The Olive Twig
Sometime,
when the waters recede,
you
will be back
from the
ark,
an
olive twig in your beak.
I will let you fly away with promises
I will let you fly away with promises
into the
vast blue skies.
Your wings paint colors as you leave.
You never return,
Your wings paint colors as you leave.
You never return,
but
the colors return again and again,
wring out of
me words.
Sometimes it is a poem.
Most times, it is a sigh.
Sometimes it is a poem.
Most times, it is a sigh.
Peace is a Choice -- Hannah Schenck
The period after the Great Flood that destroyed all life on Earth except the specimens that Noah had preserved on his boat (ark) was described in Genesis 8: 8-12, which said that Noah "sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him." The narrative continued in Genesis 9: 12-16, when God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” The olive branch and the dove, and to a lesser extent the rainbow, have become universal symbols of peace. Bob Dylan, the newest Nobel laureate in literature, a former Jew who became a born-again Christian, has employed Biblical imagery in his lyrics throughout his career, not only in his so-called "Gospel Period" (1979-1981). In many respects, his career as a great artist began with his second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" (1963), which opened with "Blowin' In The Wind," a song about injustice and the longing for reconciliation. It contains the line, ""How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?" The sixth song on the album, "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," is very different in tone: a series of apocalyptic, surrealistic images of pain, sorrow, grief, and hardship.
ReplyDelete(I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard....
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children...
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley...
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning)
The list goes on and on, through another stanza. But at this point in the song the litany of woes is interrupted by a single hopeful line: "But met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow."