But God Knows

But God Knows

“But He knows the way that I take. When He has tried me, I will come out as gold.” Job 23:11

I hate losing things, especially something valuable or irreplaceable. I have carried a picture of my wife in my wallet for over 40 years. It is her senior picture. The edges are well-worn, but the beauty in that photo never fades. Several years ago we made a road trip from North Dakota to New York State to visit our son and daughter-in-law who were attending university at Binghamton. Within a day of arriving I could not find my wallet anywhere. I won’t go into details, but we scoured the car, our clothes and everywhere we could think, and found nothing.

The Eternal Value of Love

The Eternal Value of Love

“The world and the desires it causes are disappearing. But if we obey God, we will live forever.” 1 John 2:17

My first car is certainly recycled by now, its rusting exterior either melted and used elsewhere or degrading at the bottom of a landfill. Perhaps the rubber from the tires are now part of the asphalt I travel on with my new vehicle. That 1967 Volkswagen van was decorated with tie-dyed curtains and the spare tire cover was painted with an alpine scene. Since then I have gone through at least a dozen vehicles.

Mindful of Mercy

Mindful of Mercy

“The Mighty One has done great things for me, and His name is holy. His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear Him.” Luke 1:49, 50

If we listen carefully to Mary’s beautiful song the Magnificat, we may hear the foreshadowing of Jesus’ words about His reason for coming. Mary sings of proud hearts scattered, thrones toppled and the lowly exalted. Her song envisions the hungry satisfied with good things and the rich sent away empty. At the conclusion of her Prophetic refrain, she say, “He has helped His servant Israel, mindful of His mercy,…” (Luke 1:46-55)

Spinning a Narrative

Spinning a Narrative

(“I know what you have done, and that you are neither cold nor hot.” Revelation 3:15)

I would listen and, knowing what others
had said they had heard,
would scar my soul over the silence that
did not flow
but was the weight of summer obscurity.

I thought my sight was blurred,
my ears unhearing the very thing
I wished to find.

Lock me in my room, and do not let me out
until I’ve spent the night in the sweetest reverie
I’ve read about from men of old,
women like angels told,
and stories unfolded by names I heard quoted
at meetings of the devoted.

I paced, I read, I played three chords;
instead of songs or lengthy prayer
my eyelids like lead scratched my waiting watch.

I was certain no one had longed as deeply as I,
yet there was only the shallow dribble of my own mind’s
constant turbine spinning a narrative that has followed from
then until now. What I believed, hope and sought was
never as glowing as
the fireside stories; of parables in street shoes
and the buried treasure always discovered for the effort.

I have chased You, only Father, not well. I am tired,
I am weary, I have gone this far on this tiny soul’s
capacity alone.

Let me rest now, my breath is shallow. The rain has beat
upon the windows through the night
and the puddles are deep in the sunken footprints

Of a man who carried a mislaid burden much too far
up the mountain.

And yet the tears remind me there is so much love
I could never be satisfied, never filled, never stalling;
for the laying down of my burden is the only action
that leaves no footprints for the torrents to fill.

Mutters and Utterances

Mutters and Utterances

(“Some magicians think they can wake Leviathan. So let them say their curses and curse the day I was born.” Job 3:8)

I was wondering when your divination would show its hand.
When the mutters and utterances under your breath
would cast their obelisk shadows across the land.

I cannot say what I wish I could. The lake is full of fury,
the river a crease across the countryside. And every moment
that looks darker than the last
is prophesied to be the final event on the calendar
that you think you began.

How many births must there be until
people give each other room to breathe.

The hospitals are riddled with shrapnel and blood,
and yet we lock our doors to the innocents for fear
there is a magician hidden among them. And Jesus never

Enters the doors of churches who do not open theirs.

It feels like a million years of crying, each birth preceded
by twice as much dying. Can I ask you for a hand before you
dismiss me from your sphere? Where did we learn to put
predetermined circumferences around our circle of friends?

