Inedible Symbols

A word is not the thing it names. A map
is not the territory that it plots.
The painting of a tree does not have sap.
A drawing shows the stars as little dots.
Yet we’ve confused the symbols that we use
with that which they so dimly represent,
though they are just a way of giving clues
to truths but don’t convey the things we meant.
An “atom”, an “electron”, or a “quark”,
are only terms we give to mysteries,
but you can’t eat the word “food” with a fork
nor taste the truth from labels such as these:
our words, like words for foods, are useful labels,
but we need more than them at dinner tables.

Mario A. Pita

Sentience

Just like a nose can’t hear a song that’s sung,
and eyes can’t smell the fragrance of a rose,
and sights aren’t seen by taste buds on the tongue,
and ears can’t feel what only touching shows,
the intellect cannot perceive some things,
yet some believe that only it knows all,
but like a nose can’t know when someone sings,
the range of what it can show us is small.
So when your intellect doubts God exists,
see it as nose that doesn’t hear a song,
and though it gives its reasons and insists,
you feel within your depths that it is wrong:
when intellect declares our lives are senseless,
you know there’s much it doesn’t know, like senses.

Mario A. Pita

Invisibility

You can’t see Love as you can’t see a wind
that stirs fall leaves to vortex pirouettes,
yet still you know it’s there but can’t be pinned
to definitions, caught in language nets.
You know it’s there, like wind that makes leaves dance,
from what, because of it, we’re moved to do,
like make a work of art, or steal a glance,
lend a hand, console a friend, or woo.
Love, unseen, leaves traces in the way
a wind incites fall leaves to dance ballet.

Mario A. Pita

Benediction

May blessings shower on you through your days,
not like a drizzle but a rain that pours
yet bathes you in a light like solar rays
so that a brilliant happiness is yours.
May everything that brings delight to you
be always overflowing in abundance
so that throughout the day the things you do
are full of joy as though each were a fun dance.
And when you have your share of this life’s woe
may it be small and swiftly pass away,
and when the time has come for you to go
may paradise be where you go to stay.
May blessings in your life outnumber stars
in this enormous universe of ours.

Mario A. Pita

Gestures

Though I have knelt before a plaster statue
or others made of wood or else of stone,
these representatives can never match You,
and they have sometimes made me feel alone,
because they show what they themselves are not,
the living God as matter that’s inert,
the God who won’t within a stone be caught,
and this pale substitution sometimes hurt.
But in a noble gesture, I have seen
the God a statue never could reveal,
no matter if it has a marble sheen.
Through a noble gesture I can feel
that You are Love and You are with us here
and not a bloodless statue to revere.

Mario A. Pita

The Point

Today I felt as though I was a speck,
a point within a mass of time and space,
that’s feeling sore and stiffness in the neck,
and also often feeling out of place.
But feeling like a speck did not distress
for then I felt as though I play a part,
though it was not part that I can guess,
within a larger whole – a work of art,
as of a painter pointillist, Seurat,
who with a mass of points would paint a scene,
so I as point in space where I was at
felt brushed within a work as yet unseen.
As even just a point, I am at peace,
my life a point within God’s masterpiece.

Mario A. Pita

Credo

When everything is looking awfully grim,
since we all end up buried in the sod,
and prospects for the future all seem dim,
I don’t believe in anything but God.
When there appears no reason to have hope
and chances for relief from woe look slim,
and it’s insanely difficult to cope,
I don’t believe in anything but Him.
While causes for despair add up to many
and matter seems to be all we’re made of,
and we look for a sign and can’t find any,
I don’t believe in anything but Love.
The time will come when death appears to seize us.
I don’t believe in anything. Except Jesus.

Mario A. Pita