Into the Murmuring Deep

Susan Fantl Spivack, Storyteller/Writer/Teaching Artist brings us into the “murmuring deep” with her poetry, to the Real Presence that contains us all. You can read more at https://singingfrogpress.com/2022/11/12/the-secret-life-of-words/

Secret Life of Words by Susan Fantl Spivack

More than half-way through the movie
the woman—survivor of atrocities
during the Balkan wars—breaks
her silence to tell the burn
patient she bathes
her story.

Unable to close our ears or eyes,
so joined are we to their fortunes,
we take in her wounded words, his
tears—staring and clutching each
other—your arm, my knee….

It’s a suffering that keeps throbbing
at midnight as we lie down
wrapped in questions,
and wake at dawn seeking
each other’s soothing

hands across our backs
and breasts, our faces….
What goodness can possibly
equal the cruelty she suffered?
What gentleness can surpass

the raw horrific warp of it? 
Your sudden weeping? 
My whispered comfort words?  
Do I have the right to say
this?   Only kindness

will save us.
                                    11/22/2009-11/11/202

The Holy Maybe

The hint half guessed,

the gift half understood,

is Incarnation.

Here the impossible union

Of spheres of existence is actual,

Here the past and future

Are conquered, and reconciled….

But to apprehend

The point of intersection of the timeless

With time, is an occupation for the saint –

No occupation either, but something given

And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,

Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender

“The Dry Salvages” by T.S. Eliot
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