I wait too long now. The songs lie dormant in an age so far gone
that the tears follow my wrinkles from the corner of each eye
along the creases in my cheeks. The weeks pass and summer slips
by; a brief breeze of someone I once knew by name.

When grief finally erupts from its deep springs, the mourning
over losses (years of love, missed endearments) obscures the sky
and I hear my papa cry, “you make a better door than a window.”

These days (no lie) I would rather sneak out of the way
than take the lumps for discovering what I had always wished

To be true.

That is Where I Hear

That is Where I Hear

(“God showed his faithful love to me in front of the king…The Lord my God was with me, and that gave me courage.” Ezra 7:28)

Even though the brain waves crash upon my skull
like an endless buzz saw,
and the air is heavier than an anvil upon my head,
I have no other hope, no better word than
the softest whisper speaking from beneath the pain,
“I am with you, and I will be with you again.”

Even though the songs no longer come from my hands,
and the words, my love, my still life, explain less and less
between the lonesome stretches of writing.
I have no poetry than the simple rhymes of
childlike times. My mind is full of mystified
tangles, sentences dangling from the corners of my mouth.

Yet, I still read the unchanging motion, the words spoken
that are rooted at the base of every grunt or elocution.
“I have said, and will said it again; never will I leave you,
and never forsake you.”

And yet, nearing the end of my mission, when, from the first
the seeds grew rapidly, the message ignited wildfires of love;
at this final appointment, the last post of my journey

I fail. Though the soil is rich and watered well, the seed
does not germinate, the crop is dwindling and
I watch from a brittle chair awarded me once for
Outstanding Support, while the tears dry before they
hit the floor. My trajectory, though cruelly gravity-bound,
always rose between days of relative ease.

My books are old and tattered. Perhaps my words are as well.
Expectations shattered, percentages shrinking, while I keep thinking
the old seed should produce the same crop of my earlier mission.

And that is where I hear

Such a sad, sad silence. 

Silence!

Silence!

(“Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.” Zechariah 2:13)

Who are we to instruct the Wind-maker when
we cannot see the breeze at all?

 When did we ascend the throne on antediluvian peaks
and survey the globe. Our panorama’s are sadly flattened?

How can we instruct the creation to match our templates,
the stars move from view while we position our deviated rules
written on cardboard before the nearsighted followers?

            No, I taught no one; only the man, only the woman,
            only the image-bearers on our best interpretation.

And where is our learning? What have we assumed? While we
exhume the bodies of our best knowledge, the failure rate only
rises as we stick to our guns.

How do we count the countless? How do we dare?
How do we enact a directive when the conversation was confidential?
How do you still box the air, never sparing your opponent
nor scoring the apparent.

            No, I announced it well; did you not hear my trumpet call?
            I raged at the uppity boys who silently wait the anthem’s end.
            I put them on the spot, closed the door and did my duty to
            God and to my Country.

Silence!

The quiet of the Almighty will break ever unholy assumption.
Do not lift an eyebrow, do not look around. Do not gaze in the stadium seats,
keep your eyes on the ground. Yahweh arises and you will soon see,
everything you though you understood, everything you knew to a “t”
has been trampled by His coming upon the winds of the dawn.
Everything you thought was right, you better prepare to get it wrong.

Do not put a finger to the piano, unplug the guitars,
drop the mic, (humbly this time) and stay right where you are.
He comes to judge your judgments. He comes to inspect the scars,
the wounds and the harm your pronouncements made when you made them
in His name.

It is no different, we are all the same. We walk the straight line if
the straight line means a detour around riches we’ve gained by
ignoring the least of any of these and promoting our feasts: VIP
only.

The Almighty is roused; He sees the waves sent to drown
the bad taste in our mouths.
The Almighty is pained; He feels the sores on the arms
and feet of the chosen.
The Almighty is slow; He knows the time we mistake
for divine approval.
The Almighty is ready; He comes to make His grace
the thunder before rain.
The Almighty heals; And cuts, and lances, and finds the
root of our growling glances from faces He designed to
shine like the sun.

