Robert Cording

POETRY: White Mountains by Robert Cording

September 15, 2018

At times they nested above us, Hugely fixed in silent considerings, Shadow lakes pooled along their sides As rafts of clouds passed across The sun. At other times, weightless As breath, chameleonlike, They could take the color of rain And vanish behind a scrim of cloud. Always expected and always strange— How, staying in exactly the same place, The mountains were continually leaving, Day after day, the gray rock At the peaks gradually darkening To smoky blue, becoming unmoored In the Chinese-misted drift of evening. All that summer as we read or turned From books, as we stood on the porch Or moved through our daily tasks Toward each other, they bridged Our pleasure and our pain. In the end We came to believe the mountains Brought us to [...]

POETRY: Advent (Five Poems)

December 19, 2012

A Prayer for the Healing of the Wounds of Christ Laurence Housman (For Advent) Is not the work done? Nay, for still the scars Are open; still Earth’s pain stands deified, With arms spread wide: And still, like falling stars, Its blood-drops strike the doorposts, where abide The watchers with the bride, To wait the final coming of their kin, And hear the sound of kingdoms gathering in. While Earth wears wounds, still must Christ’s wounds remain, Whom love made life, and of whom life made pain, And of whom pain made death. No breath, Without Him, sorrow draws; no feet Wax weary, and no hands hard labor bear, But He doth wear The travail and the heat: Also, for all things perishing, He saith, “My grief, My pain, My death.” O kindred [...]

POETRY: The Measuring Worm, and other beastie poems

August 29, 2012

A Measuring Worm This yellow striped green Caterpillar, climbing up The steep window screen, Constantly (for lack Of a full set of legs) keeps Humping up his back. It’s as if he sent By a sort of semaphore Dark omegas meant To warn of Last Things. Although he doesn’t know it, He will soon have wings, And I, too, don’t know Toward what undreamt condition Inch by inch I go. (Richard Wilbur) Parable of the Moth Consider this: a moth flies into a man’s ear One ordinary evening of unnoticed pleasures. When the moth beats its wings, all the winds Of earth gather in his ear, roar like nothing He has ever heard. He shakes and shakes His head, has his wife dig deep into his ear With a Q-tip, but the roar will not cease. It seems as if all [...]