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About all kinds of
things
and going's on; so all
the way to acknowledgement.
All called "silk weather" -
Takes one indoors and out of doors
In a way I'd not traveled before,
and that's what poetry's all about -
To take you all over -
Inside and out, Down and up,
Via curious ways, and from
the familiar to the profound.
The universe all around
covers our lives and on into
an intensity of living love.
� Copyright, Charles Russell Riley, June, 2000
ArtTechnology.com
Writing
About the author and complete works follow:
Russ Riley grew up in the depression. Like many of his
generation, he learned from the depression and his deep Christian
faith to pull together and help others. He served throughout
the European campaign as a doctor in WWII. After WWII, he
served his community and family. He was a surgeon of the old
school. The reason he became a doctor was to help people.
Patients were not denied service because of a lack of income.
He went to the patients when they needed help. During the
depression, he delivered babies at the Home for Unwed Mothers in
Richmond, Virginia. During the war, he served tirelessly as a
battalion surgeon to care for the sick and wounded, and this service
did not always stop with his own troops. When he once came
upon a wounded soldier who no other doctor would care for because he
was German, he assisted him with the same care he would give to his
own soldiers. This is the way he was. He cared for
everyone. The unusual war stories on this site were inspired
by his humanity and humor.
One of the comments after Russ passed away was that he gave a
human dimension to the women's prison, which is one of the many ways
he put his faith into practice. He was a loving father and
husband, who gave his spare time to his family.
His interest in poetry has been as genuine and constant as his
service to country and family. His writing is as crafted
and caring as his doctoring. It is quite understandable that a
highly skilled surgeon who lived in a continuum of God, Nature, and
Man would reflect this in his highly skilled writing. It is no
wonder that two of his favorite authors were two greatly skilled
writers: David Jones, who wrote of the great tragedy of war,
and Gerard Manley Hopkins, who captured exultation in the
experiences of the physical world that transforms and transcends.
Another Spring
We first come again to lunch on the terrace, in
the warmth of it all.
The winter Daphne, about the bird bath, wafts lemony -
like magnolia fragrance.
The Christmas rose and the Lenten rose bloom, too.
"Can you see them out there?" my wife asked.
A good time of year - no outdoor bugs.
The crocus blooms on the hillside, purple - the color of lent.
Some visitors, winter gone - now fly and call raucously all about.
One settles into the charm and gentle greeting of another spring.
How to conclude, what is just now begun is an unanswerable conundrum.
Tough the pleasure of this time is a graceful end in itself.
Sunday 3/12/99
on the lower terrace
Georgetown Notes
(Our Walking Tour)
Elevation
Irregular red
awry brick
Begoniaed
walks
Shack-like
Leaning houses
Like Healy
Hall turn-
buckled...with
Boa constrictor
Radiator....
Martini Cap-
puccino ala
tombs...."Ancien
Regime" athletic
Pictorial....
More structures
Palatial
Recessed lead-
en swags
Circuitous
Cellar stairs
Frontal......
___
Did Jack of
3307* once peer
At the old manhole
cover (F.A. Schneider)
Just across "N" St.?
___
And have you ever
gone
To the corner
grocery on
thirty-fourth
Where the senile
Lady lets you in
via a buzzer?
___
Two gigantic in-
the-walk sycamores
guard the old Russian
Volta Place embasy -
Their bank seemed
Shaggy from fear -
___
Sanitary
Pomander
walk** is
Very quiet
Now ......
CRR & ESR 9/3/76
* Marbury House - bought for him by Jacqueline - Va
** 40 block tenants were ejected from this Georgetown residential
area in 1950 when it again became "the place".
Before this it was called Bill Court - judged unsanitary.
The Holy Spirit
Past into Future
To you -
All of you -
The appointed
For whom the flames
Come like burning bush!
How came,
All of you here
On whom the plumes
Of the white dove
Brush?
Why you,
Because water-born
And spirit-oiled
In infant sojourn?
Why now -
Who stood by you
In the lost past?
In ghostly conjecture
you pause.....
For the unborn ones
This is a departure.
A SILK SCENE
The Japanese
With slanty eyes
See the scene
Through a screen
Of silk --- it seems
To abstract nature.
Though a joy to them,
To us a dream
Of another kind ---
And all this is
Of no concern
To them . . . .
This brought on by a
Japanese painting on
silk in the foyer of
the Redemptorist
Retreat House,
Hampton, Va.
St. Patrick's Day
March 17, 1991
THOUGHTS ON RETREAT
Early Saturday
a.m. & later on
3.31.90
Early morn through the glass ---
Old dull flat watery Hampton Roads
Bleak in the saturating shower
Dim-lit the land-seascape
Blurred the marshes along Mill Creek.
Square stand the duck blinds ---
Guards for the estuary.
