False Portents

False Portents
(and failed importance)

So now some new prophets are spewing old judgments at
the new sins they think
the country is sinking in.
Where were they when brothers hung from trees,
their necks broken while their lynchers lit fires
and made plans to meet up for chicken fried steak
right after church and singing “Just as I Am”
one more time.

Where are your harbingers, you judgments of doom,
about how immigrants stole the first nations’ lands,
lying with pen and word about treaties and trading
and never warring again with the redman. The first
feet upon the magical land’s dirt carried the same
blood as the feet which disembarked from boats on
sand. There was no Manifest Destiny that blew
the bobbles across the sea. Where is your Great Judgment
of God
at the men who left bodies strewn across the prairie and
thought they carried orders as they rode away while
the blood seeped into sod.

Come now, you who forget your Father’s great mercy,
who ignore the greatest Command ever uttered by One.
Where are your words about buying people like firewood,
treating women like luggage and questioners like lepers
(which is silly, we know, for all we know, that even if
you could catch the dread disease for an east wind blowing,
from the west breeze slowing it all until it rested within
your next inhalation. And Jesus touched them, while all
ran from their bells and hid their children inside closets
where the foul air could not reach their impressionable lungs).

Where are your words about unreasonable force,
false remorse, religious bigots and bone-dry spigots that
once poured grace. Where, oh Seer, have you wandered
to perceive
the love so unrestrained it burns the arrogant in its flames,
returns the first blow with only stillness,
walks the second mile out of the sheer bliss of
obedience to the Son of His love

Who, better than your contemporary pronouncements,
announced the Father who rains and shines and invites
and designs the best way, the merciful way, for the

Wicked

and the Good.

To Try it All

To Try it All

(“Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any of you has a complaint against someone else. You must forgive one another just as the Lord has forgiven you.” Colossians 3:13)

The tour would begin at the intersection of Second Street
and Alhambra road; two boys who had the wind knocked out of them
simply because school had begun. The asphalt simmered,
the crepe myrtles, the trees with a grandmother’s name, spurred us
on. We marched between the cyclone gates with every clue lost
to new boys finding a place sit, a group to surround our shyness away.

I was never sure who I was, or might be, though I had as many friends
as enemies. Bruce good at conversation, introverted, I think, borrowed
time for him to string words into sentences and punctuate them with the
tiny spaces. He hated his name, his first name, I mean; Marion, it was,
and I understood, though we all agreed, for evil or good, that Bruce was
not much better.

Deidre was good for hanging upside down. Her dad constructed the best
swing set in the neighborhood. She hardly used the seats; more often
she hooked her knees
over the cross-beams of the Capital A held the blue and white tubes together.
It seemed she would hang there half the afternoon, and punch me in the ribs
if I dismounted too soon. And she could throw a ball better than anyone but Don.

Don was good for walking home, and singing “Build Me Up, Buttercup” on the way.
Held back a year and big for his age, he was my protector when a bully
or a chum
sent me a private invitation for a meeting behind the temporaries after school.
Plus, MJ, his sister, was the prettiest girl I knew from third grade through
junior high school.

I still was not sure who I was, or would be. Would I gather notions, subtract
emotions, and arrive at a calculated equation, well-balanced and firm? Four years
of cramming every day full like a knapsack for a month long hike still left me
thrilled at wandering, spilling all my wondering in ink and hopeful encores
after finishing my set of hand-crafted songs.

I was so unsure, though, I stopped at every red light longer than I should. “Your
poetry
doesn’t rhyme, kid; your music barely has a tune, dude; and God needs you
more in the pulpit than on the stage, son.” I stopped my pursuit before it had
begun.

Now I’m old enough to say “No,” to the objections and “Yes” to the offers,
but have traveled so far from the connections my extension cord will not reach
from this tiny spot of paradise back to the places I should have rolled the dice
and given it all a whirl.

It’s not heartache, nor a spirit broken by age; it’s regret, and I’ll forgive myself yet
before the next song with too few rhymes is written from where I sit. I miss
every bus I missed, every song not sung, every role I dismissed and mostly
the courage to try it all.

One Mite of Grace

One Mite of Grace

(“It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer on his behalf.” Philippians 1:29)

Time has frozen some of the machinery down,
other pieces are worn, gears ground, belts dry as parchment,
and oxidation fills the spaces between nuts and bolts and spacers.

Every joint which first swung freely creaks with effort, to begin
even half a younger man’s backswing. And the follow-through,
we once taught to others at the plate, stops before the shoulder
clicks
with every overhand throw.

I knew my calves would ache about now, my feet sore from standing,
I expected no supple angles, no ground touched with unbent knees.
But I still thought I would swing the racket, chase the high fly balls,
and hunt my slice buried near the adjoining fairway. The serves
would be slower; the drives
would be shorter, and I might make a muffled sound when
bending over to snatch the tee.

But, at 60, I never dreamed I would sit out my favorite play-times
altogether.

So, now I have pain. It never matters where the clock hands point;
the pain remains, and advances. The pain squeezes and takes more chances
with my thinking than I ever did
hoping to make the team. No one can see it, this intimate enemy,
and I rarely let it show, though its armies bombard my cranium
and set fires within my head.

My Loving Jesus, yet and then; is this my promised suffering?
How will it help, now and friend; to paint You beautiful when I barely
sing for minutes before the volume must cease altogether?

And not only me, Sweetest Sovereign, but soulmates who cannot still
rise from their beds. Pain and its alliances have nailed them prone
and tossed them alone. Careers and income blown away; the
dead leaves of dying trees: Shade and Proud.

If our suffering is a gift indeed; let us breathe the mercy
and refuse to waste one mite of grace today.