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The Bright Field

7/18/2013

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I needed to be reminded. And this morning, when I opened up Anam Cara by John O'Donohue, I was.
The poem he quotes is by a Welsh poet, R. S. Thomas.

The Bright Field
R.S Thomas

I have seen the light break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great prize, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have 
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle 
of the lit bush. To a 
brightness that seems as
transitory as your youth
once but is that eternity that awaits you.

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future nor hankering after an imagined past. That. 
It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush. 
Yes, that.



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Poem in New Mexico Mercury

7/16/2013

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"Going Gone" - New Mexico Mercury
 

Wrote it last summer, on a soft day. I was newly returned to New Mexico, wondering what would become of me and so, I drove and drove and then I remembered why the return had felt like a homecoming. The first version of the poem I wrote was longer -  though I think the shorter works better. Here is the long version - 

See part 1 at the New Mexico Mercury

part 2 goes:


It was good to up and go 
I was feeling down and dusty 
full of longing wearied by
what I knew to be true
Saint Francis leads to Sawmill
the café is open till 8
pride goes before a fall
like that.

It was good to up and go
past Pojoaque to a road
unknown to me
and the shock of such
beauty - after turning 
through trees - the sudden wild 
lands - mesas, hills, hoodoos
folds and swells and flat tops 
shades of pastel pink 
edged with the unmistakable black 
triangles of the Sangre de Cristos 

What to do with such feeling
like sky
seeming solid
seeming blue
but not

A telephone pole at the top of a
mountain rose full of electric 
currents running across hills 
that are anything but sedentary

A man in a hat once pulled over as I did, 
took off his hat, leaned across and kissed me 
A girl and I drove up this way once
when I didn’t know this place was home 

© 2013 Shebana Coelho
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