Jessica's Blessing

Mirador, Costa Rica

March 10, 2010; updated September 21, 2023

Trapped in the din of exuberance

I shrink behind a stoic smile
as children of Mirador
shake the sanctuary walls,
submerging my senses,
drowning thought
in waves of chaos washing by,
composed of shouts
and soccer balls,
giggling swirls of almond girls,
rice krispie squares and lemonade,
the dreams they share 
of lives unfurled 
beyond the world of Mirador.

But can we ever comprehend
the calculus of blessings?
How karma comes so well
disguised. How butterflies
somewhere will sway,
the wind will shift another way,
and through the swirling
stardust currents, God speaks
Child to empire’s fringe.
How echoes anchor minds
that wander, crack the armor,
fill the arms that ache to cradle,
fill the lives that ache for more.
And how the winds of Mirador
bestow in trust a brown-eyed boy
to bind my soul a blessed hour
adrift on complicated tides
unbidden thoughts impressed inside 
from child or God I cannot say –

Are you among the modern magi, 
those who wander far-off byways 
searching for a holy child 
to bless with gifts then walk away, 
to one day join a jeering band 
in casting lots for what remains 
when charity gets out of hand, 
declares ‘shalom’ then works for change?

At the open church door, threshold
to the gleaming muddy world beyond,
a red-dress girl but five feet tall
lays down her youth, reclaims her child
and lifts the face of timid grace
to offer what she holds inside
her blessing, a beatitude —
Be happy, spoken word for me
from God or girl I cannot say.
Madonna child of fourteen years
squares her back and turns away,
with watchful baby over shoulder
skips past puddles, rounds the corner,
treading lightly on the pathway
down her mud and gravel days.

Other poems from Costa Rica:

• The Girl's Guava Tree 
• The Night Music of San Rafael de Guatuso
• A Friday Morning Devotional in Iglesia Evangelica Metodista 

The Second Soul of November

"Resistance" by David Noah,
Winterville, Georgia

Athens, Georgia

November 18, 2011

       Call me Aquarius

unlike Ishmael

set to sea

by soul’s November

damp and drizzle

cold November

grim about the mouth

November

chased into the arms of Ahab

        ever striving,

        ever driving

raging to the fading light

in endless existential angst

aspiring to redeeming greatness

spurning fear and hope alike

embracing Übermensch inside

        which elevates

        contentious ways

        defines the dark

        in dismal days

        descends again

        the well of cold

        which holds the dread  

        November soul

well goodness gracious that

November, bless its existential

heart, so Sturm und Drang, so

not my drama. Mine the mellow

Southern season mixing mild

with bracing days, when

woodlands open up and welcome

winter’s heart of tan and brown.  

There’s peace in piercing shafts

of sunlight slowly warming forest

floor where solemn anoles fade

in silence, green to tan in golden

sun, a grace in shy suburban does

when flushed from front yard

flower gardens, gracile statues

snapped to life and soaring lightly

merge with early evening shadows

cast by rising Hunter’s Moon.

November’s second soul is sweetness

wrapped in dwindling light and life,

a treasure passed unrecognized

by those who set themselves

to sea

        immersed

        and haunted

        ever onward

        driven, seeking

        never finding

        ever scanning

        endless oceans

        screaming

        squid-breath

        over here, ya

        wanna’nother

        piece a’ me?

Though some still think to call

it glory – deeply woven hero

story – manning up is in our guts,

in coded genes we cannot break,

but fallen human spirit grows

new harmonies will soon take hold

November’s grace will seep inside

and ground the mind of greatness

yet.

        So never mind

        the date precisely

        when my fate shall

        breach beside me,

        when the white whale

        comes for me, I’ll draw

        upon that second soul

        to harness what I have

        in store to bless the beast

        that looms before me,

        bless the beast that lurks

        inside, to look with love

        on ice cold eyes, to look

        my last on open skies,

        to fill my lungs with light

      and dive.

Tryptophanic Sugar Buzz Blues

Athens, Georgia

November 30, 2011

I don’t bake turkey

      Thanksgiving Day.

Don’ bake no turkey

      Thanksgiving Day.

But sis-in-law cooks Butterball

an’ ain’t no shame to give a call

when all I hafta do is pray.

The feast is spread,

      it’s laid before me.

A mighty spread

      awaits before me.

just who to thank, you make the call –

the cook gave labor, bird gave all,

the voice inside cries bless the fowl.

I said a prayer,

        and then I toasted.

