Epiphany

Pilgrim Heart

Songs of a Common Poet

By Paris Eugene Hlad

 

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But decorations for the tomb

Are poems and pictures I have made;

Though none can be more than a paint,

They gleam for God before they fade.

 

Sometimes, I advocate an obscure philosophical proposition or even try to advance the ideals of a highly personalized religious perspective.[1]  But what I write is always more about my feelings. I believe that sharing a powerful emotion can bring about a kind of friendship between me and my reader, and the establishment of a personal bond is the best, and perhaps the only means I have to gain a reader’s trust.

 

In his magnificent poem, “Little Boy Blue,” Eugene Field put this principle to use, writing about the death of a child. It came down to me in 1956 when my mother read it to me on our way to visit relatives in Chicago. It is still the only piece of literature to have ever made me cry. It sought me out and found me. It told me who I am, and where I am. More importantly, it told me that I am loved.

 

The Epiphany

 

A Suddenly Beautiful Sorrow

Near Broadway, the Waterfront Park,

Newburgh, New York 2013

 

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I wandered on the waterfront

Where cherry blossoms grow

And took some petals

Into mind, and then,

 

I let them go

 

They were so pink

That God seemed vain

 

And naked to my eye

 

Yet I was gathered in His grace,

As they began to fly

 

And as their beauty rose above

My wonder far below,

 

They burst into soft rings of light

That set the scene aglow

 

The blossoms flew in ways their own,

Then on the river fell, like teardrops

 

From a mother’s eyes

When children perish well.

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[1] Paris was raised by Roman Catholics who drifted in and out of the Church in favor of a more personal understanding of the Deity. However, a significant amount of the poet’s religious instruction took place at Morrison Baptist Church in Minneapolis. This is an important consideration in understanding Hlad’s religious perspective because although Paris does not exclude the followers of other faiths from his discussions, his arguments are primarily Protestant in origin. But to him, any belief (faith) in objective goodness is to believe in and side with God, while a rejection of objective goodness is to believe in the primacy of the self, which he regarded as siding with evil.