It's firefly season here, and there seem to be more than usual; I see them in great numbers while walking in the evening.
Fireflies
Sparks of the flame, bright, swift,
tracing their paths through the air,
dip, dive, vanish with flash,
lighten the heart's way.
Augustine's Hymn
O pure and holy God of Love,
The angels sing before your Throne,
By sharing all, each will each own:
The Voice, the Lamb, the burning Dove
Are each in all and One alone.
The Three are One, the One are Three,
Where each is all and all are each.
And when God gives as we beseech,
He gives this truth, an endless sea
Beyond the mind's most brilliant reach.
Great anthems in my head will ring,
The sky is never blue but gold,
And as the earth, so new, is old,
So is this song the mornings sing
On days of light in breezes cold.
You drown us with Your holy grace,
As dust must drown within the sun,
You drown us ere we have begun
By casting light from off Your Face:
The Three You are, and Three are One.
The wooing of my soul is here,
Astride this point, as we ascend
With those who count our God a friend,
Enflamed with love and holy fear
By First and Last and Without End.
So It Goes
There is love,
there are lies,
there is lying in love,
there is living a lie
(and loving it too),
there is love like to hate and hate like to love,
there is lying in wait,
with surprise in their eyes when shots ring out.
She hates him, he her,
he loves her, she him
at times all the same;
it's a jumbling game where the prize is a heart,
or a life,
or a death,
and the sudden exhaling of everyone's breath when shots ring out.
And so --
the gun's in her hand and the shots ring out,
and how it ends who can tell?
I suppose no one knows who has not been there.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand,
life-lines are tangled with lies,
and soon somebody dies,
and death is an untensing of breath.
And so it goes.
The dark is a friend,
the dark is a foe,
the tears on her cheek recall no memory,
wandering in darkness before hint of dawn;
only sound stays as shots ring out.
He is dead.
There --
it's said.
He lied;
let him lie.
It cannot be recalled.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand;
who can tell who it is who suffers the more?
I guess we would need to be there.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand,
and when love is a lie,
or a lie is a love,
there is lying in wait,
a doom and a fate that cannot end well.
And so it goes.
We are fools for our loves,
we fall for their lies,
and so --
the gun's in her hand:
who will cry over spilled blood?
The tears were already shed,
and she works out a fate she chose long ago.
So it goes.
And so --
the gun's in her hand;
what's past has passed --
we would love to recall our past lies,
and yet there they lie.
It makes no sense,
but it cannot be reasoned away.
And so it goes.
