This is a very enjoyable thread. I particularly like the contrasts between
Andy's poem and Candice's, short lines v. prose, inspiration v. doubt,
lyricism v. narrative etc.

Best wishes

Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 10 August 2000 00:37
Subject: Re: STAND up (& Sanctify)


>Look forward to reading everybody else's posts & poems this
>evening, and here's my own slight (and looking increasingly so!)
>contribution, which last saw print in the Fall 1979 issue of the
>_Denver Quarterly_ and reproduced with now with some reservations
>but no(body's) permission. (She's a rebel/And she'll never be any
>good--name that tune!) All saints are rebels, aren't they? And
>often social misfits of other orders as well, it seems to me--
>yet just as prey & prone to the 7 deadlies and other disorders
>of the spirit, including ambition, as the rest of us. "The First
>Hermit" is a (prose-poem) attempt to out that sort of spiritual
>competitive spirit that I suspect plagued even the most "primitive"
>and/or "muscular"/athletic among the early Christian saints.
>
>
>The First Hermit
>
>Carefully, I packed my little bag of nothing and strode forward
>with a glad staff. Repairing to the wilderness, I even invented
>a new name for myself: _hermit_. But what a bad dream I had that
>first night in the desert. Dreaming of another, one who needed no
>new name for his prior Paul. I saw him kneeling in the wilderness
>long before my birth, and I thirsted hopefully (it's just a fasting
>mirage!) but bootlessly in my requisite sandals. For I knew enough
>to know how it works: dream at home and take it or leave it, dream
>in the desert and vision is the Rule.
>
>So off with me the next morning to find this so-called Paul, my
>staff nor I too glad, I came upon a centaur drinking at a waterfall.
>"Take a right at noon," the man-half advised. Upon following his
>directions to the Letter, I soon met up with a date-bearer hoofing
>along whose face disturbed me. So did something to do with his
>hooves that made me lose my usual appetite for dates. "Are you a
>goat or a man?" I inquired (very politely). "Are you a hermit or
>a boor?" he retorted, adding a strictly unwarranted injunction on
>table manners: "Use the middle fork this evening." But on reaching
>a crossroads at suppertime, I wondered if I had misunderstood him
>(and if he'd eaten those dates by now).
>
>Then, lo verily, a crow swooped down at moon-up, dropping a loaf
>at my feet. "From Paul," I thought I heard it caw as it flew out of
>sight and what sounded like something about "merry," something about--
>christ, no, it couldn't have _that_! It's just what the desert is so
>famous for, arguing in circles, begging for questions--it's the
>Mendicant Way of daybreak, discovery, he's gone stiff already!
>
>And that is how I found him, kneeling in prayer or death, same
>difference to Paul, still sparkling with sweat outside his cave.
>Two lions were busy digging a grave nearby. "Make yourself useful,"
>one suggested. "Make yourself at home," the other added, "Anthony."
>
>



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