Below on the lawn Mary's statue
On a round concrete dais
Arms full of roses.
Wet dripping birds cling
To their tree roosts ---
Most uncomfortable ---
Songs muted, flights cancelled!
Later on a return to the window.
Still a gloomy sodden sky ---
A gaggle of swans skim the water
Heading east when the guard helicopter
Takes another turn about ---
Afraid to trust in the Lord?
Blinks its little warnings
Save me if I'm saveable ---
The President sent me!
Mallards go up in a flurry.
Fort Monroe remains stolidly aloof,
Fires no shots, if shots it has?
Jeff Davis left long ago.
We are imprisoned by rain
And freed by our prayer.
I almost miss a conference
Scribbling thus; recording's slow work.
It seems redemption is faith
And the latter not explainable,
And so, therefore, is redeeming.
Quo vadis, reed bending to the wind?
Springtime's pollen-dusting everything
To a chorus of sneezes and coughs of repentance.
C.R. Riley at Redemptorist
Retreat House 3.31.90
On Mill Creek
Just beyond the Ides of March
From the east porch
The Sun of heavens
Up 45 degrees over the Roads
Of Hampton--- in apices
Of leafless shore trees
Perched sea birds,
Singly atop each water-pole,
Filed along pier rails.
At lawn's edge
Feathery swamp reeds
Dressed the banks.
Hesitant breezes
Twirled the reeds, roughened
The water-glare,
Squinting our eyes....
A lone duck far out bobbed
On his water-seat.
God's peace in a warm sun
For wintry souls, grace
On Mill Creek.
C.R. Riley
St. Patrick's Day
Redemptorist Retreat House
March 16, 1991
The following is included as an insight into how the author
worked. Besides copious notes on everyday occurrences.
He copied poems that were of particular interest to him.
THEW
THE WORLD
GOD HID himself so that the world could be seen
if he'd made himself known there would be only him
and who in his presence would notice the ant
the handsome, peevish wasp worrying in circles
the green drake with his yellow legs
the peewit laying its four eggs crosswise
the dragonfly's round eyes beans in a pod
our mother at the table holding not so long ago
a mug by its big funny ear
the fir tree shedding husks instead of cones
pain and delight both ways to learn
equally mysteries but never the same
stones which show travelers the way
love that is invisible
hides nothing
JAN TWARDOWSKI: (1915 -, a priest and rector
of a Warsaw church, has long been considered the most original among
polish devotional poets. He published his first collection in
1937, and only resumed publishing his work twenty-two years
later. Over the past three decades he has published several
highly acclaimed books of poems.
FROM: POLISH POETRY ----SPOILING CANNIBAL'S
FUN 1991, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
Mother's Sunday.
Today is one of those special
Day of days. A yearly time
To honor our mothers.
Here, and there, and beyond time.
No matter where, that particular
Mother of yours was and is one of
God's two great gifts to you.
A father has his day.....
But the mother is always
About to guide and she prays
That each of us will
measure up and try to
Be as good and holy as
One can be - that reminder
to keep on trying! So -
that true happiness
will be your and yours.
Not just Hers but yours every day.
CRR, May 10, 1997
A Holy Roof
Unfinished
3, 18, 88
We came on Lenten Friday -
Once again a long time -
To this place of peace on
Hampton water, where priests
Do solace, trim-up, repair
And refloat faith keepers -
Listen to sad tales -
Forgive - Scatter condolences.
Lord's appointed of a mystic kind.
Fascinating was the chapel's
Weather-beaten, water-stained
Ceiling - above those
cross-stationed opaque
glassed wailing walls.
Cautiously began the Assuaging
of the assembled souls -
Red tile would be nice
for the roof!
Two waddling ducks about
No ships sighted -
From the small quay
Davis' old prison
Fort Monroe to the left,
And the old decrepit
Cambridge Hotel.
The spit across the inlet
deserted,
Hampton is in ill repair.
No one is about
but retreatants,
Overcast the day wears on - cold -
the last of winter's vestiges.
3 beautiful white Birches by the chapel's south.
Water spills from the chapel roof down the wall.
The gutters stopped up.
PLEASE NOTE: As time permits I will be
adding poems until the collection is complete.
Please Note:
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The author retains all rights.
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ArtTechnology.com is an art gallery dedicated to original expressionistic art works, poetry, and prose. By means of original expressionistic art works, poetry, and prose, ArtTechnology.com seeks to raise epiphanies in our personal and communal growth. By faithfully exploring the familiar to the profound through expressionistic art works, poetry, and prose, ArtTechnology.com hopes to immerse us in the intensity of living love, harmony and peace. ArtTechnology.com is serving by means of expressionistic art to find a growing awareness of agitation and contention, which each one of us may take control of and resolve our inner turmoil with harmony and peace.
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