Front Porches and Fire Pits

Front Porches and Fire Pits

(“May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.” Jude 1:2)

The negotiations nearly ceased when the
bands battled aimlessly. They played in different keys
and ragged tempos while we listened from opposite
sides of the park.
Gazebo against gazebo,
they played like the day would never end.
Our ears heard multitudes clashing. Those unused
tunes wiggled like earthworms below our feet.
No one planned it,
this disconcerting entertainment. It was merely the
result of too many musicians and not enough direction.

Thunderclouds had been building to the west all afternoon,
And when the lightning took us all by surprise the thunder
sounded out from one end of the day to the next.
It realigned our unrehearsed ragas and turned our attention
toward the rhythm the rain made as it hit the ground.
We had heard there were fires in the grassland and flash floods
in the hills. We counted out the time now, one and two and
three and four. We let the fancy trills and turnarounds go
for the simpler melodies of folks making it all up on
front porches and around fire pits. We put our instruments away
and merely sang. One word, two words, a break,
two words and then three.

We made up songs that sounded like they had been in the
back catalogue for ages. We learned them on the spot and
discovered we knew more than we thought.

We had been afraid that the discord we heard would
divide the afternoon from the giggles of children we were
used to hearing. We began sharing our apprehensions
across fences and learned there was so much more
we could say. We spoke and waved and tried our
concerted passages anyway.

We passed the lyrics on to our progeny.

The Words Came Slowly

The Words Came Slowly

(“Until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord kept testing him.” Psalm 105:19)

Perilous sounds like a good word to start a poem,
Unaccomplished might end it.
Sold like a slave and bound like a trapped rabbit,
we sometimes are fettered by our own lack of imagination.
We hope to find our future buried shallow in
our back yard.
We never expected to be at the cliff’s edge
with no way to turn back into who we once had been.

You can say what you want,
you can seek however long you will,
but my story will always stay the same.
Unaccompanied in a land I did not recognize
I stuck my claim on the lyrics hidden between
each note and time signature.
I memorized the songs of my youth and
sang them solo while I waited for a door
I could not open
to allow me entrance into the next level of
my dreams.

Affectations may be the words you find snuggly
tucked away mid-poem,
lingering may be the jump-off point to the final
verses. There were strange sounds that sifted between
the cracks of my catalytic walls. There were unfamiliar
songs teasing me to spend my spare time learning them
like they were my own.

Renovation began the moment I entered the
dimly lit room.
Patterns emerged like dust dancing in the sun.
The words came slowly and I learned them well;
the tempo was off, but I sang them sound.
Completed sounds like a good word to end a poem,
Unharmed might begin it.

A Blank Slate

A Blank Slate

(“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20)

I’d like to believe I am a blank slate.
I’d like to think I’m ready for the writing on the wall.
I’d enjoy the chance to talk in private the ways
I preside over public speech.
I’m ready for the old instructions to be rewritten
on my heart.

You were lying by the side of the road, a
castoff
of better times. Nothing in your pockets and
nowhere to go, you canceled your subscription to
unhelpful words of painted pain.

I’d like to believe I’d give you a chance.
I’d like to believe I’ve read the situation well.
I’d enjoy the chance to enjoy an open door
before I closed it for the afternoon.
I’m ready for the completion of the courses
I signed up for free.

You were worn out, a castaway who once
believed
in basic rhymes. Your mind was crawling with
nowhere to go, so you sat on the side of the road
and waited for--and waited for--the mail to arrive.
Words on paper might transform the vagaries
of time.

I’d like to write on the whiteboard of your heart.
I’d like to think you could read me like an open book.
I’d enjoy the chance to show you something
more than recited dogma, to serve you something
more than leftovers and crumbs.
I’m ready to accompany you through the shadows
others had left behind.

As You Started Your Descent

As You Started Your Descent

(“If I say, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your faithful love will support me, Lord.” Psalm 94:18)

Was the path too steep for you,
Or too slippery like a
snake on the ice?
Were the days laden with thunderstorms
and rain? You had been walking such a long time
that fatigue caught you unawares and
captured you in its claws. The day plodded on.

You had started a run,
jogging before the heat set in.
You waved everyone on that passed you
as you took to the trail. You always started it
slow
knowing your muscles and lungs needed to
warm up beginning so early in the morning.

The pathway rose above the suburbs and became
isolated at the top of the hill. The cedars and firs
lined the path and people had all gone into town.

So you quietly wondered if the mail came this far.
Your mind wandered cautiously; you thought about the
children who played outdoors in the summer sun.
You heard their laughter while you measured the
peak ahead, the point of the excursion.

