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Joseph W. Greif

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2nd Post - The Architecture of Cottonwoods Vol. 4
by Joseph W. Greif → (All Poetry by Joseph W. Greif)
   Rated "G" by the Author.
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This is the 2nd,3rd and 4th Canto in the book.


Poem Artwork

 

Canto II
from the imagination that humans are a   symphony of the created word
(by R.S.)
. 
Eagle
as an element of air, in a quality of light not recognized by physics, your living
creates in its existence, feathers to fly
 
just as human thoughts, create images
 
in open minds to become their own creations
 
Lion
in rhythmic breathing, your breath and blood combine into a consciousness
of your world as an extension of yourself
 
just as in being human
life becomes…
…an experience of the act of being alive
 
Horn Head-ed Cow
in heavy contemplation, you chew your Earthly-ness and sleep under a vast field of
stars, knowing they were all put there for your nourishment and digestion
 
just as calculating humans, must be carefree yet careful not to measure and
weigh too much stuff …which can over balance the nourishment found in the
gravity of this life on Earth
 
Hue Man
living creative life in colors, formed in feelings, lifted up in
a levity of willing…your thoughts arise into your thinking
 
just as counting is to rhythm, balance is to measure and creative humans are to
eagle, lion, and horned head-ed cow
 
 
 
 
 
    Canto  III
      from the library of valuable information
…to consider Roman(esque) or anything non-classical as barbaric, is
in a historic sense misleading for life has moved on since Rome
last lifted its eyes above the horizon of its conquests
 
…and…in a historic step or two before now there came the Goths…
with a barbaric style…
 
and it stuck as an insight - some call it painted glass   insight 
 - with glass storied and weighed into the sunlight of color, and secrecy
 
(all to give medieval life another layer of meaning then)
and…also, to help the church establish its yearly date
for the mystery of Golgotha
 
though it would be better time spent today to contemplate
the building up of gothic structures in levity…
as a architectural raison d’être
within the study of the lightness of light
 
which once was found in the contemplation of spiritual sight…
last seen in a Baroque light as taught within the last of the secret
mystery schools (in Germany and Austria)
 
(this ending; was beginning around the time the new world
was coming true )
 
…for then, in that teaching light, masters of architectural insight once said:
“know light, as a heart felt sounding bell, ringing ever mindful
in the in-raying of another lightness, such that all windows and walls
in all churches raised up after the mid 12th century can be filled
with the lighted insight of individual color designed into our seeing…
as it is our nature to create”
 
 
…to create
 
magnificent glass, pride of place glass
each the bright gift of some mechanic guild
who loves their city and thinks its gold well spent
to make her beautiful with piety
 
…(this spoken specifically of the grace of Cathedral Chartres
in 1194, by an unknown scribe)
 
and other lovers of light, out of the lightness
arising from the gravity of our classics
will concede…that magnificent examples
are to be found (at Bourges, Amiens, and Rheims)
(in many Gothic cities)
and in French modesty
perhaps finest of all at Rheims
 
- for witness the old couplet -
(spoken of in France as a nourishment)
 
…clocher de Chartres, Nef d’Amiens
cloeur de bauvus; portal de Rheims…
and here paraphrased
…for the convenience of the readers hearing
 
as the following:
 
“the Goths as builders
considered themselves, and where generally
collaborating on a vaster and more conscious scale
than anyone else…
 
…who raised their eyes …to the etheric lightness
of the sky, …at that time”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Canto IV
memory #1
Fürstenfeldbruck
Oberbeuren
Kaufbeuren
Munich
…and in the 1930’s
John Strobel
left before the war
and lived with Seminole’s
until it was over…
…we knew him as a master
herb gatherer, and photographer 
…who once ate wild mushrooms
and then sat in some sort of coma
on the toilet, for 3 days (or was it 3 hours)
 …anyway; he came out of it
as if nothing had happened
though, we couldn’t use the toilet
the whole time he was in there
(and even though he did not eat
meat in 1956, we still spoke of him with our highest respect
 - (for he had his own personal philosophy
of freedom that impressed us)
memory #2
an alpine fire of the spirit
within the family…specifically around
death’s soundings
which consisted of load knockings
and birds tappings on window panes
…preparing the family for a fore-coming death
in sounds sounding out from somewhere
that we could not see into
…but knew that one of us was
 being called to
 
memory #3
a church built in 1899
at the edge of a changing history
in the middle of the Camas Prairie, in Idaho
remembered, in feelings, now cherished of the 1960’s
by this altar boy
as a time alone with God, and the mass, and incense
and candlelight
 
…until; the living Christ could not be found there anymore
as this altar-ed boy grew older
 
and, just as later too, it was imagined, that a bishop shining
Sheen and his Guardian Angel, could not find the living Christ
either in or out of the church anymore…
 
(…so said the Moss, that covered the Earth…
…once while rolling other stones…)
 
(this imagination is of the grandfather Ron Moss
who once lived and sold books, in Seattle)
 
…and this was also told of…
the Trappest monk
the Cistercian hermit
the Platonian writer
who in personal love began to find the living Christ
and died too soon
one could assume
 
and others too, for Christ’s sake
found this Earth a frustrating place and lived lives of solitude
patiently searching, and waiting, for the spirit living behind
and in all things, to reappear, again
out of the etheric realms, that we as children
chose to be once from, and here now …have become
 
 
memory #4
…in a corner, an Idaho Coyote Spirit
smiles and laughs a cosmic laugh
to think that people think
that a cosmic order can only be found at Chartres
or in a Dominican, Trappist, Catholic, Buddhist Eastern
Western or American home
 
- “for christ sake” -
to find the sameness in all things
“this is not vanity” - this; Ezra Pound could say
 
for to find our balance on the path of our living
is living in a balance between the too hard and the too soft things
of life…a balance where the human makes
a gesture of the divine, found in the harmony of everything
that matters …sounded out in the many movements
of our passing, becoming, the whole of who we are
out of the how, the what, and the where for all
that we find …that we always are 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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