Cried out that prayer,

        then blessed and toasted

Fifteen pounds of turkey roasted

brown and juicy, packed with stuffin’

made from crumbed corn bread muffin

whipped potatoes mounded creamy

drippin’ pools of giblet gravy,

bowls of butter beans with ham

hot casseroles of squash and yams 

green jello salad thingy chillin’.

Ready now, we’re set, we’re willin’

Lordy mercy make us able:

eat our fill and leave the table.

      And it’s –

      First big helpin’, belly bulgin’

            Twenty pounds of pieces scattered

            all across the turkey platter.

      Second helpin’, belly bloatin’

            Thirty pounds of tryptophene

            still lyin’ round about the scene.  

      Final scrapin’, belly breakin’

            Forty pounds of scraps remainin’

            call the dogs, my stomach’s achin’.

      My oh my, this grown man cry

            ‘cause here come’ sweet potato pie

            an’ pumpkin, pecan, apple crumb,

            in whip’ cream bliss just let me lie.

Tonight I’ll toss

      in bed and dream.

Oh Lord I’ll turn

      and squirm and scream:

The Lady of the Gravy lake

is bakin’ spells I cannot shake  

while mired within my sugar swampland

turkey zombies slowly stalkin’

candied yams approach gyratin’

devil’d eggs incarnate Satan

wafting ghastly sulphur haze

and through the stuporifous daze

mad bargain shoppers pepper spray

their fevered way into the scene.

This ain’t no ordinary thing,

Thanksgiving night I got again

the sugar crusted, diet busted

sweet tea sweatin’, midnight frettin’,

stomach churnin’, belly turnin’

blood congealin’, colon squealin’

bowel blastin’, pyroclastic

nostril flarin’, zombie scarin’

Tryptophanic sugar buzz

      Blues.

(Now don’t be lettin’ this happen

to you!)

To the End of Haight

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California

October 2, 2011; revised June 15, 2014

It would be wrong, of course, 
to hike up Haight in too new 
tie dye, made in Haiti, hauled 
to Georgia, bought off 'Hippies' 
costume rack, my own creation 
(purple bled with golden high-
lights) gone to rags too long 
ago. 

I caught the Summer of Love 
by grace of A.M. rockin' radio 
while sweating construction 
to finance my physics, and fantasized 
Love-Ins were all I could muster 
that innocent summer in North 
Carolina. 

Now here in Haight I haunt the places 
free range hippies propagated 
seeking *Authenticity* or failing 
that, a clever tee to take back 
home with burning words declaring 
what it is we were, just what we 
wanted life to hold, what never was 
but still might be, in understated 
irony. 

From off the other side of Haight 
persistent as the backed-up traffic 
bold, phlegmatic yogi laughs  
though not in mirth, but merely 
practice. Blocks from fervor 
gentry groom their comely rows 
of reclaimed homes, each worth 
more than all the flowers worn by 
hippies in the Haight back in the 
sixties.

With knowing smiles and narrowed 
eyes, we've moved beyond the naïve 
wise who fought for justice with those 
flowers, summoned peace by sharing 
song. Go gentle, people, after all 
it’s every generation’s fate to re-enact 
the Fall. Last call before we’re ushered 
out.

At the end of Haight the 'Golden Arches' 
sits across from Whole Food Market 
hard by parkland, pulsing, pulsing 
tribal drums beat about the edge of awareness 
from somewhere deep within the great long golden park 
that stretches out to the end of America  
where sea fog gathers cleansing chill 
close underground raw forces build 
and the late day breeze drifts so gently 
about my face, I cannot say which way 
it blows. 

Afternoon Joe

Athens, Georgia

October 10, 2011; revised December 13, 2013

You smile into a steaming cup 
in search of grounds and gracious lines 
to share with he in painter’s cap

who holds up signs by traffic stops 
where hand-drawn letters spell the barter, 
"work for food," but what he offers

one more try for wary drivers – 
multiply the fish and loaves

within the gap from red to green. 
But eyes averted never see 
the narrow Galilean path 
that stretches off another way

beyond the light that guides the flow 
from bank to drugs to Chick-fil-A 
and on to homes to huddle nights 
encased in husks of wood and cheer, 
which fortify a life’s veneer

