The Last to Leave

 

The Last to Leave

(“He had promised to give a lamp to David and his sons forever.” 2 Kings 8:19b)

Do you remember when you were the last to leave?
I wanted to show my heart, but not all of it.
Music wafted in from the next room
while small talk about big ideas
melted the distance between us.
I wanted you to see me clear, but not the corners.

Do you remember when you asked me where I bought my clothes?
I wanted to tell you thrift stores, but the best ones.
The places I shopped for t-shirts and 3-piece suits
smelled of dampness and sweat. You might not
have minded I guess.
I zipped my hoodie tighter, but not all the way.

Do you remember when you asked the last time I cried?
I wanted to be perfect, and so I lied. It was just before
we started our conversation.
I could write a thousand things and still not plumb the depths,
the reserve hidden at the bottom.
I wanted to cry when you asked, but got up for a coffee.

Do you remember when I returned with your espresso?
I wanted to impress you, show that I know you. Unlike
my silent self which I hid beneath poetry and song.
The dissidents in my brain claimed my last bit of resolve
and so I evolved into a domesticated animal.
I wanted the dark and light to be equal, but served the froth instead.

Do you remember when you were the last to leave
and I sat in the corner watching you lean into a new friend?
I wanted to die. I had denied myself and moved into
the shadows alone.
The very thing that frightened me, the thing that kept me caged,
was the thing you drank deeply as I watched your conversation.

And I had aged far too quickly. I lit my lamp partly.
I used up my energy deadlocking a room that consumed my thinking.
And I watched him, the same age as me, unleash his hiddenness
like a summer cloudburst. You were drenched while
I covered myself from the rain.

Nowhere Left to Go

 

Nowhere Left to Go

(“Jesus looked at his followers and said, ‘Great blessings belong to you who are poor. God’s kingdom belongs to you.’” Luke 6:20)

It takes only one gaze, one long and expansive glance
from the king of heaven, the lord of earth,
to bring the shadow people into their proper light.

He used to sleep underneath the bridge. Everyone knew it.
There are no secrets in a hamlet edged up against the river.
He had no car. Walked the bridge to the island where he
lived in a workshop his grandfather left him when he died.
It did not belong to him, but to his family far out of state.
The evicted him, he filled his crates, packed a leaky travel trailer
and pushed it to a storage area for safe keeping. Stretching tarps
across the roof and every corner the bungee cords groaned as
the winds ballooned the blue and camouflage waterproofing when
the winter storms blew fierce.

He could not live in it: storage only.

He cursed when he got angry. Ok, he cursed a lot. He had a motor
scooter he used to ride to town until it broke down. A bicycle replaced
it and worked just fine until the rims and gears wore out with rust.
Then his job fell through and could no longer pay cash only.
For the last two years he had fought to find a way out of the
shivering dark and lonely.

I gave him rides to the food banks when I could. We drove to
the storage lot, unlocked the flimsy trailer door and put the bags
in cupboards and counters, but mostly on the floor.

Nowhere to go when the rains came, I put him up in a storage shed
fifty feet from the door of the church. He found a corner between
manger scenes and lawn mowers and slept with his head on the
lower shelf with canning jars on either side. It was not easy. He was
not tidy. And it was only temporary we knew.

But some of the leaders blew their stack to think a vagrant, a
known drug user, (actually, they would say, it didn’t matter anyway)
and said insisted he had to be out by the end of the day.

Nowhere left to go, and with empty suggestions from the evictors,
he cursed at me, and cursed again. I had let him down, he had been
my friend.

And now, two years later I cannot find him, I do not know where he’s been.

I often wonder why my brothers would not receive someone that Jesus said
was a blessing.

When the Sparks Began

 

When the Sparks Began

(“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.” Colossians 4:6)

 

They had been transparent days until then,
skies full of space, dewy grass with the fallen
petals of camelias carpeting the places beneath
the trees.

They had been joyful evenings until then,
rounds full of laughter, guitars with the chosen
chords of folk songs measuring the pace of memorized
ditties and reels.

