Hidden

Hidden

(“Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors.” Psalm 19:12)

Some are imbedded for so long, it seems like they’ve been there from day one;
we recognized them well at first, in front; but time covered them with sand,
and ash and soot.

I spent six years in Texas before I knew you there existed
strange worlds where
you need not drive and hour to reach the nearest town. Six blocks
north of my new East L.A. neighborhood I crossed the street
and stood in San Gabriel with Alhambra behind me.

In second grade there, (it might have been third) I asked a
schoolmate if I still had an accent. (I think I wanted one, to
be distinct, to stand out. Not a deep Southern drawl, just enough
to be cool and from somewhere else, somewhere where no one
had ever been.) She crinkled her nose, looked up to the sky and said
“I think so, maybe a little.” (I avoid “ya’ll”, if you all were interested.)

But intonation has left its mark, without my knowing it well. “Uffda”,
from my Norwegian friends, and “ennit” from my Native brothers.

“Uffda, that’s a huge bowl of tripe soup, ennit?”

But, unless you recorded my speech with my knowing, and made me
listen through the hour that traced my talking (tied to a chair, I
would never
volunteer), I am certain there are expressions my kids laugh about
when they have their “adult” lunches and giggle about moms and dads.

I’ll be honest, my dad insisted “cassette” had a long “a” and so sounded
like a girl name Kay. He had many old Gospel Quartet Kay-settes.
He had a double tacks: one was to deny he ever spoke that way, and two,
to say he knew for certain it was pronounced his way.

So, Heavenly Father, You don’t have to tell me twice; if the
words I use every day
can trip me up without a single moment of awareness,
I am certain I need You to dig deep where my sins are
hidden better, and with more resolve, than
my inattention to the certain silence of my
latent drawl.

See the Words

See the Words

(“Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I lay it all out before you.  Then I wait expectantly.” Psalm 5:3)

What if we could see the words, the syllables come rushing
like pellets from an air gun. What if their velocity measured
the force, the love, the grace, the clear-throated and the hoarse.
And, what if their colors measured a story’s truth, like halo’s
shine, like glory’s arc of purity. And false words fell under
the weight of colors so dark there remained little brightness
to measure at all.

Imagine each syllable of every word, each syllable’s letter
flying above a crowd of mouths intersecting and reflecting until
all we have seen is as much joy as a flock of monarchs spiraling
in joyful colors and buzz. Or, depending on what you had heard,
what you observed,
the flight is as annoying as a swarm of mosquitoes in high-pitched
drone?

We would see no better than we hear, even though the words appear
color-coded and hover eye-level. We might still dissect the syllables
in our insistence that each hue has an exact correlation and my
reaction
equals (without fraction)
the speaker’s meaning, as if a caption was written
in italics and English and definitions’ shades remain
unchanged over the arch of the sun, over the length of
the days.

But to You, Yahweh, I come with naked sounds in
the morning. By later I may have adorned my words better,
but waking is black and white first copy, my heart’s first
grunt and sometimes song. It is so unrehearsed, but You-
the-
Word
know the first sound from my mouth; tone and emotion,
shorter and longer, that I do not wonder if you mistook
my colors
for someone else’s better requests.

God Understands (thoughts on Ferguson and Christmas)

God Understands

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High.” Luke 1:31,32a

You may think it strange to begin a Christmas newsletter and devotion by referring to the recent tragedies in Ferguson, Mo. But, hopefully, if you bear with me, we can together understand one of the primary reasons that Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth.

Eyes on their Wings

Eyes on their Wings

(“You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created.” Revelation 4:11)

Can moths with eyes on their wings, or
the color of fallen leaves, stop my traverse from
breakfast to work like a giraffe out of place
at the University commons? Life is not a rebound
from fractured intentions, but a constant awakening
of boundless moments; a necklace adorning
the middle as the end.