in hoarded warmth

                                   but those like Joe

spend hours in the public square

and nurse their warmth from cardboard

cups – a Big Joe buys an afternoon

of comfort on a well-used couch

amidst assorted Macs and pads

and textbooks cracked by pert coeds

in gym shorts, flip-flops, painted toes

and funky guys in baggy clothes,

by nursing interns sporting scrubs

and midlife strivers buttoned up,

a young instructor talking math

by Chinese couples lugging packs

a working mother, child in tow –

they come and go and barely note

an old man whiling time alone

and gentle souls at rest, like Joe

who on a warm midafternoon

could tell you how to weather cold 
on cruel nights that numb the soul, 
when howling Arctic winter lows 
pile snow on sagging canvas homes, 
the weak won’t make the morning call 
in trembling walls of flesh and fabric;

battered down, resigned to die, 
the voice of God 

       commands we rise

       and manufacture right

       on ice, from slush

       a snowman shrine to life

       submerging fear

       in warmth of play

       through bitter night

       to brittle day

                                  and yes I too

I mean to say have felt my heart so

strangely warmed behind my silent

public smile my words are snowmen

guarding night and creeping numbness

in my life,  but first retreat to resupply

the cardboard warmth to ease

the ties of mid-day neighbors, even

Joe who, unobtrusive, slipped away

somewhere along the ancient path

to find a home beneath the sky. 

Autonomy, a Prayer

A meditation on the week after a prostatectomy.

Athens, Georgia

September 7, 2011; revised May 13, 2015

To be free from tubes and holding tight, with taut skin stretching staple-free, my belly humming blissfully beneath a bandaged five-part scar; to sneeze and laugh and like the twinge; to feel akin to fountain boy still en pissant in Brussels square; my body, unattached and free – 

              my freedom brings autonomy.

To step outside to open sky and feel the sun inspiring sweat; to swerve and crunch September leaves and smell the summer stored inside; to stand in shade air-cooled by breeze; to harbor strength to stride with ease to where I will; where will is strong –   

to will belongs autonomy.  

To pay due heed is prayer indeed, or prayer enough for one set free from climate-cooled sterility, from pumps, procedures, hardened tools, precision cuts that take out lumps and treasures of vitality in trade for time and open space to fill with what, that choice is mine – 

my choice defines autonomy.

To walk away from death each day, each step a prayer and prayer’s reply; each dawning light, a night behind, a morning more to hear the score of tiny tongues in praise of life; those chittering skittering prayers told by insects, birds and hurried souls too busy for reflective ways – 

through deepened thought, autonomy.

To claim the time to redefine my way within the sacred web, receiving life more graciously and giving back with equal ease, enraptured in the dance of grace, transforming old conflicted ways; a daily task, to drop what chains me to the past and reattach with what will last – 

in life of love, autonomy.

Photography by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia: 
"Birds and Wires"

To Our Children Leaving Home

Photograph by David Noah,
Winterville, Georgia

Photograph by David Noah,

Winterville, Georgia

Bob Ambrose 
and Susan Richardson

Athens, Georgia

August 21, 2011

Reflections on a vision given to Susan

of Kelsey going to college; and on memories.

It is always so,

they go forth

bearing our biology

passed on from dawn

of life’s first day.

But so much more

they bear our dreams

on loan since Eve

awoke to wonder,

pondered, suffered,

lost her Abel.

Ever to the left

behind who love

enough to let

them go, may God

grant visions, offer

signs.

        Of fair spring skies and foals in fields

        enclosed by fences, sturdy gates

        restraining safe the bounding colt

        and bright-eyed filly. Safe, but kept

        confined too long, they’ll never be

        what God designed, and so to grow

        and tame proud hearts, we lead them out

        to wider fields across the hill where

        far-off fences, unmanned gates give room

        to run consumed by joy, constrained

        till strong. The same our young.

But God steals hearts

and leaves gates open,

gates unguarded

but by love, a love

impressed inside

the growing, love

that’s fit for wider

fields, a love more

fierce than wildest

demon, love beyond

our gentle vision.

        Within our gates are wide green pastures,

        lush enough to feed a soul, sustaining

        life a while, forever. Open gates, though,

        promise more: they hold back magic,

        mysteries, wild valleys, distant shores

        and shadows, room to roam beyond our

        vision, we who love them desperately.

They will go

through gates in time.

They will pass

beyond protection.

They will wander

far lands guarded

but by love.

And they will find

new fields to favor,

pastures they can call

their own.

        So stay a while, forever with us, safe

        in fences, you who go. You leave behind

        you ones more fragile than you’ll ever come

        to know. But go with God and bear great dreams

        beyond the gate if that must be. If that

        is now your destiny, we will await

        your coming home.

