Ordinary Time: Poems for the Liturgical Year

By Michael D. Riley

Liturgy is the golden chore; the ineffable becomes as practical as a calendar or a loaf of bread. The Son of God becomes the Son of Man and briefly walks among us, Love itself incarnate in the life of faith. This generous collection--in both senses of spirit and breadth--uses the liturgical year to explore the many aspects of Christian belief. In a wide variety of voices, styles, and forms, Ordinary Time (the title is deeply ironic) includes themes from the most intimate examinations of conscience to some of the knottiest theological/philosophical questions. In tones ranging from comic/satiric to meditative to ecstatic--in characters as diverse as several apostles, three different Christmas shepherds, Mother Theresa, a retired Navy cook, and a lapsed Catholic celebrity on a TV talk show--these poems cover an extraordinary breadth of faith experience, without diminishing the struggles of faith. Like Mother Theresa in "Darkness," absence and doubt have their place: they move Incarnate grace deep enough even to meet suffering and death. The ritual year that winds from nativity to death to resurrection includes each member of the body of Christ. This collection provides one pilgrim experience in memorable detail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781498279468

Michael D. Riley

Michael D. Riley's most recent collection, Green Hills: Memoir Poems, appeared in 2013. Players, Ashore Here, and Circling the Stones appeared in 2007/08. He has poems in two recent anthologies, Irish American Poetry From the Eighteenth Century to the Present and Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, as well as in many periodicals including, Poetry, Rattle, and Poetry Ireland Review. He is Emeritus Professor of English from Penn State University and lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Book preview

9781498279451.kindle.jpg

Ordinary Time

Poems for the Liturgical Year

Michael D. Riley

12880.png

Ordinary Time

Poems for the Liturgical Year

Copyright © 2016 Michael D. Riley. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-7945-1

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-7947-5

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-7946-8

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Let poems be prayers.

Priest to penitent Seamus Heaney

Station Island

"

O

, exquisite risk!"

St. John of the Cross

The Dark Night of the Soul

So far from heaven, yet still I can sing.

St. Therese of Lisieux

The Story of a Soul

"We forget too often that the only possible

language of religion is metaphor."

