Blackhawk
Blackhawk
Casey Dwyer
I
My course is set for an uncharted sea.
A door has opened up in me.
Dark wood of mind
Winding, wired arteries of
Anamnesis.
Lighted at best a dull grey
Without wheel, without time, without
The loud quiet of the garden,
The still motion of the spheres,
The fairies at twilight.
Brutal world.
Briars catch our skin, tear our flesh,
Break us at the breaking of the world.
II
The intellect is strangled by the briar patch.
Caught in the birder’s net.
If what is and what will be is contained in my mind,
Lit by eyes of clay,
What I know I cannot know.
What I know I cannot unknow.
Come, says a voice, light piercing
Voiceless garden,
Vapid, dark places,
Moments that tore us asunder.
Come, says the voice, and at its speaking
Something hidden, holed up, unfolds
And enfolds what was as I knew it to be.
Come, says the voice.
Light warms my face as I turn.
III
Wheels within Wheels within Wheels.
Alas, Alas, You great city,
You mighty city, Babylon!
In a single hour your judgment is come.
The garden is the spheres and wheels
Each moving, ascending, in and out of time.
They move and do not move, grow.
Expanse ever expanding.
Time enfolding time.
Not condensed to the comprehensive explanation
Each thing pregnant with wonder, giving birth to Beauty.
The dancing angel at sun’s setting
The honeysuckle, the cottonwood
The quiet of the church at noon
The swaying of the locust tree
Blood, body, breast, bone
So old and so new.
How long have I sought you.
Your old men dream dreams,
Your daughters prophesy—
The vineyard and the threshing floor
The swarming locust, the hopper,
The destroyer, the cutter.
Spirit poured out on all flesh,
Sun rising with healing in his wings,
God poured into flesh
Blood, body, breast, bone
And scarred, Pascal Lamb, for you.
IV
We turn together,
Altogether turned.
That light that globes in
Astral night now burns.
I hear and see, rays
Aligned, illume.
Before what was dark
Is now subsumed.
What I didn’t look for,
what we heard but did not hear in the garden
when our eyes lightened nothing, let nothing in
and the briars left love loveless
wrapping all things in cellophane,
Now is found of me, as I hear Love’s call
And step, turning, into the great turning of the world.
Apokalypsis, the bush’s great burning
Every inch of reality is that burning
And yet is not consumed.
V
Now the door stands before us,
You and me, in this sempiternal moment.
I want you here, if not as flesh than as bone,
To feel that Rose and touch that Stone
We walk together, or you alone.
But not alone.
Hounded.
Hallowed.
Beckoned.
By dirge and dance invited—
No bush can hide you, for they all burn
They all sway in that wind that shakes the locust, the honeysuckle, the cottonwood,
Each hounding in its ruffled silence
And the birdsong sparking, as rubies, settling on the flowers.
Flowing in a flowing that speaks of
fire
Of a sea that is set aflame as glass burned in the kiln
Is turned by time to Beauty
Casey Dwyer
Poet & Pastor
Casey is a pastor, poet, and painter living in Monroe, Wisconsin with his wife, Danielle. He pastors Lena Free Church in Lena, Illinois, where he relishes in the art of preaching and pastoring saturated in the stories of real people and real places. At home you’ll find him painting in oils, listening to Dante, and rejoicing in his garden. You can read more of his work at revivalrenewal.com
Photography by Eberhard Grossgasteiger