Can a doodle inscribed outside the warmed eggshell
hook my glance to stare much longer than my schedule
allows? Etched from within, there is no timeclock
to measure the naked chick’s pointed beginning
to its shivering first sundried, outside, front-born
day.

What can take me away from me, from my,
from I;
what can capture my eye, steal my breath,
start the tear unbidden--
unless I look first for

The invisible, the eternal, ineffable
that dwells as surely in sand fleas
as with the marquee displays of
of wild and foreign universe of space;

Speaks daily with intent of the Maker’s
(as recent this, as forever as then) words
and breath which have scribed a world of
new pages leaping like flames above all time.

A Door in Front

A Door in Front

(“I know that you have a little power; you have followed my teaching and have been faithful to me. I have opened a door in front of you, which no one can close.” Revelation 3:8)

As the quicksand pulls upon your waking and
the ache of another day plainly drains your greater strength
before starting out the door;
once more
you remember the days limber and pliant
when a change in plans was as good
as
a change of scenery on the nth day of rain.

But the pain has laid down pathways,
dog trails in the backyard, from doghouse to
neighbor fence to
food dish and
back again;
her needs are habit and predictable.

So the pain has kept you within its leashed radius,
a few blocks perhaps, a few miles on the better days,
and few visits with friends, no dinner dates (even
laughter wears you down faster than shotgun rounds
piercing the fog in autumn). From the bed to
the couch to
the office and
back again;
your strength has all been borrowed before
you’ve had time to devise more elegant plans.

Believe me, I know the dark silence and how it
screams loudly. I’ve worn the guilty collar that
won’t let you off the hook. So much more you could
do,
so little done before another round of uneasy sleep
and treading the careless circle again.

But friend, there is another standard, an embrace
more certain that first place or captain of frontrunners
who win the race hands down question from any short-sighted
eye in the stands. There is another standard,
another measure of the love you feel has leaked and spilled
and ignited and frightened its capacity away. There is
the open door,
the wonder of One who does not care you cannot stay
for more than an hour. He will make up the rest of
the day
you long to complete. There is One Standard,
who endured and knows the tears you’ve hidden.
Hears the anguish unbidden, and exchanges them
(it is more than true) for prayer and answers more
than when, healthy as a bear, you thought you would
set the pace longer, much longer, than you have.

The open door is Father and He enters your pain,
your disdain of the half-life you feel has devalued your soul.
You, my sufferer and friend, are whole even while
you lay unmovable in shallow breaths and sacred pleas.

You Only Look at Me

“I cry out to you, but you do not answer me; I stand up, and you only look at me.” Job 30:20

Recently a good friend of my passed away unexpectedly. He had heart problems, but no one had pronounced an end date. As far as he and his family knew, he had a few, maybe many, good years ahead of him. Alan was the director of a drama ministry and we had invited him to bring a Christmas-themed production to our little church here in Southwest Washington.

When You Speak

When You Speak

(“To Him who loves us and has set us free from our sins by His blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” Revelation 1:5b, 6a)

I.

If you come up my walk on an afternoon,
winter when the shadows are low upon ground,
my dogs will greet you (or warn me) and will not stand down
until they have finished their security check and wagged you
in on hind legs hopping. Dogs are hopeless. Mine always
seems to be smiling the grin of a Husky ready to do the work
of a hundred men and do it again after a nap on the snow. Mine
always sounds angry when she barks at the sounds nature never
intended:
door knocks, car latches, rumbling engines and plates dropped
on the kitchen floor. When she sniffs a deer wandering between
the house and fruit trees the growl is guttural; deer and humans
alike
cannot hide the frightening image of ancient predator and prey.

But, give her sway, open the door, and she is ready to play,
though every auditory cue suggested dinner was upon the
canine menu.

II.

I have aged longer, a decade in five, as pain has depleted
the cistern of joy. Each day alive takes longer as the
knives in my head slash each thought from origin to
completion; from truth to unreasoned hallucinations.
I hear nothing but noise (though my best songs have
hibernated long enough to voice my first recollection.)
My best friend’s words (they are comfort, always and first)
are grit and dirt to ears sandpapered clear of resistance.

