Hyperlexia Journal

For the past week, I've been unpacking boxes in our new house (circa 1972) and trying to become an official Washingtonian; ie, get my state driver's license, among other things--complicated because my passport is issued in my pre-marriage name, Laura, and our long-absent marriage license cannot be found to prove otherwise--so Vital Records, here I come.

Anyway, it's time to post! The Cutter family hasn't dropped off the side of the earth or morphed into some new dimension, regardless of what you might think.

I have another poem out in a brand new literary journal, Hyperlexia. They post "poetry and prose celebrating the autism spectrum." Take a look.

A Christmas Poem

Notice the little clay hedgehog in the circle of animals around Jesus' manger. I picked him up at a German flohmarkt (flea market). He reminds me of a stanza from the Anglican hymn -- "All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all."

Excerpt from THE HOUSE OF CHRISTMAS

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

--G.K. Chesterton



--Painting is in the Speyer Dom

A Christmas Poem

"In the Bleak Midwinter" is a poem I've always liked, and this seems an appropriate time of year to post it.

In the Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

--Christina Rossetti (1872)

Divided

Stone from the Costa Brava, Spain
We, too, can divide ourselves, it's true.
But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
Into flesh and poetry.
—from "Autotomy" by Wislawa Szymborska

Forgetfulness - Billy Collins Animated Poetry

I've been more forgetful than usual lately. Uhh, I'd tell you more, but I've forgotten what I wanted to say...

We Are All Falling

AUTUMN

The leaves are falling, falling as from way off,
as though far gardens withered in the skies:
they are falling with denying gestures.

And in the nights the heavy earth is falling
from all the stars down into loneliness.

We are all falling. This hand falls.
And look at others: it is in them all.

And yet there is one who holds this falling
endlessly gently in his hands.

By Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated from the German by M.D. Norton)