Poetry as Prayer, Painting as Meditation

Yesterday I painted a larger version of

"Reaching Toward Heaven." That was the painting I did after a dream like no other.

I was in the other house, the old one, although it was now modernized. The best thing about the dream about the house was, when you opened the back door, there was the sand and the ocean.

And at the end of the dream there was a painting of heaven.

I had the dream in December and I am still trying to paint that painting.

Today I sit. And I contemplate the new painting, and the original.

 

Then I turn my attention to the pyramid candle. I stare into the white lick of flame, and the blue core at the bottom of the wick. 

 

This is always the same flame.  The same flame I stare into every morning.  

 

What?  You say what? What are you saying?

 

Yes, I pray.  My prayers are my poetry, my poetry is prayer.

I pray to Mary.  And to all of creation.

 

I say, Mary, stay with me.  Let your blue silk cape drape over me.  Make it a tent over the world in which I move.

 

Guide my every

 

Moment.  Let the words I speak I sing when I open my mouth

 

“Pour your chant from the bushes,

 

Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.”

.

Make of my soul’s yearnings a flutter of hope.  A wild cry bent by starlight, far spread by rain, raised on clouds to the mountaintops.  

 

Let me chant inside and out, systematically covering the crops, the animals.  That the Earth be blessed.  

 

Let that chant not be stopped.

 

For.  Ever.

 

AYYYY.  EEEE.  OHM. OOOOH.  AHHH.  MMMMMMMM.  SSSSSSSSS.

            

Amen.