III.

Oh my God, and my Good. You have not change,
you have not moved.
You have loved and are the Healing Pool in which
I drift, I sleep and I wake. And yet

When You speak
I hear the pain cringe, I feel the clinch in
my shoulders, the drain of emotions
and my default is zero when once
Your words
were infinite joy to the hearer.

Speak to me though I startle, for,
Your words, mistranslated by my pain,
are the reason I still speak of my God,
my Good, then, now, and again.

The Used-Up Troubadour

The Used-Up Troubadour

(“They sing to the music of tambourines and harps, and the sound of the flute makes them happy. Evil people enjoy successful lives and then go peacefully to the grave.” Job 21:12, 13)

Music never disturbs me, never blurs my travel from
opening sentence to thesis to end. I never turn it off
(except when I’m writing) the soundtrack of my life;
Donovan and the Mamas and the Papas; Iron Butterfly and
the Carpenters; Dave Brubeck, Count Basie. Led Zeppelin and
Keaggy; all played the ages of my unstaged history.

But, tenting alone with cold autumn sod as my bed,
barely a single hope drops from the night dew into my head
afraid to nod off and dream. Most times, in my fright,
they woke me screaming at a time when forsaken was not
the word; a man must have friend to find himself forsaken by them.

Other times, in my singular hope, sunlight in a sliver brightens
the slowed connections between the ever-tiring synapses. Nearly
waking
my heart believes the reverie to be my reality, and
waking
my eyes are shattered like the last note sharpened far out of tune.

Those times the merry songs are taunt and mock; their
perfection bears little introspection, and their joy only as deep
as the next round of beers. Those times the rhythm, like gypsies
round wagons in the night, despite the tambourine scheme of things,
I’ll crawl behind the third or fourth layer of trees in the grove.
The crackling of fish on the camp stove is a better tempo for
my addled brain.

Too many have watched me jump the hurdles mid-chorus;
song and fun and joy and spun, I’ll still dance (less often)
without a reason. But, the days when I was left bleeding on the sidewalk, I mean bleeding,
not bruised; I mean leaking, not misused; but that time people danced and sang while I
hoped I would still breathe tomorrow and my children would know their daddy was
going to be ok
because

For a time, he never sang the songs he once danced anew.

There is None

There is None

(“Dearly loved friends, don’t always believe everything you hear just because someone says it is a message from God: test it first to see if it really is. For there are many false teachers around.” 1 John 4:1)

They are political, they are hidden wind,
They are hypocritical, they are only half sinned.
They are magic words, eyeball readers, mercy cheaters,
They are meaning clippers, double dippers dropping friends.

I once listened, cried, wept at their altars. I shivered, shook,
waited for the catered message to walk me home out of the hardship,
carry me quickly from hell to His Lordship. “You have a Christmas gift
coming, my son” he said. (I love Christmas, always have. I would love
something wrapped and tied with a bow on top from God.)

“Where are you looking for churches,” he said, “I do some inquiring
for you,” he said. He did inquire and, along with my name, told them,
if it’s all the same to them, perhaps they might select another name.
(I was to blame, they dug my grave of shame even deeper). I was
waiting for a good report. Mysterious messages appeared, voice mail
(I hate answering voice mail), “something has come up, and we are going
a different direction”, right after he inquired for me, my hopes expired for he
had not told us but a quarter of his plan.

They are righteous (in their own eyes), they speak truth (in their own ears),
they do good (to those who will not embarrass), they preach grace (except to
those who need it).

The false are righteous, the false are correct, the false drink coffee,
the false buy you new ties and hang them around your neck.
The false reflect the sun, the false blind everyone, the false drink no alcohol,
the false do no wrong at all.

I have confessed, I have more confessing left. But the false, in their perfection,
never admit their own sleight of hand, yet demand full repentance from all
(the more you confess, the better you will heal).

