The Sermon Of Water Poem by Orin MSH

The Sermon of Water serves ablution
Around the leaping ocean of the face
Pushed around by sand and grit
Turned to Oblivion
A shining chorister whose psalms are lit
With enfeebled flames and ignoble face
The dryads sing their soothful divination

Bright fellows of the Fays & jovial Sprites
Whose secret grieves are lapping in watery rites

The maudlin ministers in their half-pint oratory
Half-written speech filled with rancor and spite
What maligned words and praisse perfunctory
What infamy, what surreptitious speech?
The edge of worlds, only angels can reach
The warbling worshippers in their idled aviary
Our feathered friends cry with an unspent rage;
Exultant, soar through Gospels of the Age
That pays them neither heed nor pithy wage


The chalky snow scours all impurities
From star-shaped flakes and vague wizardly shapes
Around the gaping hollow of despair
Where we might speak of how all things can be
The grieving cold and dim despondency

Besides the edge of day, the darkness drapes
Our dust-daubed dreams, then knocked them just as fair
The skeleton keys unlocking mysteries
In meadow's deep, Kelpie-marshed estuaries

In arid land, dull moon and dried up seas
A cloud of mist grows raving lunacies
In madness or great lulling ecstasies
The Summoning Water
Carry the weight of prayers
Undulant on the trail of vapors
Until the drumming waves whisper
Our names in the darkness, forever

(Orin Marlais Keat,26th July 2022)