The Invisible God

      Poems for Devotions

      Copyright © 2017 John J. Brugaletta. 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. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1848-2

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4408-4

      ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4407-7

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      For the Reverend Canon Mark Shier

      “He is the image of the invisible God,” Colossians 1:15

      Acknowledgments

      The poems listed below were previously published in the

      journals indicated, sometimes in a slightly different form.

      A Civil Reply to Screwtape The Lamp-Post

      Ballade of the Hanged Men TRINACRIA

      Church Time of Singing

      Consummations Blue Unicorn

      Hope Blue Unicorn

      No Breaking Branch The Lyric

      Sun Blue Unicorn

      The Speed of Light Chronicles

      Three Translations from Dante South Coast Poetry Journal

      1. Quests

      "Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you."

      Luke 11:9

      "Without the quest, there can be no epiphany."

      Constantine E. Scaros

      THE BLIND ONES

      If the bard in the Odyssey is a clue,

      Homer himself was blind

      but saw so clearly the Achaean ships,

      the spears apparently slow in gutting a man,

      the effete Trojans at their tower,

      that we see them through his absent eyes.

      Tiresias too, perhaps more than a fiction,

      saw more than the sighted,

      the running sore hidden at the heart

      of Thebes, the parricide, the incest

      to which others were blind until

      the blindest of them all tore out his eyes

      so he would see no more his offenses,

      and then finally saw most truly of all.

      Milton certainly, Paul as well.

      And so we close our eyes to kiss,

      and when we savor some delicious food,

      and when we sleep to dream, perhaps of You,

      and when we speak to You in darkness,

      hands shielding our eyes, blinded for minutes,

      hoping to catch a glimpse of You.

      A CIVIL REPLY TO SCREWTAPE

      “[God] has made change pleasurable to them. . . .

      But since He does not wish them to make change. . .

      an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change

      in them by a love of permanence.”

      The Screwtape Letters

      I love a change of pace, a change of scene,

      But when I’ve lost my way among the new,

      I find the same old thing makes me serene.

      A flat stability is much too clean;

      I long to rove, to taste, to live askew

      And love the change of pace, the change of scene.

      But then adventure soon becomes obscene;

      I trade the seascape for my kitchen’s view,

      Because the same old thing makes me serene.

      You demons bait your hook with flash and sheen,

      And scheme to net and land and kill us through

      Our love for change of pace, for change of scene.

      But heaven’s planted here a sweet routine

      Of table, of our bed, and of a pew.

      We know these same old things make us serene.

      Our saving grace is that we live between

      Those ancient trees and these that lately grew.

      We love a change of pace, a change of scene,

      But only in the old are we serene.

      LITTLE FLAME

      Here I tend on bended knee

      This uncertain tiny light,

      Coaxing it with twigs and breath

      Till it shatter cold and night.

      Should it grow so I can see

      Where to walk and where to rest,

      I may sweep and order here

      For the coming of our Guest.

      I had sensed the pits and bones;

      Firelight tells me nothing new,

      Only steeping my shut eyes

      In the miserably true.

      If this little flame will grow,

      He may come to grace my day,

      So the breath that helps it climb

      Blows in words with which I pray.

      QUEST OF THE MAGI

      Nothing is true below the moon;

      Only the stars are wise.

      That's why we blink at things of earth,

      Searching the steadfast skies.

      Once we'd observed the rising star,

      Each from his proper land,

      Three of us took a mount and food,

      Met as if all were planned.

      On went the star, and we went on

      Following where it led.

      Give no belief to those who say

      Truth will elude the head.

      We had no sense where God's Son lay;