“You want grace for yourself and judgment for others”, one once said.
Instead of responding, let me test it instead. Once said say, “I have said things
I regret. I was out of order. I hurt you with my words.” I say to Once said,
“All is forgiven. Forgotten. You are now free to move about my friendship again.”

They will call my wife names, and protect their speech with claims of
authority.

No wonder, more than once God, your words say, “there is none righteous, no not one.”

You Infuse

You Infuse

(“Anyone who says, ‘I live in intimacy with Him,’ should walk the path Jesus walked.” 1 John 2:6)

Only You know the reservations,
the slow procrastination that paints me
static. I do not care about the dimensions (2D or
3D with glasses), I am sad about the stagnation.

Only You know I am like a painting at a museum.
A father takes his son to see “The Blue Boy” on the wall,
and the son takes his own son to see the same. I am the same,
unchanged. Beautiful in silky grey; warm in the background green,
I am mounted and unmoved.

You are a Master Artist, not a painter. I am
a new creation, not a painting. A father and a son
visit me apart and are not ashamed that I am unchanged.

Only You infuse my taciturn crawl with fragrant oil,
the perfume all nature wears unaware. In silence sometimes
I find
the tears I cried over misshapen mimicry are part
of the elixir, the tonic of Your love.

Being, I move. Trying, I lose every scented molecule
of Your affection. I have stocked an entire pantry with
colognes and sprays to disguise misguided efforts
to hammer my own painting tightly to the wall.

I would never lose the fragrance if I merely moved in
closer to
only You.

Cliff-Edge Day

Cliff-Edge Day

(“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.” 2 Peter 1:3)

Holding tightly to another cliff-edge day
I hear the dirt clods tumbling below, beside, away.
I see the patch of grass, the brashly painted island
with boundaries tightly drawn.

I do not wish to write another screed of pain,
the words have piled up like broken lava
and I stand atop the cone, the crater, knowing
sooner or later
I will tire of the subject and take a 

European vacation just to prove I can still
live outside the lines.

There is a force (I shall not say “hand” or “arm”,
anthropomorphism does not suit the spiritual subject
in concrete verse)—(yet, I should not say “force” or “power”,
as if something like the hum of machinery kept me
from falling)—

There is a devotion (not mine, but Another) that
refuses to see me fall, though boulders roll unevenly
passed the appalling picture without explanation;
I am secure, though I would rather crawl alone past
the constant question, “How are you?”

I am beaten, I am worn, I am divided, I am torn,
I think with dust in my eyes, I see with  my mind
addled with icy sunshine; and lay quietly on the same
couch (my body imprinted in blue cushion by now)
when I would rather stand Grand Canyon tall, rising
early, adhering late to the Canyon walls.

Yet, all is stalled by the fingernail grasp that
uses a whole day’s energy by half a day at noon.

God's Chosen People

God’s Chosen People

“But you are God’s chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests and a holy nation. God has brought you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now you must tell all the wonderful things that he has done.” 1 Peter 2:9

Darren Sproles shouldn’t be playing NFL football. The average height of an NFL quarterback is just over 6”2”. Running backs average height is 5”11” and weighing in at about 215 pounds. Not only does Sproles play in the NFL, he broke the record for most single-season all-purpose yardage in 2011, with 2,629 yards. Playing for the San Diego Chargers, New Orleans Saints and the Philadelphia Eagles, he is the first player in NFL history with 2,200+ all-purpose yards in four different seasons.

To Console or Call

To Console or Call

(“More than anything, keep loving each other actively; because love covers many sins.” 1 Peter 4:8)

It all smelled naked to the untrained eye;
like shame in the garden, rain during harvest,
so we covered it up with fragrances and smoke.

We were frightened and cold.

It all was larger than our own small acreage;
like memes in their orbit, tales oral and ancient,
so we hid in closets or glued green leaves on our broken branches.
We were broken and old.

