The Writers’ Workshop is a group of church members and friends who meet about once a month to work on their writing together. The workshop provides a safe place for people to develop their own voice through poetry, fiction, and non-fiction prose. Over fifty people have attended the Writers’ Workshop since its inception in 1992, and everyone is welcome to bring something they have written that they can share with the group.
These group members displayed the following examples of poetry and prose as part of Faith & Arts Sunday 2014 (February 23, 2014): Gary Buchs, Jim Cartwright, Fritz Fritschel, Donald K. Johnson, Jean-Paul Klingebiel, and Kathryn Klingebliel.
A New Hymn Text…
Listen deeply to falling leaves,
To fallow fields once filled with sheaves,
To earth’s fierce urge for fruitful care,
Where creatures all receive full share.
refrain: For listening deeply is our prayer
In listening deeply, God is there.
Listen deeply to silent tears,
To hurt and pain of many years,
To scars whose source is dimly known,
To courage the wounded have shown.
Listen deeply to movement’s sound,
To nature’s tunes where ever found,
Of harmony and joy of sight
Bursting forth with color bright.
Listen deeply to quanta leap,
To dreamy paths rise up in sleep,
Of earth’s myst’ries as yet unseen
To be sustained in tones of green.
Listen to those who have no home,
To refugees forced by war to roam,
To countless ones now cast aside
With no shelter where they reside.
Listen deeply to feathers of hope,
To dreams beyond our present scope,
With love and peace for what might be
To form a loved community.
Fritz Fritschel
February 2014
street chair man
I live in a chair
between the sidewalk and the curb
On the edge of the park
You see me you do not look
I look at the trees the passersby
Turn my back on the busy boulevard
And on the cars and hills
I do not see the hills
I do not lift up mine eyes unto the hills…
from whence cometh my help?
Kathryn Klingebiel
2012-04-15
bag chair man
I live in a chair
still live in a chair
will do so, what? to the end of time?
double bags piled up about me,
untold treasure under the streetlamp,
treasure that says “me.”
little savings from a long life:
if I leave my live-in chair
will I lose myself?
Kathryn Klingebiel
2013-04-07
rain chair man
umbrella under the pour and roar
one small umbrella my roof
against the downward universe of water
living water
am I not living too, in my chair
on the edge of the park
even with holes in my umbrella
you do not see me
wet through the holes in my boots
under the umbrella
on the chair
in the rain
Kathryn Klingebiel
2013-04-14
and today even the flowers are gone…
how to say this?
I know we are all temporary
but this? street chair man’s spot is empty
the chair is gone
all the bags, the man himself
all gone
the spot under the lamppost
now just bare empty dried grass;
that was yesterday’s news
and today the kicker: a bouquet of flowers
lying next to the lamppost,
does it sing?
does it weep?
what does it say to you and to me?
Kathryn Klingebiel
2014-02-04
Stylites in the City
The man sat with his back to Kapi‘olani Blvd., a traffic artery leading from downtown past Waikīkī and then on to Wai‘alae and the freeway heading to the east end of the island. He sat across this major artery from the rundown version of his home, King Arthur’s Court. He had turned his back to the hustle of life and to his now decrepit dream.Nobody now dreams of Camelot. We seldom refer to King Arthur or to his dreams of the perfect society in Medieval Europe. The vision of hope, equality, justice–or at least the steps we could take to begin our journey to the realization of that hope–Camelot of the 1960s is gone, a memory, certainly not a realization. So it came as no surprise to see the man, sitting across the busy traffic corridor from his decrepit court, sitting motionless in his old chair between the busy boulevard and the sidewalk bordering the Ala Wai playground, sitting with the detritus of life around him, wrapped in worn, soiled clothes, sitting with his back to the busy street and ignoring the pedestrians walking along the sidewalk.
Arthur follows Saint Simeon Stylites. He has forsworn his court and left the hustle of society to retreat to solitude, meditation, quietude. So he sat, months on end, ignoring life around him, silent, still; I never saw him other than in his chair; only once I saw him eating food, with his head still covered and face mostly hidden by the hood he always wore.
As with the earlier disciples of Saint Simeon, time tends to wear the faithful fewer, then fewer. Last week, the Stylites was no longer present. I looked around and found a man sitting on a chair further inside the park, further from the busy boulevard and from King Arthur’s court. Ah, I wondered, has he furthered his withdrawal from this busy world? Never having seen clearly his face, I could not tell if this new Stylites was Arthur. This man had no hood upon his head, but the bushy cornrow of his hair didn’t seem consistent with Arthur; it was not he.
