Poetry

I have chosen the realm of poetry and art as the primary lens
for understanding the world. The arts and the flowering of
emotional expression and deep longing are what makes
us fully human. Let us not only know, but feel.

© Copyright 2024 George Grimm-Howell. All rights reserved.

White Self-Portrait

Inspired by "Self Portrait" by Marc Bamuthi Joseph

I come from a monoculture.
One crop, one religion, one way of loving.
Isolation of the farmland Midwest
Married pale Ethnicity to beget
The world of white farms with red barns.
Fundamentalism then married in
To keep the culture running.
White and hetero, made in God’s image.

Then the cousins came to stay:
Heterosexism and Masculinity.
There’s only one way to be a man
And that is to hunt rabbits and women.
These kissing cousins begat Bullying
And his big brother Intolerance,
Because that’s what bullies become
When they grow up.

They own the land,
They own the church,
They own the culture without color and then
Pretty soon the need to keep the Monoculture pure
Demands Silence to hide real questions.
No room for listening, no room for dykes and fags
And those of whom we shall not speak.
No room for boys who love disco and dress-up.

Instead the Patriarchy of pioneers
Called out uncles and cousins and
Drove diversity deep underground.
Keep the rows straight.
Keep the yield predictable.
Bring the poisons.
Bring the blades.Kill the weeds.

A Meditation on the East

Oh the thrill of standing still at day break
Facing the East and drinking in the golden beams
That pierce morning cloud and gild my face, even the lilies,
As the dawn proclaims a new day, this shiny penny placed in my palm.

How will I spend it, this marvelous gift?
I must choose wisely, for the great eye sees all.
Today is the day I will climb higher, see more, do better,
Embrace more, love more, know more, taste more

And ponder all the verbs that God is.

The ball of fire rises and warms the air,
Ecstatic molecules swirling and swooping up mountains, through valleys,
Careening off cliffs, sailing verdant plains and soaring over searing deserts,
Lifting birds, filling sails, flying kites, turning windmills and filling my lungs

Until I think they will burst.

I see from the mountaintop the sacred connections of the people below,
And with ascending consciousness circling on feathered wings,

I see ever more circles loom into view,
Revealing for all who can see that the many are connected.
At that moment sky whispers in my ear the sacred truth that all creation is one.

Just for a moment, let me be the eagle who knows the secret in her mind's eye
As she touches the earth here, the water there and now the bluest sky

Refusing to choose only one.

For life is seeing, seeking and soaring—and most of all—hoping at sunrise.

A Meditation on the Below

My big toes pressing down, down in the soft earth
Cool, moist humus, wellspring of all life humming and human.
I imagine for a moment toes turn into tender tree roots
Embracing, penetrating, making love to the earth.

Down they grow, past the fragrant mud, past stones and beetles,
Thirsty divining rods questing and questioning, seeking and finding,
And once sated serving as anchor, a spreading foundation
Choosing this place as perfect, here and now and forever.

With source tapped, life now anchored shoots up and out and everywhere,
Fingers, leaves, flowers perfumed and passionate drawing life to life,
Bees and birds, women and water, men and butterflies
Worshiping at the source of life and being.

Foolish questions fall away as nurture and nature abide together,
Bound and bonded, birthing and bountiful,
Fecund, that word I love that's dirt and sex and lovely life
Joining us all in one never-ending cosmic organism.

Root us here, O Mother Earth,
Receive the sky into your blossoming bosom

That nourishes bodies and branches, souls and seekers,
Prayers that prance and crawl and walk and fly into the sun

For one glorious moment before plunging back into the black source of all.

Upon Entering Seminary

Very hungry have I been,
Searching and devouring
Tasting and testing,
And now
At last
I pause at the end of this earthbound trek
And with the first silken strand
I fix myself to this place.
In this protected nook, sheltering and secure
Shall I spin a cocoon of blessing
Where my restless journey will now turn inward,
Forming, reforming, transforming,
Where the flowers I have tasted
And precious jewels I have pocketed
Will be spun into kalaeidoscopic wings,
My coat of many colors,
That will, in God's time, unfold in prairie sunshine
To launch this newly wrought soul into blue heaven.

Snow Breathing

So this is the sound of new snow
That descended in the night.
Hush, world, hush.
Everything stops to listen to silence.

The Sunday morning snow stops time
And erases unraked leaves
And so much unfinished work.

I will not break the spell with my shovel.

Even the impatient daffodils
For an hour let go of desire.

And it is in this moment

I discover I am breathing.

I Don't Want to Feel Like a Tree

A response to my mother's poem, "I Feel Like a Tree"

I don't want to feel like a tree.
My arms would ache holding up so much sky.
Fingers rigid pointing south and west
Could never lace my fingers among yours and caress your face.

I don't want to feel like a tree,
Tall and still, I would suit the stray cardinal or crow for perching,
But some days uprightness melts into a worshipful pose
As I gaze earthward into blue eyes in a sea of green grass.

Not content to merely sway in someone else's breeze.
Let me dance and leap, embracing first sky then earth then you.
Let my feet be lashed not to soil and rock
But to the stirring winds that carry me back to the place where your arms await.

No, I don't want to feel like a tree,
With rough hewn armor that protects tender secrets.

Let me feel your fingers trace a path on my ticklish skin,

Reaching through me to hold my quivering heart.

Open

At slow opening of day
I open the window in search of blessing,
Breathing in the early morning air.
The unseen sun performs the opening act,
A prelude to possibility streaked in orange and pink.
How will I respond to this invitation
That tugs my spirit upward and outward?
I open my eyes, still heavy from sleep,
Sitting erect, planted in the soil,
I lift my face, turn my palms heavenward,
Opening my heart to transmit and receive
Messages of love that wing their way
From my heart to yours and back again,
Opening the channel of sacred intercourse
That allows the pulse of life to flow
From sky to earth,
From life to life,
From heart to heart.
Now let us open this day as the tender gift it is.
O what will we discover?

Meditation on the Above

Too many hours we spend gazing downward
At tiny screens, lane stripes, mud puddles, belly buttons
And myriad hazards that can trip us up,
Which is a curious phrase, since when we trip up we fall down.

What I long for in moments of quiet is to fall gently into the sky
To lose myself in contemplation of the Sistine Chapel of the universe
That sees all, knows all and offers us answers

If we only can crane our necks long enough
To take in all the mystery of that little gap

Between the fingers of God and man,

Almost touching but never quite.

And in looking up I imagine what I must look like
From the perspective of tree tops, moon, or stars,
Or of the hawk perched in oak, her sharp eye

Scouring the earth for scampering delicacies
Or of the star nation, those innumerable ancestors above my head,

Who weep for me with love and hope through starry-eyed tears.

But today the vision is found in my own mind's eye craning upward,
Scouring the heavens, the clouds, the treetops and rainbows, even,
For drops of truth I can catch in my mouth,
Glimpses of longed for peace and deep knowing

Of what my place in creation must be.

Whenever I can pry my eyes away from contemplation of my own feet,
I look up from wherever I am and feel hot sunlight on my neck

Or watch the simmering clatter of oak leaves in wind

And, finally, lose myself for a moment

In the splendor of my own insignificance.