Our minds were bigger than our bodies could take us,
our dreams unlimited have become finite over time,
the choices, from tears or sins, stares and pain,
have little chance of presenting themselves again.

Old friends, has my behavior surprised you? I must say,
you are as fragile as recent as I can remember. I would
not fail you even when frightened by the swordplay that,
I must say, wounded and nearly destroyed us both.

In these final few chapters I am wrinkled,
the band of pain is tightened around my brow and
I could use the eyes flashing with acceptance,
the voice sure with remembrance of both our broken wings
and broken hearts,
the standing invitation that never asked questions
and the pool of forgiveness (just mercy, no suggestions)
where wounds could be both cleansed and forgotten.

My feet are cold, my eyes are tired,
new friend are kind, but old friends are desired
who,
knowing all love all. We all were in the garden,
we all took a bite, we all have cursed and all have
accused, and now, as we ease toward our final mooring

I would give all for you, old friend, to console or call,
with love covering all. 

Surprise: Some People Don't Like Me

“Those people are surprised now that you do not do the same wrong things they do. And they say wrong things about you.” 1 Peter 4:4

Let’s face it, none of us wants to be disliked. I didn’t huge slices of my time to theater productions in high school hoping people would boo me onstage. I didn’t join my first Kiwanis club hoping the people in town would call me names. The same is for all of us, isn’t it? Perhaps you are part of a hunting club, or a group who plays dominoes once a month, or the Yearbook club at school. We never join with the thought, “And I’m sure this will make me hated by my friends.”

Share a Slice

Share a Slice

I wonder who would take me to task for asking
questions no one else asks (but is thinking).
I wonder would my words be rehashed over the
tiny backlash they caused, though the ship (is not sinking).

I wonder, if I held my tongue, and never disrupted
the party line, sung only the verses we all know (from memory),
I wonder, if the bell was rung, not to incite a riot
among the faithful; just to fill the space (sometimes empty).

I would share a piece of my mind, a slice of my brain sustained
from the 90% unused. It is kind to speak truth or (raise my hand)
when pieces don’t fit, when pieces are missing. I would share
a piece of velvet, a piece of cake; a pie, a muffin, (no lies stuffed)

In the middle of honest thought some fear is heresy.

Mercy of Music

Mercy of Music

(“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3)

The flat picking swirled carelessly once it started around the room,
just like Dylan, maybe Tom Petty, with careful lyrics, and EmmyLou harmonies,
my eyes were set free; the simple tears that release the deepest angst
just below the second layer of skin. Or maybe it is like Levon Helm’s
final whispered song, sounding like the old guitar and the gutted throat,
the kind you can cry, or dance, or touch fingertips to. The kind, if you
are alone,
you let play in a loop and lullaby your way
to sleep.

I’ve been so far from the music I made, kept it square within
the boxes I found in the attic played “Gnostic Serenade” and
partly understood. Early days I danced with laughter, dropping beats
and missing sevenths all over the floor. I was young. I was an apprentice.
And you don’t start over when the people are up and dancing/

I was foolish, Jesus, to think you preferred only monastery and
diligently metered music. Older ones who played their mandolins
like guns,
never missed a line or lyric. I did nearly break a whole in the floor,
keeping time at the piano with my left boot banging below.

If I haven’t learned this by now, that music is Your sweetest gift,
so full of mercy, so fragrant like lilacs in spring. Someday I shall
breath the Asian spice deeply and understand the scales, sometimes
more than 12 tone and between the beats (maybe in 9) the scuttle of
feet on gravel is the bridge that brings all of it home.

I don’t know.

But I’ll never waste another hour or minute, tossing away a world’s good song,
because time, because boredom, because fables built fences to keep our
senses pure and unaffected
by the mercy of music misunderstood.

