Salt of the earth, light of the world
Epiphany 5; Matthew 5:13-20
If we, like salt, bring savour, and conserve
the earth, can we retain that quality?
Will words that sparkle on the tongue preserve
creation’s rights, and battle entropy?
If we are light that’s set upon a hill,
can we remain connected to a power
that through all blackouts keeps light burning still,
a glow of promise in the darkest hour?
If God’s commandments are our salt and light
to share with others in our dubious world,
how might we read that compass in the night,
and in the tempest, hold that map unfurled,
until like prisms, hearts share rainbow light,
while fields of salt beneath the sun flare white.
Barbara Messner February 2020
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Barb, poet priest 
Magnificent rhymes … how do you do that? The meaning of the rambling words clear when you come upon the door at the end of the line.
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Perceptive metaphor – rhyme as a door; sometimes it feels like that as I write, especially in a sonnet – three rooms, where the rhyme leads us into that portion of meaning, then opens into the next, and a couplet to lead us out into the world.
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What a lovely sonnet. I’m struck by that closing image of fields of salt gleaming in the light. It’s giving me things to ponder.
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Thanks Eric. I wonder where your pondering on fields of salt took you. When you said that I suddenly saw an ambivalence in the image that i hadn’t intended – we have country where salinity has increased until nothing much grows, and after rain, shallow pink lakes dry off, glittering with salt, beautiful in a way but ominous. As Maren showed in her poem, salt can be painful and detrimental to nature.
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