Hosted by Randy Smit and Rhonda Edgington
Part of the fun of hosting this poetry corner has been seeking out folks from our congregation and beyond to include in this space. We’ve enjoyed highlighting members and friends with a broad range of experiences. This month’s Poetry Corner features Curtis Gruenler, who many of you know teaches in the English Department at Hope and specializes in the Middle Ages. This semester he is [also] co-teaching a course in the new Hope/Western program at the Muskegon Correctional Facility on friendship and community. ~ Rhonda Edgington
I wrote this poem in a poetry writing course I took at the end of my freshman year, when I decided to major in English. It’s never been published, and I’m happy for it to appear here.
Peter
By Curtis Gruenler
We fished all night and caught nothing. But still
I cast my night once more at his command.
What kind of man is this that by his will
Brings fish beyond my dreams into my hand?
He sits so still above the moving waves,
The eye amid a storm of groping thought.
His crystal words assure me that he paves
A golden road; his summons leaves me caught
Between my life and journeys long, unknown.
I would be with him, share his catch, but he
Can use no fisherman. And on my own
Could I demand his blessings unto me?
Depart from me, O Lord, for I have sinned.
“Fear not and follow me.” I hear your call;
I’ll cast my life into your sweeping wind.
My world is dust; I give to you my soul.
Around the same time, one of the poems I came to love was “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (below). It’s one of the few poems I’ve kept consistently in memory over the years since. It’s sort of fitting for Lent, and also good for reciting when one finds oneself alone atop the dune at Tunnel Park at sunset. ~ Curtis
God’s Grandeur
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.