Throughout the following days he never reappeared. He has withdrawn from society.
James F. Cartwright
Haiku on Birds While Walking
Cardinal red, gloss
black; Papa bird among mate,
fledged cardinalis.
Jim Cartwright
November 2013
Click on image for closer look.Bright yellow in field
of green. Saffron Finch amid
gray common waxbills.
Jim Cartwright
November 2013
Click on image for closer look.White Bird
(Sometimes around LCH, but more down toward the ocean, the two or three flutter-swooping-soaring-playing white birds you might see are Fairy Terns. They build no nests but lay their eggs among forked tree branches.)
Heaven’s restless nymph
Manu o ku
hovers in our seaside shadows
breeze buoyant bird among the leaves
nestles feather floated
suspended amid the tree’s wooden arms
White bird
alien guest
yesterday’s chick is gone
lost swallowed
So Earth-bound Sorrow visits all
to leach life
break treasures
dilute dreams
Then heaven’s Spirit bids us see beyond
Turn
Fairy Tern
falling toward azure skies
exuberant elfin furl
lifting veils from our landed eyes
Wisdom’s white dragon breath
wafting free
swirling by
soft soaring silken sails
Fly Fly Fly Fly
Donald K. Johnson
Advent’s Little Children
(Some congregations like to save Christmas carols for the twelve days of Christmas. At LCH, we introduce our Children’s Sermon with a children’s hymn, so my wife and I wrote these words to go with “O Come Little Children,” for the Advent season.)
O come little children, O come and prepare
A place in your heart for a gift sweet and fair
Sing glory to God, light a candle each day,
And thank God for Jesus who shows us the way.
O Sing little children, O sing and rejoice,
Shh, listen and wait for the angel’s soft voice
To guide you to Bethlehem, starlight and all.
Get ready at home for the Christ child will call.
O children and old ones, the time is now here
For all of God’s people to quiet their fear.
The promise is with us, our hope is in bloom
God’s love does surround us, salvation is soon.
Words by Donald K. and Ruth Johnson
Shhhh. . .Honu Is Dead
Rock-a-bye honu
with dangling head
Great sea turtle lapped
cradled at the shore
Still borne in Mother’s water
up from the deep no more
Violated citadel
yielding to the enemy
the sand-tan belly-stones of your
una castle
Great silent sea song
once gliding
weaving undulant cove wood
with counterpoint eddies
sewing sun diamonds
in bubblet ribbons
to the dark
clicking
deep
Complete your ho‘o honu hula
sleep my friend
sleep
Donald K. Johnson
Hawaiian Glossary:
- honu – turtle
- una – turtle shell
- ho’o honu – to deepen
- hula – dance
Montezuma’s Woman
Miniature woman
Square like the chiseled story stones
Hiding from archeologists in the Andes
Yellow fingernails grimed with yesterday’s breakfast soot
Heat shiny terra cotta skin layered with clothes
Shriveled woman squatting in Acapulco’s curbside stench.
“You buy?”
Her hand offered colors woven from
Fern emerald glens awash with bird song evenings
Magenta mountains soft in their sun dusted haze
Turquoise studded silver snakes twining sensual arms
Burnt sienna gorges gold gilded by earth’s fireball
Black enigmas lurking beyond hewn temple doors
Crimson floors blood pooled by Conquistadors
Wool warped and woofed by Inca wisdom
“Cheap!”
A dribble of manufactured dominance
stuffed in a plastic card
offered in exchange
Don Johnson
Ten Foot Daisy
When word and stone tear heart and bone
Take a child to the circus for truth.
It’s a cartwheel life to be touched, to be known.
Share cotton candy. Look! Stumble shoes, pants unsewn,
Exed out eyes still the white face cries, yet the clown’s aloof
When word and stone tear heart and bone.
Joker knows a nose rounded red, with razor honed
And bottle in bed. A suicidal soul is no spoof.
It’s a hell of a life not to be touched, not to be known.
Risk death to please the crowd alone
So lashing whip and frail chair meet tiger’s tooth
Tempting a tear in heart and bone.
It’s a high wire dive if the balance is blown
There’s death in the plunge, so a cowards net is wisdom’s proof
It’s a cartwheel life to be safe at home.
