Poems and Other Writings

This page is dedicated to "singing" the landscapes of our inner ecology and earth to life. Each month, together we'll explore a new poem or piece of writing. We'll see how language that focuses on the particulars of the outer wilderness, can return us to the truth of our inner wilderness.

Please feel free to ponder the questions elicited by the poem below. Memorize a stanza or two. Write a poem of your own. And, if you like, please email me with your own observations, poetry, and thoughts. I'd love to hear from you.

April 2009

Untitled

Moving across the blank page
the sound of my pencil
creates a silence
the wake of a tiny ship.

The silence becomes a person
more real to me than myself
a companion looking over my shoulder
smiling a little at the poem
that has ceased to matter.

Nothing I shall ever write
can be more true
more trustworthy
than this faceless presence
beside
     beyond
          inexorably within.

The wise ones called you Unpronounceable.
He called you Abba.
Now they tells us to call you
Quantum Vacuum, Empty Fullness.
Whatever.

Language neither creates nor destroys
this moment
this moving stillness
whose white sails carry me
through darkest waters
unerringly home.

© Elizabeth Michael Boyle

• How do you experience the "faceless presence/beside/beyond/inexorably within"?
• What is it that language can neither create nor destroy?
• How do you experience stillness within yourself? Does it too lead you unerringly home?
• By naming the creative power behind the universe are we being reductive? Should this power remain "untitled"? If not, what name would you give it?
  
  

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