The Angel

The Angel

There is an angel outside my window

Standing amongst the trees

Standing amongst the remains of the giants

Always looking to the gates

Standing, watching, in silence he waits

Watching the entries, the exits

The comings and goings

His head lifted slightly toward the sunsets

He reminds me often that my life is up to me

Yet there remains a guardian

Not a guardian to keep fear and pain away

No, a guardian to allow fear and pain to play

In the midst of my noisy din,

In the midst of my normal day,

Along the paths of chosen friends,

I find I live in the presence of my enemies 

While drinking the choicest of wines

Breathing the breaths that are most sublime

All the while my guardian keeps watch by the windows

What he knows no one knows

What he’s seen, what he’s heard

The gusts of the wind, the songs of the birds

The cries of my heart, the darkness of my eyes

The stillness of my soul that has been mesmerized

By the things he can see and hear every moment

But there are no moments in eternity’s scenes

Space without time, movement within rhyme

And without

I swallow pride, I swallow doubt

Nodding slightly to my silent guardian

Who still has head lifted toward the sunsets

Who can I be?

Who is this that is me?

He sits there quietly 

The gusting spring winds scattering flowers abroad

So that it appears the snow has fallen once again

A snow of pinks and purples and whites and yellows

Stories of newborn sullen fellows

Whose lives were a scattered glance

Yet in all their beauty, all their romance

The yearning lingers on

A light, a stroke, a sing, a song

The angel still keeps his watching, long

As the seas still swirling

The shoots unfurling

This life is just a whisper away

Voice

Voice (Day of Atonement)

I dream of days, I dream of ways

Where I do not have to enter into this incessant wandering

This amassing of graves between worlds of reality and fact

And the realms of reality and truth

These things I have wrestled with since my youth

Seeing the dragons get all the stronger

I still face them though I wander

between the place of courage and of fear

I sit amidst the lovely violets here

Just watching from a distance

I seek a grand but notorious gaze

a Voice that lives amongst blue-green eyes ablaze

These stories wrap around my mind

I cannot grasp such things sublime

Yet grasp them is exactly what I do, I must

Reach deep within to find the vessels of trust

That lead me to my pleasures

These things are so much more than treasures

They are rather more than things

Rather more on angels’ wings

They fly beneath my feet to greet me

All the while I look above while seeking

Those things that cannot be known or seen

I hear the whispers of gentle giants

I feel the tethering of a meek compliance

Knowing I cannot meet these ways

These ways that just lead all astray

Yet promise a sure deliverance

I also cannot yield to happenstance

Nor can anyone else for that difficult matter

For space is nothing but mindless chatter

if it truly had no beginning

I see the red roofs on those distant shores

The winding, writhing tales and lore

which break into my musings

All hair, all skin, all dark accusing

Just bristle in the sunlight

To speak of love so forthright

Is the answer to all these breathings

I cannot come into the forms and worries

Yet I cannot leave them ever since

I yield to the mysteries of unfathomable furies

With not a skip of heartbeats hence

I yield to the mysteries of unfathomable furies

With not a skip of heartbeats hence

So where does this all lead?  So where does this all go?

I think it goes where no one knows

But it does go into the knowing

The place where our listless souls are growing

In the green room of our past neglect

The pictures of our contorted wrecks

are turned into sound and life and beauty 

This happens right before our eyes

We listen and are mesmerized

by things we cannot hear nor see

In the listening I am free

It is in the listening I am free

I hear the Voice

K, Duane Carter 9/14/13

Sense Eternal

Sense eternal

there seems to be a place where I live

yet I cannot seem to dwell there

I cannot seem to breathe the air there

all the while smoldering in this sordid heat

and dryness, dark and dust

I live in a land of angels and oceans

Streaming rivers, birds in flight

Mists dancing with the mountains

Where words are never enough

You have to breathe in the beauty

For it just becomes a part of you

I feel it in the depths of me

I know I am there

I can feel the colors, the sounds 

The movements of the symphonies eternal

yet I can still smell the dust, the heat

Instead of running through golden fields of wheat

I simply sit here and yearn for more

I refuse to live in an unending chore

But rather dwell in the beauty

Knowing that it must flow forth from me

Water for the trees

Healing for the nations

Joy and hope and deep libations

Of all that is good and real

there seems to be a place where I live

I simply have to dwell there

or maybe rather let it dwell in me

K, Duane Carter 6/29/13

Glimpse

Glimpse

I have seen a glimpse of angels

Right here on the porch

This morning eternity was in the creek

Meandering through time’s torch

While those of the highway overpass

Went by toward their destinations

All the while they still went by

The creek moved still in contemplations

It always has, it always will

So I rest here in my chair in the sun

The hovering came, watching my watching

Then came a display of the bright heavenly ones,

Which I happened to simply catch in a moment

Yes, it was more than mere reflections

But it was much better than a nothing, naught

It was a marvelous resurrection

I didn’t need an answer, 

I didn’t need to know

I simply needed beauty

To remind me it was so

K, Duane Carter 6/30/12

Snowflakes

Snowflakes
The snow is falling looking like so many angels
Drifting white beauties announcing God’s goodness

The world in silent stillness waits
For the announcement to be
As the snow drifts on the tree
We all long to see something real
No more talk about kingdoms surreal
Only a walking with the snowflakes lighting on my face
Only a dancing, rejoicing, and breathing in grace
Though in silence they fall, they release out a roar
That changes our world, our spirits to soar
And in the quietness of the falling, we rise to the sun
Hidden behind the gray clouds is the Glorious One
I see the snow drifting, shifting, dancing
And Jesus is calling us to His romancing
He makes my heart pure, He calls it forthright
And just like the snow I become gentle and white

Yet a force that takes earth and makes it beautiful

K, Duane Carter 2-15-10