Silence now! And listen unspoken. He will heal, he will refresh,
he will transform, he will fix;
Listen, for He will heal, but only that which is broken. 

No One is Looking

No One is Looking

(“Our earthly fathers correct us, and we still respect them. Isn’t it even better to be given true life by letting our spiritual Father correct us?” Hebrews 12:9)

If I wish for just a few more moments,
a day, a weekend, eight days or seven,
I could prove to you I function better
with the pain annulled and my mind clearer.

And yet they ask me, in geometric proportions,
how I’m learning the lesson, with disguised assertions
about meaning and karma, all things and bad things
and the reasons they happen.

My answers are weaker as the pain has become
a red ribbon stretching past memory’s happy sky.
I have stop analyzing, asking why, and cry far more often
now that all my reasons have run dry.

Pain leaves me lonely, it is my only conversation.
8-5 is torture, my body an enemy-nation occupying the
joys once, the stories twice, and the months pass
faster while I wait for an explanation;

Or a new creation to take the leaden weight,
once free to think, beyond river’s rapport with the ocean.

I’ve cried at each limping interval;
the silence is unkempt and literal.
My sentences have no periods,
my commas are not large enough.
There are no interludes; only agony
without the ecstasy.

So, with faith a microbe and hope a single Pennsylvania firefly,
I wonder what You will do with me. Why you have done this to me.
For, in all honesty, I see no purpose now for this hotly searing
fire in my head
that sheds cold tears

When no one is looking.

Of All Days

Of All Days

(“So all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouts, with the sounding of rams’ horns and trumpets, and of cymbals, and the playing of lyres and harps.” 1 Chronicles 15:28)

So I said to them, once the lightness had returned to my step:

“I was warned about the storms you bring,
with your refusals to sing, and everything you see that has
turned the great green world black. I will not turn back.”

And they just looked at me, mouths hanging open, not a breath taken,
and spears for eyes that pierced the thought bubble above my head:

They said:

“When will you learn it is our call to burn the beastly fields
that are filled with weeds and wheat beneath your feet. When will
you see, take note, and agree with our proposal, read it squarely,
about our disposal of human garbage at the curb.”

And I just looked at them, mouth hanging open, my breath still shaken,
and years of lies that made me feel different. Until this little bit of time.

Come on, people. Dance, people. Look upward, darlings. Look outward, pals.
Listen slowly, sisters. Listen surely, brothers. For the demons are canceled
for the day.

Invite every opponent, swing open the mighty iron gates,
Lay out the long red carpet, Ring the bells, it’s not too late
for every point on the globe to hear the chimes singing,
“Disrobe your objections and dance the directions of the
three-beats-in-one.”

So I said to them, once the smoke rose above the clouds
the hugged the sun like chariot wheels across the sky:

“Here is why I wrote this tune (I knew the lyrics would drive
you crazy, and still, there they are.) Do you see how far we are
from the

Joy of Mercy

The

Glee of Grace

The

Hymn of Peace

And the

Cancelled Notes we owed and could never pay? So I ask honestly,
Why, on this, of all days, would you try to keep anyone away?”

I Just Have to Tell You

I Just Have to Tell You

(“Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come…and save you.’” Isaiah 35:3-4

I hate to admit but my eyes are blood-red this morning,
blood-red since yesterday, closed and shut throughout the night.
I though we both received the same orders; the ones I received decades
ago, the same you’ve heard from the mouth of the Lord:

“Go into the world..”

But, here is where my eyes break down, where my stomach lodges
clear up into my throat,
where my fingers shake from mistaken interpretations as
more and more act like dragons
and spit fire at the world they think has begun its
persecution.

“Go into all the world…”

But we gossip about the “family on welfare” where,
parked just in front of the sagging garage,
was a fancy car, a new car, a car sans scratches, and
one that matches your best desire for one too.
And you step into church, with the first sentence ringing:
“I drove by Linda’s place. Ha…she gets food stamps while there
is a fancy car in her driveway!” And our dragon saliva lights the
next best gossips to say the same. Worship did not happen that day,
I think Jesus ran away to comfort the object of these good peoples’ scorn.

“Go into all the world and preach…”

Hey, we pay a pastor to do that. And, boy can he tell a story. I mean,
he has our ear every week. (And they go home never taking their
booster thoughts of truth.) We pay a pastor well, until, he meddles
in politics, or sex, or money. And we would report him the moment
he mentioned the Democrats’ solutions. We don’t walk out, we just
leave our post and send letters of excuses, because I want to leave worship
like a massage, and without bruises.

“Go into all the world and preach the Good News…”

That’s the Ten Commandments, isn’t it? Oh it is so sad that they won’t
let us
post the 10 on every state house lawn, or every
telephone pole alone I-5. We used to be such a godly nation. (Decimating
Native Americans, Enslaving African tribes, Denying Votes to fellow females,
and rounding up every Japanese inside chicken-wire ghettos. Not to mention
lynchings and mobs and bombs targeted with hateful precision.)
We used to be such a Christian Nation.

“Go into all the world and preach the Good News to every creature…”

But you better take a gun with you, or mace, or pepper spray, and don’t
stay too long in the neighborhoods marked by poverty and starvation.
“Here’s a per diem, you can buy all the food you want at McDonald's or
Arby’s. Spend your money wisely, and you will come out ahead.”
They watch us, well, they see us well. And, at least we went on
this mission trip
when the others stayed home without precedent.

By the way, did you notice that one house. Oh it was decrepit. Shutters
hanging askew. Wood siding cracked, splintered and eaten a foot above the
foundation wall. Broken windows and forgotten screens, roof shingles
looked like a melting cake frosting. And then, (don’t mention this to
anyone else)

But, did you notice, that a Cadillac pulled up, maybe two years old,
and shiny, oh it was shiny. It gleamed golden in the sun. Those seats
were leather, I know they were. I just have to tell you. It makes me
mad, people like this, using my taxes to get themselves ahead.

…and preach the Good News…

I’m sorry, God, we didn’t get to it today.

Sabbaths and Anthems

Sabbaths and Anthems

“Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” John 7:22-24

How do you respond when you read about the Pharisees judging Jesus because He healed someone on the Sabbath? I imagine it at least makes you roll your eyes, right? Jesus, in great compassion, heals people suffering because they are blind, deaf or even harassed by demons. I’m sure that if we were there, we would be jumping in joy when we a blind friend is able to see for the first time in his life!

But, religious people are full of criticism. They don’t like to lead with love. They cannot even take the time to think things through. No, if something offends them, they are ready to damage the person’s reputation for the sake of their own dead beliefs. So, Jesus heals on the Sabbath and the Pharisees are after Jesus with their fangs bared and saliva foaming at their mouths.

Jesus, with only one goal; to honor His Father, is attacked by those who considered themselves the religious guardians of truth. “Keep the Sabbath” meant, “don’t do anything we think is wrong on the Sabbath.” Of course, they already hated Jesus, he had so many people following him. Now, they thought they had a foolproof way to rid themselves of this nuisance.

But the Pharisees had gotten things way out of proportion. It was more important to rigidly keep Sabbath “laws” than it was to heal someone on the Sabbath. They said Jesus was leading people astray, and would eventually hatch a plot to kill him. Don’t be too aghast, we see it happen quite often in the “Christian” world today.

A young black man becomes deeply disturbed that a greater percentage of blacks are killed by white police officers than are whites. Stop, take a breath, and put yourself in his place. The numbers bare the inequity out. Recently a large church on the East Coast invited those in their congregation who were minorities to share their experiences with Law Enforcement. To quote a friend who attended:

“We did an entire Sunday morning testimony service to blacks and other minorities sharing their feelings and negative interactions with L.E. (law enforcement). It was eye opening for some of the older white parishioners. When they saw how many testimonies there were it was hard to dismiss them as isolated incidents.”