Like a ten-foot daisy affection is grown
A friend’s hugging ears are chicken soup
When word and stone tear heart and bone.
It’s a cartwheel life to be touched, to be known.
Donald K. Johnson
August 4, 1999
The Coming of Light
(Honoring the craftsmen and laborers who gave Sainte Chapelle, in Paris to the world.)
A peasant from the glasscutter’s guild ducked into his twig-roofed hovel to flop exhausted on a pallet. Pain from the bruise where his master’s wrath had landed dissolved with a satisfied sigh as he thought about the window. The ruby shard snuggled in soft metal, soldered next to the emerald tree hummed with playful tension, as did the orange sash on the Duke’s lavender robe. What a wonder. The life force of cohabiting colors, like the yellow speck in the Bethlehem sky, moved, beckoned, whirled as the Divine story marched boldly forth in it lead shrouded web. So the old man slipped into sleep wrapped in rainbow dreams.
A couple seeing Europe on a shoestring had one more cathedral to go. This one promised Mozart on period instruments at sun down in a splendid medieval glass bottle. Local moneychangers herded them through a tourist-shearing sty onto rusty folding chairs.
The curious crowd from the world around clattered into the stone-cutters-canyon and calmed. “My!” “myyyyyyy!!!!” Hush descended as every eye looked up. Quiet breath-catching sounds punctuated the sunset spangled music resting on the backs of a thousand gifted craftsmen, all at peace slumbering in graves nearby.
Clever this light to shed its extraneous dress passing through glass to enter the eye and drape its purity around hearts, shivering all with awe as their awakened souls drift upward.
Donald K. Johnson
November 2008
Morning Cats
Cats on the porch rail
Cats waiting and anticipating
Cats calling in the morning
Cats watching so intent
Cats worrying, where’s our food
Cats balanced, dancing on the rail
Cats begging
Cats praying little cat like prayers
Cats dreaming what cats dream
Cats singing cat songs so fine
Cats sleeping in the sun
Cats watching bugs and birds
Cats wishing tiny cat wishes
Cats just simply sitting on the rail
Cats just being cats
Gary Buchs
2014-02-10
Once in Their Lifetime
Finding time
Together time
Brother Sister Time
The tick and the tocks leave stamps in their hearts
As time plods along like an elephant’s walk
We command time no more than
The tides high or low
Yet for the young, time has a pace all its own
Like time for a tree or the moon or the stars?
Free from sight in places afar
The gift of this time, this irreplaceable time
Building bonds that forever
Help hold fast who you are
These “Once upon a times” will become your forever times.
Love, Grandpa Gary Buchs
The Old Plow
Out by the old hedge tree
Sits an old rusty Plow
It was good enough in its day
To turn the sod they say
But now the old Plow just sits by a tree
Never again a furrow to see
But in its day it was good enough they say
Good enough, what does that mean?
I thought about this today
Is that what someday they’ll say?
He was good enough in his day
But now he’s old and rusty so it’s time to go away?
Gary Buchs
Kapi‘olani Rainbows
Oh, what of the rainbows?
Heavenly arches in the sky
Glorious shimmering colors
By the sun rays splayed
On gentle rain clouds.
They soon appear for a moment
Only to fade away, as if by magic
Play of Sun, hiding behind clouds
God’s message of beauty to us all;
Serenity prevails on our gentle Earth.
Jean Paul Klingebiel
128-20130327
A little bird told me so…
A little bird told me so
Long on songs hopping to and fro
Seeming without cares
Future and past not his fare.
Alas, next day he lay there
Someone’s morsel to prepare.
What of its life, progeny to grow?
Insignificant life we think we know?
Transitory and short it was
Not so unimportant as I saw
A rare species to be soon extinct
Even in this our precinct
Life is in flux, hardly stays the same
Even the havens go insane
Nothing is forever, all has to go
That is what we have to know.
Jean Paul Klingebiel
128-2013-07-14
Waves
Mighty force spread out on the Oceans
Justly feared by man the world over
Waves can bring destruction and death
Gentle pulsions, cradle of evolution
Stirring life out of primordial soup
Waves are essential to life creation
Nature seems to abhor static idleness
Constant motion and change universal
Where would we be without waves?
Light, mass and motion all related
Our world and distant galaxies, all in motion
Their mass and their light all part of creation
Jean Paul Klingebiel
128-20130811