“church bells…” and “the way to church”

Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall 2022): 45-46

“church bells…” and Two Other Poems

John J. Han

(Two haiku)

church bells…* the pack of gum I stole fifty years ago

reading Dante fire and ice mixed in a dream

(A tanka)

the way to church—

** I change lanes to pass a slow driver we exchange glances this holy morning

* Previously published in Frogpond: The Journal of the Haiku Society of America, vol. 37, no. 2, Spring/Summer 2014, p. 40, and in Beyond the Grave: Contemporary Afterlife Haiku (ed. Robert Epstein), West Union, WV: Middle Island Press, 2015, p. 89. The poem was inspired by St. Augustine’s Confessions (written c. 397-c.400), in which the author regrets a pear-stealing incident:

Fair were those pears, but not them did my wretched soul desire; for I had store of better, and those I gathered, only that I might steal. For, when gathered, I flung them away, my only feast therein being my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy. For if aught of those pears came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin. (chapter 2) Translated by E. B. Pusey (Edward Bouverie)

** Previously published in cattails, May 2015, tanka page 4.

The Inspiration Tower in Branson, Missouri

(A tanka prose)

The Inspiration Tower, one of the landmarks of Branson, stands in the place where the preacher-author Harold Bell Wright wrote his bestselling novel The Shepherd of the Hills (1907). As a student of Wright’s fiction working on two books on him, I have visited the Shepherd of the Hills Adventure Park, where the tower stands, three times. However, I went to the top of the tower only twice. In September 2022, the elevator was broken, so I had to leave after buying a few Wright souvenirs. A month later, I went up to the top, taking pictures of the surrounding areas in all directions. The rolling hills of the Ozarks looked wonderful even though it was rainy. On a clear day, one can even see the Boston Mountains in Arkansas and Oklahoma to the southwest. Most of the visitors to the tower seem to know—or care—little about the deep connection between the place and Harold Bell Wright. The Shepherd of the Hills is set in the places one can see from the tower—Mutton Hollow, Dewey Bald, Sammy’s Lookout, Old Matt’s Cabin, Old Matt’s Barn, and Roark Valley (where Wash Gibbs’s log cabin stood), among many others. Having read The Shepherd of the Hills and other Wright novels set in the Ozarks, I find the place to be more than a tourist site. Going there almost feels like a pilgrimage for me.

towards dusk sunlight lingers on the ridge… shadows deepen in the valley