For the last number of weeks, I’ve been working on a blog entitled “Meditations on Abortion.” That blog is now on the shelf because both of my editors, one female and one male with different views, have given the draft a decided thumbs down.
And while Easter is now behind us, I received an unexpected gift on Easter Sunday from my college friend, Don Hynes. In the late 1960s, everyone understood the word “hippie.” It is now going out of style but, if you had looked up the word in a picture dictionary, it would’ve been a younger Don.
His career was absolutely unexpected as he became a sought after construction manager for huge building projects. But the “hippie” sensibility was never lost and so he began publishing poetry usually to be sent out on Sunday of each week. Most of the poetry was seasonal in nature, aligning human emotions with the death of winter, the birth of spring, the glory of summer and the slow dying of autumn. I thought him as pantheistic.
But then came, “The Irish Girl” a book length poem that as one reviewer said: “This is magical lyricism of the highest order, not a comma out of place. It doesn’t get better than this.”
And then last Easter Sunday, Don Hynes, sent this poem and, I think, even my non-Christian friends will appreciate it.
The tree that grew on the hills above Jerusalem
was cousin to the juniper growing here
on this rock shelf above the Salish Sea.
Stately furrows, roots like cable,
branches bearing delicate spindles
to capture the rain and light of this spring day.
We cut and shape these trees
as we did that one on Golgotha
those centuries ago,
forming it to a cross
to bear the weight of love.
It is a heavy burden
and one many choose to reject.
I remember that terrible day,
the punishment of the Via Dolorosa.
Here and now there is only
water, light and stone
and the body of forgiveness
taken down from the cross,
placed in the earth
and from the earth risen,
as we may rise
into the sunlit presence
speaking to us softly
in the murmuring voice
of the endless sea.