The final resting place arrests the soul that's stirred to ponder
Unlikely calm, untimely psalm shall with these spirits wander
Now your tomb no more the gloom of morrow's peril pending
The will you brought, the peace you sought herein has found it's ending
I cannot summon up the scale, the cry, the wail, of this sad tale
Where you in desperation drew that final fatal vision
Sunshine graces all that my eye falls on in this vale
I search for hope that we won't follow on the sad division
That led us to the precipice where looking down on others
Would lead us to the place where we would choose to fight our brothers
Hope has many colors, complications, aspirations, and rebirth
But let us hope... lest it should die... along with our self-worth
(See the haiku text embedded in the image above. For a high resolution image, see cinemaspirit.info/heaven/.)*
Haiga for the Heavenbound
By Mark D. Stucky
We search for the source
flowing with living water
and find our new home
*(About this work: This ecological/spiritual haiga--an image integrated with haiku text--was inspired by Revelation 22:1, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” The image of harsh desert with threatening storm clouds, crystal glass filled with water, and water-nourished paradise is a highly edited collage of four individual stock photos and contains a dozen separate layers in the original Photoshop file. This was first published in Small Town Anthology IX: Southwest Michigan’s Tournament of Writers 2023, Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center, 2023, p. 365. See also my poems “Bringing Heaven to Earth” and “Resurrection iBodies.”)
By Mark D. Stucky
Glamour is a hollow, shiny shell,
a rapid, pretty paint job
on an insubstantial surface,
that alluringly promises much
but never satisfies the hunger.
True human beauty is internal,
from the depths of one’s core.
It starts in the heart and soul.
It slowly sprouts and spreads,
percolates and permeates
the exterior from within.
The best but bleakest beauty
grows from wisdom
wrestled and wrought
from woundedness.
Pain, a teacher of distinction,
comes to every one of us,
but only some students
embrace the lessons
and find meaning in affliction.
For perceptive learners,
crises cut and clear the clutter
from bloated, busy lives,
enabling the complex splendor
of sorrow and healing,
of tears and laughter,
of doubt and faith,
of truth and grace,
of peace and joy,
of love and compassion
to emerge from pruned spaces.
(First published in Small Town Anthology VII: Entries from the Seventh Annual Tournament of Writers, Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center, 2021, p. 93.)
Acoustic shadows haunted hills
and crawled within a sleepless cave
where peace was whispered in a wish
and silence was an endless prayer.
The sound of tears dripped in the wind
that carried din until it bled
the last of life from hungry lips,
the last of love from hopeless hearts...
Leaving the War Behind
for Elihu Burritt, peacemaker
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
- H. W. Longfellow, “Christmas Bells”
1863, your old friend Longfellow almost
despairing. What a year! The Union
torn. Chancellorsville. War’s ravenous mouth.
And then came Vicksburg, Gettysburg.
The whole land lay in a bloody drouth,
the cannon thundered in the South,
and Elihu, you sailed away. For years
you let the ink flow like a sea
to float the cause of Peace. Yet you found
no peace at home. Was it a personal
surrender, to be England-bound?
And with the sound
of waves and seabirds, did you leave
behind the burden of a homeland
north to south a battleground?
Could a foreign landscape comfort
you? Or did war images confound –
the carols drowned
in military march-time in your head?
As summer waned, the loss of Chickamauga.
Brother killing brother in a marshy fen.
Elihu, did you never quite give up
the distant hope – oh where, and when? –
of peace on earth, good-will to men?
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