Certainly without saying it

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W e   B e a r   T h e   S t a n d a r d

Zion Chapel of Ease Cemetery

Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

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Down these mean streets a man must go

who is not himself mean,

who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

He is the hero; he is everything.

He must be a complete man

and a common man

and yet an unusual man.

He must be,

to use a rather weathered phrase,

a man of honor --

by instinct, by inevitability,

without thought of it,

and certainly without saying it.

If he is a man of honor in one thing,

he is that in all things.

He must be the best man in his world

and a good enough man for any world.

He has a sense of character,

or he would not know his job.

He will take no man's money dishonestly

and no man's insolence

without a due and dispassionate revenge.

He is a lonely man

and his pride is that you will treat him

as a proud man

or be very sorry you ever saw him.

The story is this man's adventure

in search of a hidden truth,

and it would be no adventure

if it did not happen to a man

fit for adventure.

If there were enough like him,

the world would be a very safe place

to live in, without becoming too dull

to be worth living in.

= Raymond Chandler =

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Happy Wednesday

Tutorials from predecessors

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W a l l   T o   W a l l

Savannah, Georgia

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Since when did keeping things to ourselves

help us to better remember them?

We need tutorials from predecessors.

To restore what's missing makes a science

of equating like with like, or touching

small pebbles on a larger mental abacus.

We hitch a memory of order to ourselves:

From rotating bodies in space comes wind,

by which we're buffeted, cooled, or graced;

The sun warms both the sunflower

and the angel with whom we might wrestle;

We get some lyrics from a higher power

and then we act on or for each other.

In calculated reunions of broken parts,

the latter must always feel the former,

inherit both the track and the turn.

A situation like an empty orchestra.

And when we try to sing above it, intuit,

and even in our singing are mistaken --

if pitch is something sought and never pure,

if latter sounds like something we can climb

as opposed to where we find ourselves

more recently in our relations, in time,

having been left or starting our leave-taking --

something happened -- someone followed someone.

Someone had. Even held. Our formers.

We're doppelgangers, saintly or undone;

pick a song and listen for your cue.

Here's the void. Now sing some compensation.

= Michael Morse =

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Happy Tuesday

The luster of black china

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I ' v e   G o t   N o t h i n g   B u t   T i m e

Carriage Horse

Savannah, Georgia

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WHY I AM OBSESSED WITH HORSES

Because when I saw a horse

cross a river

separating two countries

and named it Ghost Rubble

it said No my name is 1935

because it also spoke in tongues

as it crossed the black tongue

of the water

because it still arcs through me

with its zodiac

of shrapnel-bright stars

because the river's teeth

still gnash

against its flank

and its eyes

still have the luster

of black china

glowing black-bright

in the glass hutch of memory

because a horse's skull

is a ditch of wildflowers

because a horse's skull

is a box of numbers

a slop bucket

resting upside down

under barn eaves

wind in an empty stockyard

orange clay that breaks

shovel handles with a shrug

because a horse is the underwriter

of all motion

because a horse is the first

and last item

on every list

of every season

and because that night the air

smelled green as copper

and lath dust

and that night as it scrambled

up the bank and stamped past me

it said Unlike you

I am the source of all echoes.

= Michael McGriff =

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Happy Monday

God's love so sure

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S y m p h o n y   i n   P i n k

Irmo Town Park

Irmo, South Carolina

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The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race --
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forever more endure

The saints' and angels' song.

= Frederick M. Lehman =

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But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ,

(by grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together,

and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches

of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:4-7

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Happy Sunday

Thoughts we will not show

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L i g h t   o f   C o n t e m p l a t i o n

Magnolia Cemetery

Augusta, Georgia

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The murmuring of Bees, has ceased

But murmuring of some

Posterior, prophetic,

Has simultaneous come.

The lower metres of the Year

When Nature's laugh is done

The Revelations of the Book

Whose Genesis was June.

Appropriate Creatures to her change

The Typic Mother sends

As Accent fades to interval

With separating Friends

Till what we speculate, has been

And thoughts we will not show

More intimate with us become

Than Persons, that we know.

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Saturday