Sunday, March 6, 2016

Pondering Amidst a Season of Penitence

A blessed Laetare Sunday to you, gentle reader!

In the spirit of Lenten sacrifice and keeping one's focus on things not of this world, I have for you today another, older, piece of mine that I lately found and polished up a wee bit.  It is, I admit, didactic, imperfect, and perhaps it will not quite please - but, then, were we made to be pleased?  Were we created for pleasure alone?  The answer, I would dare to say, is at once more simple and more complicated than it may seem.  But that is a question for another day.

In the meantime, then, I offer for your perusal and pondering this little tidbit which - I hope! - will encourage the practice of penance without itself being one.  But perhaps some queries are best left unaddressed...!


+JMJ+

Brevity
By Caitlin LoTruglio (née Clancy)
Copyright 2015, 2016

Say not “I am not old”
Nor “I am well, I am healthy”
For in life you have no measure
You know not when you are wealthy

The boy on the playground swing
The man on the motorbike
The girl with her cat’s-cradle string
The working woman on strike

The one may fall from his height
The other meet with a crash
The child may take an infection
Her elder fall under the lash

No warning may precede each
A demise needs no clear call
Though warnings ever abound
One fate will soon befall all

Are you watchful, good sir, are you ready?
Little lamb, who will own your dolls?
Lad, do your playmates shout “steady”?
Lady, your Maker calls.

To each a solemn promise
To each a holy oath
Each day we arise from the ashes
Fall to dust as we plight our troth

Conceived in the glory of Heaven
Received by the frailties below
Made up by our doings and darings
Taken up or let down for to Know

So in your brief space of December
Which comes you know not how or when
Adam’s son, do your best to remember
That love is beyond mortal ken

One final injunction I leave you
One final thought to recall
Though the last of the last shall ensnare you
In the end it is gift to us all

Therefore, my dear,
Child of God’s breath,
Remember you are never more
Than an inch

From death.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Curiosities Abound

Dear Readers!

A miracle has occurred.  I have posted twice in the same month!  I dare not hope to assure myself or your good persons that this will become regular habit - though I hope much it shall - but I do intend to post again soon.  I have a few poems in the works which, thus far, please me greatly.  I hope they will in time take sufficient shape so as to be presentable to your better judgments.

In the meantime, I found this curiosity locked away in one of the digital drawers of my written warehouse.  It was one I scribbled wantonly but pleasantly one day on the white board of a room at my alma mater.  I was surprised and delighted to return after the summer break and, upon opening the white board, found it still there.  I wonder if anyone read it.

In any case, for your present perusal and, I hope, pleasure, I present -


+JMJ+

Poem Written on the Board of Stowe Hall, Room 209Which Remained There All Summer

By Caitlin LoTruglio (née Clancy)
Copyright 2014

Have you ever stopped to wonder
‘Mid your breathing and the thunder

That each day presents a mystery –
A tapestry of history?

The rain upon the street
Has moistened Solomon’s feet

And the sun high overhead
Has looked upon Ulyssey’s bed

The breeze has brushed St. Paul
And heard John’s desert call

Jordan’s wavelets held a prophet
And her waters washed a God

Some stones have known the tread
Of Alexander or Boabdil, dead

And others known the sandals
Of Turks and ruddy Vandals

Each piece of earth has seen
Tyrants and their vices green

And watched the steps of heroes
And witnessed bloody Neros

I must finish this rhyme
Not at all or at another time

Suffice it here to say
As you go along each day

Be watchful as you rush around
Where you stand could be holy ground….

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Anticipation

Good day to you, gentle readers.

I fear I have left you long in darkness and silence.  Much has happened these past months, of both a joyful and sorrowful nature; too much to be properly penned here - too much to be catalogued, chronicled.  Let it suffice to say that in silence God's work is perhaps oftenest done to us and in silence life still shall be made to move.  But enough.

I doubt not that you are desirous of something more light, more literary.  I have written a number of works over the past weeks and the choice for which of these to present today was not an obvious one as it has sometimes been in months past.  After some thought, though, and in light of the Gospel readings of the day, I have here for your perusal a piece I left lingering a while but am at last desirous of uncovering.  I am, as ever, not perfectly satisfied with its sentiment and shape, but I think I have captured something not negligible.  I shall leave you to guess at what.  

May He Who Is be with you always!

+JMJ+

Anticipation: The Wedding Feast of the Lamb
By Caitlin LoTruglio
Copyright 2015, 2016

Flames erupting in a goblet
Ardor of the blest
The blaze of new wine
And laughter, hot laughter, in a girl’s calm breast –
Father, is this not how You love us?

Hot agony, pure ecstasy,
Sears me, scarlet lover,
Grieving through her fuller joy
I behold, my Lord, your Mother 

Beauty uncontainable
Blushes oceans, rivers forth
Repeatedly, repeatedly,
My Lord! Come to us speedily
Thoughts burning, yearning, greedily
Hearts parched for want of Thee

The phoenix of old resurrects himself
And from David assumes a new form
The roil of the ages lashes about
Burgeons and breaks in a blackening, beckoning storm
My Lord, is this not how You greet us?

At war is the soul reconstructed!
Divinity piercing the mind!
My Lord, My God, My Father,
Blaze – burn, flash, slash, and leave blind!

Whisper to us then in the darkness
When we, drooping to depths of the earth,
Ask –
Does emptiness reign in Your kingdom,
Or of feeling only is’t dearth?

Thorns and nails claw us, alive,
Incisions break open each mind
Thoughts belonging to others
Sink, bite deep, call others in kind

And there on the edge of the altar
At the brink of despair and the world
Flaming highly, my Lord, strikes white splendor –
From the pinnacle God is not hurled

Solace returns to the quiet
Interior fountains blue-flow
They softly, and softly, remember
The sigh of the love that they know

Tranquility seizes her triumph
And Peace thrusts his banner to stay
A silence burns over the stillness, burst
From the heart of a high holy day

Let the wine of triumph be poured
Let the heart of the lion breed flame
Let the wounds of the King be unveil’ed
Let the leper return without shame

And all that is left, the deluge of deeps,
Teeming with bright azure sheen –
All as it is as it was and shall be
My Lord – as it ever has been.