Susan E. Antlitz, Ph.D.

P o e t r y

Drops of Light

We are called to be drops of light
in the midst of the dark,
softening solid unseeing
with the silvery luminence of twilight,
silver sight, pulsing across a great unknown
 
Velvet stars, not harsh or glaring,
but quietly, gently, steadily
glowing across vast light-years,
a gulf too great to span
in mere motion.

Yet, light-- soft light, steady silver streams
reach so far.

Quietly, quietly, no darkness can withstand
the silver glow.

SEA 2007

Destiny

The universe painted on a drum
unfolds with the echoing beat
of God's Heart

Deep in the silence,
in the emptiness that reaches
between the smallest particles in you and me
flows the Love that holds all things together

The Word, the Beat, the Song
of the Imagination that calls us all to be.

God is singing; God is dreaming
and we are the song, we are the dream,
and we must remember the heartbeat
that echos through our very Being

Because that Heart of Love
that makes you, you and makes me, me
is speaking, is singing, is crying out,
to a world that so often forgets
that at its core,
deep within,
is a Love that flows through time,
a Love that heals, and a Love that breaks
all the chains of pain and fear.

Love is speaking at the very Heart
of every soul that longs to find true destiny,
the true unity, the harmony
that is flowing,
that waits for us to see
that God's heart beats for us, through us, with us,
in all our deepest, secret, most sacred dreams,
Waiting to shine through us,
Waiting for us to know
that we are the living echo
of that Great Heart,
the celebration of divine artistry,
Free, and clear, and unafraid,

That is Healing,
That is Blessing,

And that is Destiny.

SEA 2009

To Praise You, Lord

Praise and wonder!
Delight of my heart!
How vast your glory,
How luminous your art.

You paint across the sky-
Further- Sing the stars
each particle and atom
the archs of fire
the cosmic clouds.

You hide life in distant reaches
buried, to be sought out,
Your artistry the universe,
Your symphony the stars.

You have breathed the galaxies,
stretched you words farther than our thoughts.
Your heartbeat is the rhythm
behind and through and in, all being;
Your ways so far above and far beyond,
Your thoughts so much higher
than human minds can climb.

And yet, your temple is within us,
Your temple is within us.

And we
Are made in your image,

Reflections of your imagination,
Your heart,
Your art,
Thrilled through thought and blood and sinew
to sing-dance your rhythm
and dream
of all your impossisble realities

With wonder, you call us chasing after you,
to see what you have wrought
in matter and in thought.

All the world and everything in it
exists to praise you, Lord.

When we praise you, we become
the rhythm of your heart
At the heart of all.

All the unseen universes,
and everything in them,
cries out
to praise you, Lord.

SEA 2008

Prayer

Lord, hold this broken, bleeding bird
in your hand
and look on all my sufferings,
See my pain
and heal me.

For your power fills the world
and extends over all your vast creation.

Who cares for the broken and dying,
but you, oh Lord?

Let your mercy descend like the rain
and bring life to the land of my affliction,
Let your Love illuminate my world.

SEA 1995

    
Land of the River, Mountain, Sun

Sometimes at night
I look up at the stars
and wonder
who drew the lines
between
all the stars.

Pieces of my life
glitter
in the dark spaces
of memory,
thoughts that filled
my universe
and old events
that haunted
the inner stillness
of my heart, my being

Racing, pounding, raging,
swirling, upheaving waves
waiting to break forth--
to breath, to live
to escape into endless dawn,
surge within me
as I reach out and touch
the wall of glass-
the window between the worlds-
Can this be? --
Another hand is pressed
to the glass, mirroring mine
The wall dissolves, melted away
by this strange heat --
Another: warm, solid, real
Sees and understands
all the long and dusty trials
I have trod.

The land stretches off beyond
what my eyes can see
A river winds through it,
leading down to the sea
It began in the mountains, high
were the ground touches the sky.
Some say it is the River of Sunlight
reaching out into the world
so that travelers can always find their way.
I just stand and look,
and look and look--

The wind seems to catch my breath
out of me, and take it
as it whispers past telling secrets
of far away places
that are waiting for me.

The journey is waiting,
it's all around me
The Morning folds its warmth
around me saying
"Now begin, come and see, and feel, and know
Look at the beauty prepared for you,
take this gift
and hold it in your heart--
and from the opening to the closing of the day
hear the song of Life--
vital, free--
every place where you set your foot
is the very breath of the Father,
spoken when as yet
nothing had come to be.
Now child, Listen,
run quickly,
See! See what wonderful things
the Lord has made--
made and given to you!

Look and know that He loves you!"

And as the wind breezes past,
I feel like it grabbed
hold of my heart and carried it off
into the orange-gold light
and the green of the hills,
sent it tickling down a thousand
rocky streams--
Wove it into the colors on the leaves,
And painted it into the
blue and white and evening
purple-red of the sky.

A shadow there on the wooded path--
Laughs!  And the sound is from my heart.
A bird twitters and flits,
reading the notes from my beating tablet-
the song in my veins, the song of the bird--
the same, the Same!

And I run off into the day, and into the land,
to recapture the thousand facets of my heart-
They fill me, but dance away again
to always be found, and never kept.

While the facets of mine are scattered,
He gives me His
and says that I will see Him
when all my love is given,
and I am filled with all of His.

Sometimes at night,
I look into the sky
And wonder who drew the lines
between all the stars....

It is the fragments of a Heart
joining hands-
It is the Lord,
pouring love into each
crystal piece--
A love that cannot be divided,
even across the dark ocean
of space.

It binds all things together.

The glass wall has melted--
this Other hand-- now pressed to mine;
Another traveler,
looking, running,
sojourning in the Morning Light.
I see the traveler,
and the whole world again becomes new
as I look through those other eyes.

Far out, beyond the horizon
where no eye can see
and no foot this way returns
Is my distant home: richer, fuller
the palace of the Sun,
the Heart of the Universe
that beats ever with the
Dancing Drum--
The land of travelers come home--
the hearth of light,
a world yet brighter
than all of this,
and Joy no time can dull.

The Mountain, from which the
golden river flows,
will take me back
when I have passed through life
into the final sea
And my journey done,
will cast my heart
into eternity.

But oh, the fragments of that Great Heart will be left
for other wanderers there to find--
that in the night some sparkling light
may catch a wanderer's weary eye.

http://seantlitz.com