standing there
          (though there is no there yet
                    only nowhere, Nothing,
                    a space not even black because black hasn’t been
                    created yet,
                              only absence,
                                                            Void,
                                                                                          Nothing—)

          the apocalyptic eruption
          (apocalypse, apokalupsis, revelation, the opening of the curtains of the world)
          at the sound of a Voice
                              that carries through emptiness
                    (a scientific impossibility, that, but
                              impossibility never stopped this Voice yet)
                                        to tear back the face of Nothing
                                        and reveal Something,
                    raw light from everywhere bursting forth—“Let there be Light!”—
                    dazzling your eyes—
                    creating color,
                              light waiting only for more to be made
                              that it might illuminate
                                        (for what light can shine with nothing to shine on?) . . .

Can you imagine?
Perhaps a humbler image, analogy, a comprehensible scale
                    —human scale, not God’s—
                              his cabinets are too high for us to reach
                              to bring down his tools of creation

          Have you ever known writers,
                    had the privilege of sitting among them?
          Listen to the bursting-forth of worlds in their speech,
                              new creations birthing in the cross-cutting ideas—

                                        “What if we had a story in which
                                                            the hero turned into the villain
                                                  and the villain
                                                                      the hero?”

                    “I’m playing with a world where
                                        Israel stayed faithful and became a great empire—
                              what would that look like?”

                                        “The idea is that the essence of each object, its name,
                                                  is music, and if you know the music
                              you have power to control the object.”

                    “What do you know about dragons?
                                        I have this dragon who keeps wanting to change color on me.”

                                                            “Do you think—
                              can I get away with putting coffee into a fantasy story?”

          again, language shapes the world
                    as they speak and bring
                                        time
                                        space
                                        being
                    into focus.
                              It’s the same thing, really,
                              or at least the same sort of thing, this speaking,
                              as the grand re-echoing Word of God—
                    as he spoke
                              (“Let there be Light!”)
                                                  so they speak
          and there is light shining across plains, mountains, seas, faces,
                    lighting the words and deeds
                    of heroes and villains
                              of all the people in between—
                              you and me as it were recaptured
                                        in other times and places that never were
                    though they often should have been

Photo ©2018 Gerd Altmann.  Free for use.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

—Seamus Heaney, 1966, from Death of a Naturalist (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux)

Photo:  “Digging Homegrown Potatoes,” © 2011 Peter Mooney.  License:  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

Photo © 2011 by Wikimedia user Joefrei.  License:  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.