Anecdote of the Jar**

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

I ask the Lord To be with me
as I journey through my day
it was so good to know His eye
was on me each step of the way

now I may stumble I may fall
and still he will remain
my precious friend though my failure
He keeps me safe and sane

He will be there till the end of strife
No matter where you are
He is there patiently waiting
no distance will be too far

He will reached down from heaven
with his tender hand
and show you His love
how much he really cares

Don't ever give up on his love
for he loves you and He's there
He will not allow more to happen
then what we can bear

we all have those days
when things goes wrong
to know inside our heart
we can always sing a song

he will hear your call loud or faint
and surely answer your prayer
there's never been a day I could say
my lord was never there