No Glass Jaws

“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is pure. That’s the most important thing about it. And that’s not all. It also loves peace. It thinks about others. It obeys. It is full of mercy and good fruit. It is fair. It doesn’t pretend to be what it is not.” James 3:17

I used to follows boxing quite a bit. For a peaceful chap, know as a hippie and growing up  in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s, I’m sure this seems a bit incongruent! Truth is, I haven’t watched a professional match in over 20 years. But back then I did: Ali, Frazier, Holyfield, Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard; I would watch any time a top ranked bout was broadcast.

Honest Song

Honest Song

(“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13)

Now the day played upon their porches like
southern homes and sprawling lawns. Each morning
was the same,
the songs all remained in collective memory; planets
circling the comet tail of unwritten history. Lyrics barely
changed, (a word, a name, he and she), and we always recognized
the melody. Thousands of players and heard it around
the same porches on days as long as these. Some tapped time
to the trains clacking by; others to the crickets hidden from sight.

The children were shy once someone caught their eye, yet,
unobserved, they cartwheeled and caterwauled, ringing the
aging apple tree and whirled like Jupiter’s moons; holding hands,
a human carousel, the laughter lifting above the music until
everyone fell with the dizzying ease of equal parts child and
invisibility.

The old phrases take us home, the unwritten melodies, better
live
than recorded,
are the ones that have courted our hearts to love meadows
more than avenues,
and
maypoles more than
altitude.

With less knowledge than the perfected players,
the sheer truth of honest song presses kisses on the forehead
and grass stains on the knees.

Pulse in His Pillow

Pulse in His Pillow

(“If a person thinks he is religious, but does not keep his tongue from speaking bad things, he is fooling himself. His religion is worth nothing.” James 1:26)

The fog was pounding, morning throbbing,
no words were spoken, just the early grunt awoken
by the need to attend with friends with pain refraining
the hope he held for the morning.

Yet midnight ran slowly until 12:15,
12:15 made the rounds to 1 am. All he heard
was the pulse in his pillow; each heartbeat heard
scurried ahead to the next, insistent on keeping the
body unsynchronized. Sleep has its own patterns and
the body sometimes misses the closing elevator door
to transport it to basement quiet and calm.

The mind was full, always full, racing from old flames
to new hopes; from praying to claiming a post-hypnotic suggestion
of peace. Using his brain he slept in a meadow, alone and safe,
familiar and cocooned; but the thoughts followed him from
comfortable couch to warm earth bed. And the pillow pulsed
again, refrain, again, coda, refrain, verse and chorus, again.

The chemicals were responsible, it was clear. Four doses a day
kept the goblins away, though their darts were felt in the best hours.
Systems have faults, built by humans, and the system failed to
resume his prescription timely. Untidy cuts down the middle of
tabs, brought him to one-third his daily dose, for three days and
a half. He had no weapons to bring down the demons of chemistry.

He missed meetings; a beloved hour with two nearly newlyweds.
an evening at play with music and Word, and a morning to break
Friday’s fast with men, comrades he had learned to trust.

And feared, having missed doing his job, peace would be
jumbled and jigsawed, words defensive and short-story-first-person.

And, with every weapon unloaded, he goaded the best words (or
none), until chemistry found its proper homeostasis

Troubles Test our Faith

“My brothers and sisters, when you have many kinds of troubles, you should be full of joy, because you know that these troubles test your faith, and this will give you patience.” James 1:2-3

I meet with a handful of teens each week at “Pop with Pastor”. We gather at a local restaurant, I pay for drinks, and we simply chat. It isn’t a Bible study or prayer group, simply an expression of my love for the students, and an opportunity to make myself available to them. Each week on Wednesday six to a dozen of us get together for about an hour.

A Better Place

A Better Place

“But as it is, they aspire to a better land, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:16

It seems we always want something more, something better than what we currently possess. Five years ago we purchased our first automobile with that new-car-smell (translation, first “non-used” car). It is nice, economical, and we enjoy having something that doesn’t break down every month or so. But, I have discovered it is not enough. Now, I want a new car, but with more room, better electronics, and seat warmers. After the first year of “new car” wore of, the desire for something better began to take root.