So, a young 28-year-old second string quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers expressed his grief by kneeling when the National Anthem was played. He did not riot. He did not yell expletives. He merely knelt quietly as the anthem was sung. And so the “Sabbath rules” are broken!

Let me come at it this way. Would a first century Christian ever even consider making a vow of allegiance to the Roman Empire? It is easy to say, “Well, that was an evil entity.” Then the question would be, “at what point do we make allegiance to an empire a higher priority than allegiance to Christ, or to a cause that our devotion to Christ moves us toward?”

It is fine to stand during the National Anthem. It is wonderful to refrain from work on the Sabbath. But here’s the difference: The Pharisees’ judgement was far out of proportion. Not carrying a pallet and making clay on the Sabbath were far more important than healing someone. Jesus tries to correct them.

If you were deeply pained over an issue in your nation you deemed unjust, it would be appropriate to call attention to the injustice. That is what Kaepernick is doing. You may disagree with it. You may never choose to protest in that way. But, to castigate him, to call him names, to challenge his sincerity is also to have things far out of proportion. Which is a higher call: to bring attention to injustice in the land, or to stand during the Anthem?

But, as a follower of Jesus, those are not even my primary concerns. What has caused me to actually weep is other Christians calling him names, saying he should be forced out of the country, and one “pastor” even saying that anyone else that did that should be “lined up and shot!” There is one Facebook meme that has a picture of Bin Laden above a picture of Kaepernick with the caption: “If Bin Laden had a son.” (Oh, just to make a tiny point about “respect”, I can’t tell you the number of times people keep talking to each other when the Scripture is read.)

The brand of “Christianity” that I am seeing among in our country is growing worse each political cycle.  Next time you are ready to call a public figure names, try to exercise some empathy. You don’t even have to agree with them, but at least think about it a bit. We are men and women who have taken Jesus as our own.

Do you really think Jesus would compare Kaepernick to a demon-possessed terrorist? Do you really think Jesus would throw his name all over social media with every negative and ugly word you can imagine? Do you honestly think Jesus would spit in the man’s face before he actually listens carefully to not only his words, but his heart?

And, if Jesus did feel Kaepernick needed to be dealt with, I wonder how He would approach him? Of course, there is Zacchaeus, a guy who sided with the occupying nation against his own people by overtaxing them and keeping it for himself. Now there is a guy to rake over the coals, right?

Go read what Jesus did…and perhaps we should do likewise.

Pop the Words

Pop the Words

(“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” John 5:44)

You pop the right words, “God gave me”,
and “Christ told me”, and “I’m led to”,

But why I cannot find you when
the poor need another week of bread,

Why you are not running
to open the bus doors for the
children who smell just like you did
when you were a child that smelled;
did you stay home to avoid another buffet line?

You’ve changed your words, but still shoot daggers
at the same people as before. Now you quote Scripture
to prove how right your intolerance has become.

Come now, sing the tune, the words, the Spirit,
the same as we have sung for centuries on end. Why?
Do you?

You set your timer to go off at exactly the moment
you notice
no one notices
your commitment; your words last only
as long
as they are easy to speak. Hard to keep and
the alarm rings

And the Pastor is preaching suspect passages,
the doctors are only practicing, not healing,
the teachers don’t know their curriculum
and the banjo player gets his fingers stuck in
the strings.

Or so it seems to hear your report.

You met Jesus, and all he did was give you a new vocabulary
to tear up and shred every decent person who ever tried

To help you a decent person. And “Christ”, as you call Him,
is not Christ at all if You have forgotten the blessing of doing
what nobody ever notices.

Original Intent

Original Intent

(“They didn’t demand an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money…for they dealt faithfully. 2 Kings 12:15)

I will trust you with these words, and leave them in your care,
for, until this time and backward a plural of degrees
you have kept them carefully and incubated their design;

A harder task than most realize.