But the mud from yesterday’s downpour
oozed onto the path you tried to finish. Like an
unfinished song you began to slip, one step away
from sliding down the hill.
It was not planned, it was the last thing you expected.
You reached out to nothing in particular; a tree, a weed,
a hand, a creed you could plead before you went down.

It might have taken a second; it might have lasted
the afternoon. But the hush of the moment kept you
rockily on your feet. It made you remember the times
others held the hand you offered before they reached
the ground. And a drizzle of laughter lit the
path for a moment as you started your descent.

Paper-Thin Verdicts

Paper-Thin Verdicts

(“And the anointing that you have received from him dwells in you.” 1 John 2:27a)

Things become clearer the farther I am from the
shore of my previous encampment. I was divided.
I suspected that love would win the day,
that spectacles faded away the longer they
sank into deepened ridges of belief.
We were not nearly as rigid as some,
but I shook and trembled when the
drought left me thirsty and burdened,
hardened against the living springs.

I still see the occasional pantheon of
unfulfilled wishes for something more solid
than words on paper thin verdicts. But there
were times when people came from miles away
to spectate at the reports they heard on a
balmy Sunday afternoon.

We learned to live off the experiences we
heard described by preachers of a dozen
days too soon. I read their books and imitated
(quietly, I should add) their rhetoric and stubborn
proclamations. People were sitting on windowsills
to witness it all. But moments later they still
walked away lamely to return to their games of
mutual superiority.

Today I hear, and demand far less; today I
appear to be listening for a voice I missed
when doctrines turned into trauma, and my
mind was wired for weirdly preoccupied
judgement. Today I learn, and understand far less;
today I am happy for the messy ways that the
Spirit speaks. When people traveled for miles
to see Spirit sensations they never thought to
find her in their own hometowns.

Yes, my ways are dustier now,
my mind uncertain but happy with the
unanswered questions that do not demand
decisions for the defense. The gospel is
muddier than that. And that makes me convinced
that clarity has presently inspired itself
on the eyelids of those who find that a word
or two
can fill an entire day of believing.

Maybe It’s Because

Maybe It’s Because

(“I have given strength to a warrior; I have raised up a young man from my people.” Psalm 89:19b)

Maybe it’s because time is catching up with me;
maybe it’s because I remember my youth only yesterday;
maybe it’s time to admit that memory is sometimes a thief.

Because I’d be there in a moment if you called;
because we were coated with primes and pastels;
because we left the door open to let in the rain.

I can reach further back than my first named love.
I can sing raggedly of my first bottle of wine.
I can see beyond a young man’s strength and spend
the afternoon wondering why it lingered so long.

Maybe the images are murky, falling so far behind me;
maybe it’s only the fragrances I’ve forgotten;
maybe we paced down main street after midnight.

Because I once could run a relay backwards;
because I once could play football in the mud;
because the summers were hot while the A/C whined.

I can rarely see the difference between love and loss.
I can cancel plans without giving it a moment’s thought.
I can playfully suggest we get together for drinks
and act like every day is a portal to something new.

I never worried about getting the last laugh;
I usually found the humor hidden beneath our words.
I would call and invite you over if only you did not live
two time zones away.

I might stick my neck out and suggest that when
we were young
we were holding our
options open. And now we are old and wondering
if our life insurance is paid.

But all that matters, all that shatters our illusions of
grandeur
is a gentle whisp of a wind that reminds us of summers
easily passing into autumn.

 When My Day Will Come

(“The Lord is not slow concerning His promise, as some count slowness. But He is patient with us, because He does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9)

 

anger and wrath of a warrior god will swipe away the remainder of the
uninitiated from the gravity of earth. They will be judged most righteously;
you expect them to be taken silently in the middle of the night.
You try to scare people into faith, but faith that warns of all-consuming
heat
simply will not last past the end of summer.

in the end times. Every storm is not judgement from an angry god.
Every traffic accident you survive but leaves someone else dead
is not worth your words telling everyone how God saved you.

eons to God.
We do not control time, we barley know how to respond to it.
If we clean our house faster, we have more time by the end of the day,
but what do we do next? And here I am, 71, and I can remember
a girlfriend from 50 years ago, and most of her phone number. I can
remember baptizing a friend in a duck pond and 5 am and can circle
back to that memory almost any time I want. But the future comes
more slowly and with less options as I age. Fondness and regret are
the twins of the past. The future moves me to weariness and anxiety.
But God, our patient God, dwells in every microsecond, all at the same time.
Even the dreams I have take me to a short workable future or to a past
where shit was given in place of truth.

and another one, looking out the window and wondering when my day will come.