Richard Rohr

Silent Compassion

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Part I: Annunciatory

GLANCE

APOLOGIA

A PRAYER FOR FIRST LIGHT

Part II: Incarnate

INVITATION

ADVENT

ADVENT SONG: WOODEN ANGEL

THIS STABLE GROUND

SHEPHERD

THE SECOND SHEPHERD

THE LAST SHEPHERD

THREE IMAGES FOR CHRISTMAS

GRACE

INCARNATE

THE POWER

I SAW THREE SHIPS: MANNY’S CHRISTMAS

WREATH

THE CHILD

CHRISTMAS TIME

CANTICLES OF ECSTASY

BODY OF CHRIST

NAMING

ON FAITH

CONFESSOR

JOSEPH

IN THE STREAM

CONVERSION

TRANSFIGURINGS

NEW SUFFERING SERVANT

EUCHARISTIC

BEFORE SURGERY

ONE BODY

BREATH

IN MEMORIAM

DARKNESS: FOR MOTHER TERESA

EXEGESIS

CHURCHED

Part III: Eastertide

LENTEN

ASHES: LENTEN

BORROWED AND LENT

PENITENTIAL

Part IV: Palm Into Passion

(1) A hundred rusty hinges

(2) Our slow

(3) In the body

(4) We wonder if we

(5) Back with St. Benedict

(6) They catch the available

(7) St. John of the Cross

(8) I am back with St. Benedict

(9) I missed last year

(10) Into the density

(11) I fattened on sleep

(12) First light. Spindly

(13) Fog this morning

(14) The day dawns as

(15) In the distance I hear again the solemn

(16) Brisk upon the oldest path of sorrows

(17) Back in loves

(18) In one of the overstuffed

(19) I cannot love this

(20) All bad art begins in genuine feeling

(21) All through the sermon

(22) I love the old

(23) Again the Stabat

(24) Back among the

(25) Just behind St. Joseph’s

(26) Come, Holy Spirit

(27) No day so still as one

(28) I cannot tell

(29) I cannot resist

(30) I know my world

(31) Word cannot be

(32) Losing, the poet says

(33) Jesus loves the lost

(34) Only connect, they agree

(35) I bring this recent suicide

(36) St. John of the Cross

(37) Carefully trimmed, the great beeches

(38) Canada geese fly

(39) What the silence contains

(40) Blind eyes pasted

(41) Only closed eyes

(42) "I have fallen back into

(43) As a boy I hated Lent. Black shrouds

(44) Love smelts the nails

(45) Bone cracks like

(46) The cold rain has

(47) Palm Sunday dawns gray

(48) One woodpecker rattles

(49) Suddenly, I cannot breathe

(50) All across the universe

PILATE’S CLOTHES

UPON THIS ROCK

SIMON OF CYRENE

SIMON PETERS

VIA DOLOROSA

NAMED

THOMAS: A DIALOGUE

PENTECOSTAL

MARY AT EPHESUS

COMMUNION

HOST

PURGATORIAL

PRAYER FOR THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

A PRAYER TO PRAY AGAIN

PRAYER TO ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

THE LAST WALTZ

RAGS

THE DESERT

HERE I AM

TOURIST

SOBORNOST

BRENDAN

PRAYER FOR LATE OCTOBER

A PRAYER FROM THE PASTIMES CAFE JUST BEFORE IT CLOSED FOR GOOD

MICKEY CALLING

MARY ELIZABETH

IN THE HOTEL BETHLEHEM

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A number of the poems in this collection had the good fortune to find prior publication. Those initial appearances:

America: Darkness: For Mother Teresa.

Ancient Paths: Signing.

Clare: This Stable Ground.

Epic Journal: Ashes: Lenten.

Iron Horse Literary Review: One Body.*

Karamu: In the Hotel Bethlehem.

The Plains Poetry Journal: Via Dolorosa.

The St. Andrews Review: The Last Waltz.

The St. Katherine Review: Brendan.

Studio [Australia]: A Prayer for the Middle of the Night, Canticles of Ecstasy, Churched, Conversion,* The Desert, Host,* In Memoriam: For Aunt Pat, Mickey Calling, Pentecostal, Rags.

Windhover: A Prayer for First Light, A Prayer to Pray Again, Mary Elizabeth, Penitential,* Pilate’s Clothes.

* These poems also appeared in my earlier book Players.

Annunciatory

GLANCE

A wingtip.

Feathered air

muses over skin.

Come and gone,

he alters by fractions.

Cheek and shoulder

shocked and forgotten.

His shadow dims

the trees.

Day or night now

by the windowsill.

Indecisions where

you come to yourself

into dawn or twilight.

What is difference?

Death of the old self

of illusion and desire,

birth of the new self

of illusion and desire.

Soon you will know

whether the brink

widens or narrows,

the light swells or dies.

Watch. Wait.

Do not swerve

or stop. Do not

sleep.

APOLOGIA

Because of the absurdity of a very young girl

believing herself visited by an angel of God

Because of the absurdity of that same young girl

believing herself the virgin bride

of the God of the universe

of sound and silence

Because of the absurdity of a very old woman

believing she too could still bear a child

Because of the absurdity of these same two women

believing that in their contiguous wombs,

contiguous extremes of age and experience

together in the same house,

lay caller and called,

metanoia itself

Because of the absurdity of one good man

believing a dream that tells him

his pregnant young wife is a virgin still

and more than faithful

Because of the absurdity of anyone at any time

believing the most important birth in history

took place in the darkest backwater of empire

among dung, cold, and incurious beasts

Because of the absurdity of being expected

to believe in a Godman

who is perfectly God

and completely man

Because of the absurdity of believing

that the symbol is in fact, fact,

the reality it pretends to stand in for

in order to then stand aside

Because of the absurdity of a life