So Many Stars, So Many Flowers

So many stars, so many flowers adorning

Life’s paths from crystal cathedral heavens

To earth’s deepest bourgeoning bowers.

I cannot contain all the joy they sing out,

All their ripening beauty too rich for rhetoric,

Each a magic universe bustling about.

Is this streak of unseen light wasted,

An anonymous eddy in time?

Is that velvet petal, demure in its forest floor retreat,

Unspectacular because it lacked my gaze? . . .

Oh eyeless, gibbering heart!

The hallowed hiddenness of tiny or distant things

Points to the ineffable vastness

Of One who knows each bud in its

Elegance, magnificence, and transience,         

One who names each star and charts its

Flaming path through time and space,

A world of artistry launched into existence

By Marksman’s hands deft in their aim,

Ideas destined to beautify in grand mystique,

A cosmos eluding comprehension,

Yet made for our delight as we sip the

Juice of its Spirited sweetness.

© 2014 Nancy Gerst 


Sure on This Shining Night 
choral setting by Morten Lauridsen with spectacular photos of the celestial skies.

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night 
I weep for wonder wand'ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.  

                          James Agee, 1934                


Photos below by Raleigh photographer Katherine Micks.