A Poem - 11/13/2019

I make absolutely no claims to being a poet. I am invigorated by reading poetry, and I hold poets in high esteem, but I myself rarely endeavor to do it. Every once in awhile, however, a poem stirs in me and I do the best I can to help it emerge onto the page. Like the last blog post, this emerged during Brittany’s and my time away in Hawaii (it’s almost as if rest is a good thing for writing…). It was inspired by the beauty of that place, by my meditations on my soon-to-be-fatherhood, by my own memories of Hawaii as a kid, and by C.S. Lewis’ great insight that nostalgia “is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience,” a desire that nevertheless points to a longing that exists in each one of us for Something greater.

Longing for the Far Off Country

A blue-hued horizon haunts the memory
of a past which never quite was,
like yearning for some distant island somewhere
far beyond that straight-edge symmetry of sea and sky
but which is only found in the very granules of sand
and stick of salty air
here
and in photographs faded and tinted by time and love.

The sun still hangs high overhead
in a sky not yet tinted orange
by the inevitable fade toward which it marches.

Soon my day will bring forth a new day which is not my own
but to whom I hope to give this island love,
that he may yearn for and be haunted by the happy memories
of an island hinted at in the fluorescent pink sunrise
longed for in the blue midday heat
and fully found only after the last orange of sun-painted sky
vanishes into night.