Keep the Pace

Keep the Pace

(“For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.” Hebrews 10:36)

Today you marked the cycle,
three years since the trauma,
two years unremembered,
and one running for your life.

You see better than ever,
you grieve sooner and complete,
you believe truer and clear,
you feel deeper and trust
the elements of hope, the
clouds sliding down the slopes
of the hills surrounding
you only remind you of lively green
lately springing where sharply obsidian
nights obscured your view.

You woke today and you kept up the pace,
the pain cried, the past rang like a false alarm,
but, your feet on the ground, your eyes reaching
for the finish line,
you found your team cheering you on,
some have finished the race, and some beside you,
all you hear to keep you running
is the rhythm of uncounted feet still
reaching for more than they ever earned.

And, on the occasional glance, you spot the few,
joy their prize, waiting your grand finale,
breathing in unison as you round the final turn.

It is to love we are born, and joy the soundtrack
on our way home.

If I Were

If I Were

(“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Hebrews 10:14)

If I were to take to the sky, unload the anger,
unleash the whys; what in the clouds would hinder
the upward incline of uncluttered vision.

Blocking my eyes, shading the wounds from
the heat of another burst of flame,
scars never form, but remain lesions of pain;
downward toward rarified slow motion.

Clutching the fire, containing its blasts,
the heart is burned from the inside out.
Stooping in anger, throwing flame and calling it
another blooming flower only
bounces off the ear and leaves the air unbreathable.

If I were to stand above the treeline,
look across the peaks of rugged time,
make my moment last an hour,
drink the thermos slowly like a
doubter
running the truth over his tongue;

If I sat atop the silent apogee; shade
banished with the trees,
and understand the ease with which
You call me perfected; (You call me
easily, You love me painfully);

If I did, if I fly, if I stand, if I sit,
the silence would find the hidden design
You have been creating from before my
attempted climb to labored precision.

Still in gliding, the old wounds riding the wind
and dying; motionless and standing at the apex smiling;
perfection is meant for gods. And God’s perfection
is an inside job I nearly had forgotten.

Finished!

“After Jesus had taken the vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished!’ Then he bowed his head and died.” John 19:30

A good friend of mine in our church told me how he likes to read the stories in the Bible. “I like to imagine myself right there, in the middle of what is happening,” he said. “It helps me get a feel for what is happening, and what the people were experiencing at that time.”

Find Me

Find Me

(“The Lord God has told us what is right   and what he demands: ‘See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God.’” Micah 6:8)

Magnify the road we walk,
the uphill path across the i-beam shadows
of trees on the left and a stream on the right.
Do not journey alone on the path made for
more
than single file silence. The wordless ways
we speak are shared in breathless rhythms.

The early autumn recites the first frost
and so our hoods are pulled tightly overhead,
our fingers holed up inside our sweatshirt sleeves.
By noon we sweat, as autumn demands our attention
before ice replaces frost below the footprints we
lay down today.

Repeats of family hikes, reverie of first friends
wandering the hills, squandering the day, living
on coca cola and trail mix; hoping to see wildlife,
taking our time. We forget the days fade so quickly
come October’s dominance and sway.

Branches lie strewn on the forest floor, remnants
of life unattached. The decay begins the moment the
wind bends it beyond nature’s hinge; yet still it hides
life beneath its sundried core scattering at first movement
or light.

The writer is dim today, and longer than autumn should allow.
Joy with a handful, laughter unabashed and a trip to the
Grand Canyon
might swell the life he dropped on the way, tumbling along
the chalky cliff with orange gloves still waving from outcrops
between the cracks.

Too late to return and find it before darkness cover our tracks.

Find me merciful, please, though I’ve lost most of my companions.
Find me humble, still, but ready. Point me, and, though I do
not
recognize the way
I will still say, “Lead me”. But, on this
October day,
I’d prefer another who understand my solitude,
my silence and can cure me to the bold man I once knew
in May.