Speeches are Dust

Speeches are Dust

(“And God’s servants must not be troublemaker. They must be kind to everyone, and they must be good teachers and very patient.” 2 Timothy 2:24)

The birds watched perched on the wires above
an afternoon wedding when the first rain of fall
tapped outside windows waiting for the bride to appear.

Everyone knows everyone’s business in these small towns
and small churches.
Everyone has assumed their point of view, newly acquired on the street,
repeats the truth so much so the repetition wraps it up like
wedding presents,
creased white and silver, and ready to be hauled off
in a limousine rented by the objects of it all.

Once one ranted, once one decanted the fireworks
too close for safety and what the law would allow.
Hit by arrows, sliced by swords, slings and public predictions
carved like reader boards above business doors
complain loudly, some proudly, some rightly, some likely
to be nearly the truth.

And God’s servant stands mid the battlefield, weaponless except
the gentleness, perching with the birds on the wire, hoping to catch a view,
an observation point well marked through no man’s land where
the footprints fade and the pathways recede unpaved.

Less paid than called, the servant stalls, serves the sides that
sat left, sat right, stayed away or shivered at the sight of another
fight over nothing. Kind like gentle, snow like soft sans cold,
reloaded with the holy ammunition, firmly where bold love
aims its sights at hearts deeper than wounds. The words sound
like cell phone calls interrupting a movie that has lost its audience
after the first overwrought scene.

Speeches are dust, anger is rust, eyes are darts
piercing; eyes are stars parsing the universe in words
unspeakable. We lay down our arms at the inconceivable
wrapped around our certainties like honeysuckle summer.