Yet all this, naught but

idle thought about the

sacred course of life

from hopes and fears

of aging hearts. We

open wide the inner

gate, remove the reins

and give a pat, then

leaning back we watch

you take short halting

steps. With somewhat

noble toss of mane,

your stately stride

turns into trot

then frisky canter;

prancing forth, you

lightly trample

tender trails through

meadow grass, and by

the time we turn

away, you’ve

disappeared

across the

hill.

        I latch the inner gate, and my heart 
        catches, recalling how it felt to prance. 
        When you come home, let’s plan to dance. 
        I’ll let you lead. Please take my hand.

"Solitary Horse," by David Noah,

Winterville, Georgia

On The Fate of Unloved Facts

Photograph by David Noah,
Winterville, Georgia

Athens, Georgia

August 3, 2011; revised July 8, 2015

1

Words claw
phrases hammer
mangled kludge 

of tangled logic,
cause confused with what comes
next. Opinion 

masters manufacture packaged sets
they call effects
to satisfy firm made-up minds

which mine and sift
their facts to fit false
premises that promise life,

pin narratives to archetypes
while inconvenient, unloved facts
cold chiseled from empirical truth lie

shattered, scattered, swept aside,
rank losers in the fight of memes,
just dirty shards that never fit

on golden statues. Awkward 
facts are rude debris
about the base of carved-thought idols

blessed by masses, washed in clamor. Worship
or be swept away.

2

Weary, swept away 
I cry: release me 
from insistent tides, 

let shifting currents loose their grip
and beach me on a bed of shards
aside a sunny side-stream bar

my toes to torrents rushing by
while straining treasure from debris – 
the rare insight, the common joy 

alike bear meaning yet to be
discerned, invented, argue
which, but truth transcends

our categoricals, colors 
past our careful lines, it binds 
new bars where downstream dreamers 

contemplate just what will be.  From
ruins of our worshipped ways we’ll
never see those new worlds rising 

on foundations built from idols 
shattered, ground, 
reconstituted, 

bound to truth 
by stubborn facts
that would not wash away.

An Old Field Encounter

Photograph by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia

Botanical Garden, Athens, Georgia

October 16, 2010; revised July 2011, September 2014

It was just an old field. I have been back

more than once, perplexed

at how very ordinary in the light

of midafternoon, or morning, 

or the light-not-light of gloaming. It’s gone.

Whatever was is not now. It seems

a shame, the untame rush replaced

by shrug and stolen glance

at time, the slow ride home

for reheated leftovers to sustain

my aging. It was fall

     when I went wandering

blazed paths through pungent hush

of hickory, beech and white oak stands 

to forest edge at right-of-way, cut

straight across the curve of hills where

I stood blinking back the light

     by the sun-splashed shores

     of an old field grown wild

     breaking over asphalt slabs

     which once went somewhere

     beyond the post hole fence

     that vainly holds back green

     swells of sumac and thistle

     tangled in turbulence

     sparkling in the silent roar

            of  a thin place

                   opening

            onto an emerald sea

     in the presence of which

     I would remove my shoes

     wash my soul in sunlight

     and float the timeless warmth

            to a new heaven

                   and a new earth

But that was all and over soon, just slant

of light and insect drone, no still small voice

that could be heard above the buzz
and background trill, so was it somehow up

to me to say out loud what hangs in air?

     All flesh is grass, its beauty as

          the flower of the field

that dies with fall – been said by better

than one who wanted just right then 

no more than now and this sweet earth 

of distant laughter, lovers strolling, 

stoic mother gently holding 

sleek cell phone and squirming child. Right

there beneath the freshening breeze

a shadow passed inside of me:

     You hear your heart

         not that of mine.

I found it best to follow back

the well-worn path that’s cut around.

I did not hear then a voice –

there was no other voice but mine –

just jumbled words set in my mind

like taking sun and sending roots, like

softening ground and healing scars,

flowers dying, weed fields thriving. Who

can say where words come from

but now I really want to know

did Moses ever think to go

back to bush to watch for fire

and hear the holy words again?
He did not deign to verify, 
went down to Egypt, back to reeds, 
to sea, to Sinai, but for me:

What I know I know too well, like

what the ways of science tell,

so some fall soon I will return.

I’ll go back armed with leather bound

field guide to flora, open mind to watch 

weeds. Perhaps I’ll learn their proper names –

the way cool starry night fuzzy top vine

must be known to a branch of botany. Perhaps

I'll catch the roar, and this time listen

to the silence inside.