So, as I deposit them to your account, I trust you will keep
them unmixed
from other motifs and sentiments as well you can,
for rationalizations exist for withdrawing notes from

Unrelated accounts and attaching them; addendums never
realized nor penned by my familiar signature.

My words are the handiwork of my heart, and my
heart
is (as yours is) fragile, yet true. Will you,
as I place them in your safekeeping, administer them,

Not as your own,
but as you know I meant them to be.

I’ve seen the conversations, the sloppy accounting,
where lines are crossed out or carelessly erased,
and then quickly replaced with overtones never
implied in the original autograph. I have seen you,

In my mind’s eye,

Solitary at eve with undried sighs,
knowing replacing the replacements
with your own erasure would raise newer suspicions
about your original intent.

A Venue you Habited

A Venue you Habited 

(“The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands.” John 3:35)

Have you ever returned to a chosen space, a venue you habited like the moon
in its cycles? Have you glanced upon the stone where once you sat
to abbreviate the world’s long pages? Your eye scanned the horizon;

The west was endless from the butte’s vantage; a river running and rising
as June supplied its capacity from the peaks well past August.

The east was a yellow hillside wedge with jonquil and bluebell punctuation.
Sometimes the children were occupied with hikes and journeys while your
heart,
aligned with the routine,
found comfort in the pattern as all life finds in the seasons.

So, for 20 years you visited, weeks divided by two;
for 20 years you sat and painted your methods;
for 20 years you kept a liturgy of hours, your prayer rope
a comfort when thoughts twirled like gutters and words
echoed against the abyss.

Then came the pain. Unruly, you continued your routine. 
But the pain allowed less contemplation as it captured your
best assets and imprisoned them well beyond the reach of your
shortened range.

The pain stayed. Five years in the experts ran out of tricks,
the rabbits had escaped, the wand was broken, and the magician’s cape
was a threadbare anachronism while you grabbed the theater rails
to exit the building when your last hope when up in flames.

The stone still sits atop the butte, the river still swells in 
summer’s comma before the fall. But you

Are adrift, the doldrums have stopped every measure of time.
You wonder what power, now eight years unpinned from
the calendar’s rhythm, might stir the waters again,
send you to the one unchanging habit that defined

Your delineation from every other footprint maker.

A Father, you hoped to accelerate your best to leave your
children arcs and panoramas before you left to rest.

A Mumbled Lunch

A Mumbled Lunch

(“Then he prepared an inner sanctuary within the house in order to place there the ark of the covenant of the Lord.” 1 Kings 6:19)

They turned the dial and hoped it would stem the tide,
Instead they found the show was over, and cried
when the jokers turned around, and joined the clowns who frowned
at the way the whole operation went down.

The prophets and politicians raised their hopes and expectations
with fire and ice, avalanche and imprecise references to
the Day of the Lord, Armageddon, or the Flaming Horse of Red,
or the poet without his hat on. They all missed the boat,
and never bothered to vote upon the gentle waters of northern lakes.

They faked the news, and made up more,
They repay the rich for every endorsement,
While the guests and the poor suffer strict enforcement
of every line in the book,
every book, line and baited, still dangling
from the fisherman’s hand, still tangling.
No one waited to see if
the fish were jumping. The stumps were free
but the stamps prevented the letter from arriving.

I’ve seen you smile like a Christian lad in church,
and follow it, hollow and shallow, with a mumbled lunch
of sandwiches, sandals, and offers to identify the demons
behind the scandals that only happened
once the newspapers lost their business.

Leave the old man neatly dead. I mean fully rotted,
breathless, pulseless and abrupt.
The new wardrobe fits better instead. I mean fully hand-sewn,
tailored, perfect and ageless.

The dial will not fit your hand, the tide will ebb and flow
as it did yesterday, last week, last month, a century ago.
So when you raise your voice, raise it loud; be certain
(oh proud and curtained breath), that all you know
is less than all that is.

