This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is an ekphrastic by Tim Bete based on “The Gift of Today“, a painting by Mandy Madsen.
The cloud of unknowing
All around me quiet gray abounds,
Silence covered with a thin veneer,
Distant mounds in yellow bloom are crowned,
Making sky look slightly less severe,
But silence does not equal solitude,
Clouds of unknowing beacon me to seek,
Yet pillowed gray has little certitude,
I search for God and hope for him to speak,
Forgetful of dark lands that lie below,
Their darkness seems to be of no import,
Except to highlight far off golden glow,
As gray holes cause the light rays to distort.
The dart of God’s desire finds me still,
The sun arises in the distant hills.
Tim Bete is a Discalced Carmelite Secular and a member of the Community of Our Mother of Good Counsel in Beavercreek, Ohio, where he has served as a Formator, on Council, and as President. His writing has appeared in media outlets and anthologies, including Amazing Grace for the Catholic Heart, Catholic Philly, Catholic Exchange, Integrated Catholic Life, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Apostolate of the Little Flower magazine, and The Carmel Clarion. He served on the faculty at the Catholic Imagination Conference and appears on the Carmelite Conversations Podcast, which he also helps produce. Tim has published four books, including The Raw Stillness of Heaven and Wanderings of an Ordinary Pilgrim. You can contact him at http://www.TimBete.net.
Mandy Madsen is an artist working out of St. Paul, Minnesota. To enjoy more of her work, visit https://www.mandymadsenart.com/.
