Loving Gaze

I raise my eyes

to see your holy face.

Let my heart

as a lamp burn before You.

In the warmth of your Spirit,

my prayer,

like oil clouded by cold,
becomes clear:

Loving Gaze,

into the orison

of your eyes

let my words disappear

into Light,

passing through adoration

into your Presence.

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Beloved One

Beloved one.
let not my words,
but the love
that flies through them
alight on your finger.
                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Shrine of Your Glory

I take the icon of your Mother

to my heart, and close my eyes

around You. Angels surround You

in any form or title that she wears.

She bears your image in her human

frame, and, like a window pane

that opens into Light, even the

breeze of heaven passes through

her veil as through lace curtain:

in her there is no impediment

to the divine effulgence.

Theotokos, prism sublime,

I take her image

to my heart to be the shrine

of Triune Beauty.

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

The Violin

Master, You have formed me
like a rough-cut violin
filled with quiet energy
small and plain.
My countless sins and imperfections
stain the weathered frame,
and yet your Holy Name
is stamped upon me: You are my maker.
Tenderly you touch your bow
to the still untuned strings of my heart.
Here, in the darkness, your graceful
fingertips pressing my will
recall my purpose:
from the deep inner silence,
lifted through graceful scrolls,
You would fill all space and all time
with your music.
Even so, you hold me close;
it is your face pressed to my longing;
it is you ear, searching
the vibratory meeting place of divine love
that seeks expression.
By your grace,
let the ground-character
of this small violin.
be tenderness. 

                                                                                                                     ©  by Victoria Forrester

And Lazarus Danced

What is my calling, Lord?

What is my soul’s vocation

except the call of Lazarus?

It is your invocation to the Father

and His invitation to my soul

to hear in the voice of your Presence, Life!

This is the knife that cut the shroud of Lazarus

and sent him dancing into the arms of God.

Glancing into the deepest cavern of myself

where I lie bound and helpless to respond,

I beg your mercy:

Lord, let me hear, even in my darkness,

the call I long to hear after my last breath

and in the light poured from

the fragrance of your lips:

“Come into My Presence,

into the heaven of my Heart

and there drink freely

of the sweet wine of my love.

It is the wine prepared

before the world began

and psalms are unsung

in the dancing.”

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Constellation

Not in the ample air alone, 
but in the Breath 
warmed by the Heart of God
I wish to breathe.
Held by the Spirit, in His hands,
His Love unfolds me like a field of stars,
lays me before the feet of Him who alone knows
the constellation of my soul.
Are we not each a varient
of The Constellation of the Lamb
whose glory fills the heavens and the earth?
Even before our birth He knew us
and the plan His wounded Heart accomplished.
Gently, his piercèd hands reach into memory,
retrace the pattern in our fallen ground:
"Child, be not far;
I come to raise you up into my heaven,
star by star."

                                                                                                                     ©  by Victoria Forrester

Wedding Guests

Lord, open to me the holy house

of love that is your Being.

I would enter by the door of

adoration ~ wonder that overwhelms

my questions and my doubts.

Within the compass of your beauty 
and your goodness

and in your endless mercy
bless me. I dip my fingers 
into the font and make the sign 
of Triune Love over my being.

It is so too of the man who smells of
tobacco and of the woman who, for now,
has forgotten even the names of her children:

within the walls of wonder, dressed
in the seamless garment of Beauty not 
of our own making, we enter into Mystery,
holding each other gently in Your arms.

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Winter Bread

There is no road

except the road to Emmaus.

It's in the little church
and on the road to town

He winters there. 
And in our Winter Bread,
to Him who wears
love's plaited crown,
even the summer
in the winter wheat
bows down.

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Eucharist

I receive You,
and You receive me:
this is the great resplendency
that fills my heart with morning
and I taste the dawn.

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Bethlehem

Come!
Bring the children.
Awake and wide-eyed
as a child at play,
the All Beautiful is sleeping
in our Mother's lap.
Amazed
by the heaven of His Face,
even the stars
hold their breath
                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester
View images 

Weeping Icon

But who will dry

the tears of God?

Icon of grace:

within the sorrow of His eyes

His mother nears

and in the holding of her

place, the Spirit hears

a mother's song,

feels her embrace.

Then in the glistening

silence of her face,

He turns God's tears 
to fragrance,

living fragrance,

living grace.

So falls Christ's sweetness
like a mother's kiss,
her eyes the well
that draws Him into recognition.


                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Elijah's Mantle

Lifted above the convent wall

and carried where He wills,

the Lord distills the sisters' work

into our valley.

Their paradise: to know the Heart

and Mind of Jesus.

Hidden within the mantle of their call,

we do not see Elijah's cloud

above our dreaming,

and yet the sweet rains fall.

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester

Meditation on the Icon of Pentecost

Envy not him who

wears the crown of Cosmos;

it is the world's delusion.

I have worn it too

and know it's weight and heft,

especially the weight

of my own understanding.

It was on such a road

that I was found by Beauty

and dazed and empty-headed,
arrived at last with the apostles.

They were like tuning forks

and vibrant.  Not one of us

was the same man he's been before,

and they knew me interiorly,

understood by His Truth
that I too had begun to breath
in the wild realm of His Spirit.
They who had offered praise
became Praise of His Glory,
and I, Saul of the Great Misunderstanding,
mercifully, was no more.
He who had given Ezekiel his dream
had given to us the Unimaginabley More:
swift as Elijah's fire, He had consumed
our words, split language
like a rock from which
the Untamed Water springs,
filling all time and all space
with his Marvelous Roar!


                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester
View image and explanation of the Pentecost Icon 

Peter

Even before the dawning of denial,

the Lord beheld the rock

that could be struck and shattered,

and yet He called you Peter.

Even the stone rolled from the empty tomb

was not enough to let you

understand His purpose or your part.

He watched so patiently beside the shore until

He saw your ship adrift

and empty in the night, felt your heart

fill with words that could not be unspoken. 

And then the voice the Great Shepherd

thundered above the waves,

unbroken as the Net of Mystery

that He’d placed gently in your empty hands:

Who do they say I that I Am? he seemed to ask.

And no one said His name.

His love was all fire and rock and wind and sea.

Three times he struck your name against His own

until, like flame set free by stone on Stone,

you caught His Spirit.

by Victoria Forrester

The Sound of Your Coming

Pressed by love's ardent longing

into a shore prepared for You

even before the dawn,

it is your footprints in the Psalms

that fill with Light.

So too, my heart within me

fills with joy

at the sound of your coming.

                                                                                                ©  by Victoria Forrester 

2 poems from my books

Love is to life as after is to rain.

I've seen it pass through birth and death,

make prism out of pain.

So penetrant a light

so pure its substance seems to be,

all window shutters only prove
their insufficiency.

Love,
a tenacious thread
weaving through time
begins and ends
in you and me
forever.


My early poems were published in two small collections: Words to Keep Against the Night Atheneum: New York, 1983 and A Latch Against the Wind, Atheneum: New York, 1985