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Keel and Beam · Backward Mutters Poetry Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: You are listening to the Backward Mutters poetry podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Please visit online at backwardmutters.substack.com.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: There you can subscribe via your favorite podcast player and read the newsletter.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Randy Edwards.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is a sonnet which I wrote during Easter week.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The words keel and beam were likely in my head because I'd been looking at
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: the spine titles of my incomplete collection of Aubrey Matron novels
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: by Patrick O'Brien.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: They stood and still do stand quietly judging me from their place in the bookshelf.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that's another story.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: The poem itself was one of the downloaded sort.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: By that I mean I received and wrote it with little...
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And possibly too little editing.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know those sorts of endeavors?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: They are not so much an act of the will as a receptivity to a moment.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: That the church is oftentimes depicted as an ark like Noah's is a common metaphor.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that image is a bit more relatable in the timber framing
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: of Norman churches and more directly to the stave churches of Norway.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you were inclined,
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  SPEAKER_00: the relationship between ship and church is not a bad rabbit trail to run down.
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  SPEAKER_00: At any rate,
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  SPEAKER_00: one does not have to stretch too far from church as ark to Jesus as
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: a ship carrying his own through storm-tossed seas.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I offer this sonnet keel and beam, trusting that you too are being kept safe in his hold.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Set as a keel, he was placed between two ends, and into his arms he took his crew.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: As a ship, he bore them into the sea within the hold of his keel and beam.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Though waves break over, he holds them above as on dry ground.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: He bears them through flood, keeps them sunward, though dark gray clouds roll.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: The arms of his beam keeps them safe in his hold.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: They do not see him.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: He bears neath the waves,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: acquainted with grief,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: passed into the grave,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: his body stretched across keel and beam,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: then tossed as a Jonah into the sea,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: where he bears them safe to his harbor's fold,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: and they bear him in the supper they hold.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the Backward Mutters Poetry Podcast.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Randy Edwards.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.