July 26, 2005

Gift - a favorite poem

Gift

by Brooks Haxton

.....

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;
and we all do fade as a leaf. ­Isaiah 64:6


After my mother's father died,
she gave me his morocco Bible.
I took it from her hand, and saw
the gold was worn away, the binding
scuffed and ragged, split below the spine,
and inside, smudges where her father's
right hand gripped the bottom corner
page by page, an old man waiting, not quite
reading the words he had known by heart
for sixty years: our parents in the garden,
naked, free from shame; the bitterness of labor;
blood in the ground, still calling for God's
curse. His thumbprints faded after the flood,
to darken again where God bids Moses smite
the rock, and then again in Psalms, in Matthew
every page. And where Paul speaks of things
God hath prepared, things promised them who wait,
things not yet entered into the loving heart,
below the margin of the verse, the paper
is translucent with the oil and dark
still with the dirt of his right hand.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is so moving. My grandfather's Bible is like that. Thank you, thank you, for sharing this with us.

Anonymous said...

This is so moving. My grandfather's Bible is like that. Thank you, thank you, for sharing this with us.

Anonymous said...

Now how in the world did that happen? I must have been going for the apostrophe in "mess o' greens" and my pinkie slid off and hit enter...twice.

Lynn Bruce said...

I was blessed with my Grandaddy Rushing's Bible, and this poem describes it perfectly. I rarely take it down from the shelf for fear it can't take the wear and tear -- he was almost 100 when he went home to the Lord, and had been reading it daily for a very long time. But it comforts me to see it there, and remember seeing him with it open in his lap -- every single day I was ever with him.

I miss my Grandaddy. It's still hard to come to Memphis and him not be there. Some days I feel like I really need to hear him pray again, but I'm glad he doesn't need to pray anymore.

Christopher Trottier said...

I think it's awesome that you're writing poetry. Keep it up. Let the art advance.

Lynn Bruce said...

Christopher, I do write poems now and then, as does my daughter (whom we call Fa-So-La-La here in blogland), but I'm afraid I did not pen this one. Could have, I suppose... so why didn't I?

ithchick said...

I love it!

fa-so-la-la said...

Mmmm, I lopve looking at people's Bibles and seeing what is most signifigant to them. It's amazing the different things that people latch onto in the Word.

Anonymous said...

It's one of things I miss from going all digital. :-|

But, you'll notice that my keys on my keyboard are worn smooth under just a few weeks after I got it. Not all Bible reading, but.. Wow, I have lost this. I suppose I'd best get myself another copy of a different translation, more suited to my studious and expository nature than the old Bible my parents gave me when I was 8 or so. I suppose it'd impress most people who saw it, as it is very worn, but I'll admit, it's not *all* from honest reading. Once it was run over by a SUV. :-| Yea, an SUV. Let's just say it gained an extra joint in the middle for a while. Well, well, look at me. I'm being garrulous again. Apologies. Love the Bretheren!

ithchick said...

Are tyler, typepperonious, and tylerious maximus all the same person. And if so, are you who I think you are?

Anonymous said...

Such a guise of utter anonymity you hide under! With a name that is so LOTR based, you could be just about any of those PB people! With that said, my friend, I cannot say equivocally that you either know or do. not. know. him who I live through and in inside this carnal world!

I'm a virtual unknown huil throw spelling errors at you just so you wonder if I'm just ignert or in your head.

Playfully, Tyronious

ithchick said...

Are you someone who said he would start a t-shirt empire, and the one who I signed his notebook with a comment about the purple abyss?

polemic turtle said...

He's probably not.

beatrice said...

No, dear, that is a different Tyler. Same church, same name, different person.

Unknown said...

i know its a little off the subject but you had a section with a bunch of singing school pictures for Harmony Highlands that I would like to steal. Where is the link to them?

beatrice said...

Get on TROG and I'll send it to you in a PM.