Bawraw

A Cosmic Hymn by Timothy Willard

“Creation is an act of love, and it is perpetual. At each moment our existence is God’s love for us.”
– Simone Weil

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God creates
The avian shadow, speaks;
Light tumbles, crashes, fills
The fissures of the universe
Blasting through emptiness
Changing the solitary with movement,
Molecular, atomic,
Touching pieces of eternity
With perpetuity.
What is the cause?
First cause?
Thing?
A Corn King
Abandoned himself
(Divine, lasting, from before)
Sui generis?
Inside the movement
Now toiling
Now spinning
Feeling his own weight,
Glory, speck of dust,
Man;
Glory
Moving towards its source
Flesh on God
Molecular;
Move, turn, fade
Into human
Now, and atomic,
Love.

Every moment
A movement of
God’s love
Of
Moving with
God’s love,
Now, stop.
Hold the turn, the move;
It’s too much, not enough,
Evaporating,
Now, withdraw.
You, God of movement
Leaving me to oblivion;
Saturation, evaporation —
Move like wind
Through and around me.
What is an act
Of love
But that you mold
Me,
Breathe into me?
An entering
Into motion;
Gathering
Love
With each new
Breath;
Mine, shadowing yours
Echoing yours
One cause, unending effect.

Beauty, meta
In movement;
The story unfolding
The narrative never ending—circle
Of light,
A Shimmer dance
Of molecules caught
In love
Spoken outside
Of time;
Spoken
In the thrust
Of,
The glance,
Of,
It’s gone,
Now again, back.

Spring
From Winter
Into Summer;
A poppy field,
Gathering storm,
Breaking air
With rain and thunder
Lightning, crashing
Particles, stuck in the air,
Stuck in my eyes
— like specks of stardust —
Then to my nerves
Touching my brain
Touching my heart
I am one
—a Molecule
—a Soul
I see the storm.
I love the storm.
I run for cover.
I run for ever.
Remembering that night
Always,
When summer broke in two
At the hands of Thor
And Autumn
Rushed in, with her
Air —
Bright, hallowed.
Green to color.
All the colors,
In one leaf,
In one vein of
One strand of one
Leaf;
Infinity in the sands
Collecting colors
Like puddles; tears of broken
Summer —

And there, like speaking light,
The myriad life
Gathers her dress,
Lets down her tresses
And blankets hallelujah
With the quilt of time;
The chorus of gold,
Heaven caught on a leaf,
Joy caught in shaking trees
Shaking me;
Trembling — like a virgin before
Love,
The movement of love;
And collapsing in a
Heap.
This is Winter;
Deep —
Naked —
Slowness —
A gathering power
In shadows
Too solemn for passion;
An undulation,
A breast heaving;
Gasping reach
For the handle
To stop the movement,
To the slow the love,
To seize the motion
In one gulping embrace.
This is Winter —
Lovemaking in shadows
Too deep for time
Too shallow for
Eternity.
Here we whisper
Along the corridor
Of love
In the throes of
The North Wind
We huddle
We reach
We wait,
For spring
To begin,
Again.

I am
Placed—a standing
Man, solitary
On top of
The spinning
World—
Kosmos;
Landscapes,
Sturdy, dirty, in time
In undulation
Rippling like a handsaw
Caught on a hickory
Knot,
The metal-bend
Sound
And then
The sun
Touches me
From over the trees,
The rooftops,
The top of the world
Drops, like dew
In the shadow acre,
Spread wide, circling
The edge of light,
Dawn,
Drawn,
My finger pokes
Through
The ripple
That whispers —day—
That beckons —stay—
All over
Again;
Unmovable this, esse,
A source,
Unknown but
Familiar
And sure
Like the front range;
A ghost-home
For angels, training
In the trees—
Ponderosa Pine
Cypress
Redwood
Firewood,
Grizzle-aged—
A bark-time untouched
By the I-Thou;
Training,
On the peaks—
Wind shadows
Push clouds,
Gales upon gales
A stacked deck of
Thunder-rolls;
Here they clang
Their swords—sparring,
Jousting
With Messengers
Of Fire—
So violent they play
Here the freedom
Flurries
Like a nor’easter
Torrenting on a
Table of glass
Where the trees
Can’t breathe,
Just the furies
Of Northland.
Forever feels
Cold, here
Behind, fire
Lives and dances
And tears apart
The rocks—
Movement meeting
Maker—
An overthrow;
Wildness
And crushing
Each breath of
Man;
His creating—
A breathing beyond
Breath
Beyond mark
Of man to remember:
Writing,
Papyrus,
Ink,
Skin,
Smoke,
Memory upon memory
Lost inside
God.

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Wesley Chapel, North Carolina
Spring, 2018