Give me Ayin Tovah!
Please oh LORD!
I need that “good eye bright”
to see clearly in that glad light
the world and all that lives therein
more clearly than my dull blind sin!I choose that which is most dear,
that which is higher than the rest,
that which is pregnant with the best of best,
OH!  Give me river sight like waters
that rive out canyons deep and great
and beautiful in what has quick
been seen and then removed!yeah, I admit it’s true, that siege
of heart and soul by warring sides
with all opinion to the south
and every thought discordant lurking
dead north in sly quick ambush!

But it’s okay, I’ll use this pain
to myself remind to keep my eyes
wide open, kind and wider still
than the mouth of Jonah’s whale
and my heart here open wider in this gale.This is the key to our city on the dungheap
our city of ruins and all about is strewn
our cut off-ness from rich gold transcendence!
Because there is always persistence
of good, of beauty, and truth shines bright
and its pure light is all around us!

All I have to do is rest my naked eyes
on the most mundane things and not
blindly ignore that jarring exhibition
of our propensity for estrangement!If I can manage to keep my eyes stripped
of fear and fig leaves, then I can manage
the gentle gifts and unveiled grace implied
in every true glimpse of beauty and wisdom!

“All human nature vigorously resists
grace because grace changes us
and the change is painful,”
wrote Flannery O’Connor, lost
in one of those times when God woos
slowly with beauty, grace, and grandeur, woes
like seeing evulsive rivers woe and woo
the earth, moving in a manner
that is missed so easily by busy lives
or critical lives so readily distracted
in a focused pointing elsewhere
(or any other where, for that matter).In those mad times we are the mere
commuters between here and there
in Metro stations oblivious
to the works of Art before us, and
our estranged stony faces
miss the manifold displays
of a many-splendored God’s great graces
in such singular eternal entirety!

But other times, alas
it is we who find ourselves
moved nearly to blindness,
as we labor to take in
the glory of this God
in every startling moment,
like Moses or Isaiah lost
in deserts or in visions…

…Give me Ayin Tovah!
Please oh LORD!
I need that “good eye bright”
to see clearly in that glad light
the world and all that lives therein
more clearly than my dull blind sin!