Since we must take the taxi (we called ahead)
let us share the seat, spare the chatter and,
turn by turn, ask the driver what is the matter,
and why the widespread gossip has
pulled our planet so far from its orbit.

Excuses and Abstractions

Excuses and Abstractions

(“David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly by doing this! Now, O Lord, please remove the guilt of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.’” 2 Samuel 24:10b)

Call me foolish; but not like David. I have forgotten the numbers
and so, for now, write unabated.

The ink has not dried; the smoke still circles
the inkwell where the last shootout transpired.
We hoped emerging sounds, cries of the stricken,
prayers of the dying and pistols whipping up the air
like last year’s carousels would

Once

And over

Wake the lazy thinker snoozing in the clover
and turn his mask around to see, eyes properly adjusted,
that freedom is busted when everyone locks their doors and
electrifies their opinions. Let us be clear, the numbers are stronger
than Saturn’s rings; the answer clearer than Dylan sings:

The excuses were buried in the mud and come up
when the tide rises. Now Abel’s blood recites the latest
chorus to add the next verse to the blindman’s dirge.

We could offer freedom, if we were free;
we could save the water, if we would see
the blood on the streets, the blood upon the walls,
the blood upon the white tees, the blood upon the laws
and order, the hoarders and the spenders; if the next time

We see the menders binding wounds, owning slurs,
and spending dimes on candles to guide surgeon’s
hands; all
we ask, all we seek, today, this minute, not tomorrow and
next week;

Black Lives Matter (how many eyes does it
take to be opened, before we despise our own jealousies).

I am far too quiet, too far removed. I will not count
the numbers, fear the decaffeinated mood of anyone
(thus far in this bit of writing I’d say)
I will not steer clear of mental paradoxes used by
proper instructor meant to
steal younger minds from thinking if

Jesus appreciates our excuses and abstractions
to miss the opportunity in

The middle of the road.

Before Fitful Sleep

Before Fitful Sleep

(“Even the one who has strength of heart like the heart of a lion will be afraid.” 2 Samuel 17:10a)

It was the last thing I thought before fitful sleep,
the last wheelbarrow that kept cycling from load to load,
and my breathing followed the pace, my heart left little space
for calmer dreams to prevail. I knew I was certain to fail;
all I thought had been accomplished over ten or fifteen years
was upended as the gunfire encroached from every direction.

I liked my pillows flat as tortillas once,
for years in fact, since I was a kid I slid my hand beneath
the cold pillowcase and listened to the pulse thumping in my head.
But now I need them fluffy. I cannot pinpoint the date or the year,
but I think it started when I discovered thin pillows were
fragile defenses against the armaments of recycling thoughts.

Long thoughts with no side streets, no turn-offs to a quieter avenue;
wrong thoughts with no return or redemption, a sorry state for weary mind;
strong thoughts with no silencers, so loud I’m sure my eyelids twitched morse code;
thoughts that did not belong to my quieter wishes. Rarely, sparely a
plainsong of space between breaths left enough calm
that I could sleep without feeling the hypocrite.

I’m older than the fitful nights, and stay up later because
once slumber greets waking I’m met with shaking pain that
has nailed my head dead-ended so I stumble before getting out
of bed.

None know my pain (oh, I must remind myself, and any reader,
I am no whiner, no self-repeater), my face sometimes shows the pain,
but mostly it has grown back to its original dimensions; a thin smile and
eyes slightly bowed. I admit my feet have slipped from the pedal,
and my life and my work coast hazily, and my life and my work
appear to lazily pull to a stop along the shoulder. And my life
and my work
have suffered from so many miles without attention
and a cracked head that has lost all compression.

And so you know, a bit narrow, or more obtuse,
the harrowing tale of a lion-heart that hid well
the dreams of night and the schemes of day;
and who hates excuses, and sings the blues by heart.

But my final stanza, (for the safety of my readers)
still glorifies the Lion who roars in Love-and-Truth,
and will, in fortune’s reversal, soon remove the thorn
that has beset my soul, while the small circle of friends
is found unbroken.