A careless cigarette dropped from the traveler’s mouth
into a ditch on a day when all burning was banned.
He noticed, he looked
and exhaled again as he hurried to his destination.

A thoughtless epithet dropped from the minstrel’s mouth
into the circle of fifths on a night when choral odes were planned.
She heard it, she laughed
as if that would soften the blow of a word misplaced and unrationed.

The day became opaque for hours to weeks,
the sun was burnt orange, the sky soot black and weeping,
ancient tree roots and newly budded roses were burned
at the stake
along with farms and meadows and houses.

The night became static, claustrophobic and silent,
the guitar cases clicked as instruments were laid down to sleep.
Songs sung for generations, songs sung for solidarity were mute
at the way
unsavory words sucked the joy from picking and strumming
and singing and humming.

Wildfire and iced hearts. All we needed was seasoning to grace
the moment when the sparks began.

A Year in the Desert

 

A Year in the Desert

(“Then He went away by Himself to pray in a desert.” Luke 5:16)

The songs no longer come easy, the
rests and notes run together randomly.
When the blue jays whistle
the empty sky swallows their songs like
peeling paint from clapboard siding.

The songs once rose like nursery rhymes
unaided by years of leaded study. That is
why this is so hard to write.

The songs were for other folk.

And approaching endgame, the final moves, checkmate
looms. Alone with a head

Full of thunder again.

Some saw bravery; the options simply ran out. Stepping
aside across the unaided expanse, no one showed up to
say goodbye.

The words died upon the journey, the melancholic joy
sank deeper beneath another crawlspace with uneasy answers.
No one showed up to say, “how the hell are you?”

A year in the desert is spent crying for water, wishing for
another chance
where the rains wash away every question ever asked. Thirsting
for the rain that paints it all with green and yellow and pink
when the heart pumps only sludge through the man standing
under a frightening sun, onstage before no one.

But upon the advent of the second year the lonely sky
mentions that butterflies love sunflowers and
mockingbirds never sing the same song twice.
Upon the advice of professionals, the blood thins,
the skin is scanned, and the desert is no longer solitary
confinement. Sometimes the guitar strings are rusty
from months of humid atrophy. But strings can be
replaced.

Like a sitar being tuned, the desert became birth pangs;
music played only by a virtuoso. Maestro, play on.
And if no one knocks on the door to hear because
the music sounds foreign to the neighbors’ ears,
mentor us well; the few who had to venture

Far into the desert to hear the wind and sands
sing of the origin and cause of every song
that every wanderer longed for.

After the Fire

 

After the Fire

(“After the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire, there was a quiet, gentle voice.” 1 Kings 19:12)

I am weary of the quiet with no faces to watch,
though I open the windows and close all the screens.
All I see are the birds flying between my house and the trees.

My mind traverses back to sunny days
on be-cattled hills. Two or three friends,
a guitar and a song, silly stories and
the sky filling our faces.

I coveted the fire. I had heard the stories;
people hiding behind the piano in the corner of the church
just waiting for the flames of God
to ignite them like rocket engines.
I only experienced jet lag.

I begged for the wind. I had heard the tales;
people unexpectedly flying above the earth
with divine wind in their sails. Sometimes they
did not alight for days.
I was displaced by a tornado.

I would prefer not to write about the earthquakes.
They left me broken, split apart like glacial stones.
They pushed me down from the mountain and left me
disoriented, sad and too far from home. The
fault-line
ran straight through my soul.

But I would sit all day unworded with
a friend who let the silence pass between us
like the slow bloom of the cherry tree,
like the change in the wind after a storm,
like the ashes who recognize they have already been burned,
like a dandelion being born.

After the fire I might sleep for a while.
After the fire, then the
whisper.

The Music from Within

 

The Music from Within

(‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4)

One day you can hear the mandolin strings singing just
outside your window.
The next day the fog hangs so close nothing pierces the
heavy silence.
Some weeks are lived this way, and some years.
Some storms turn suddenly away and some
sit overhead like they have nothing else to do.

One day you’re riding comfortably under convertible skies,
the next you’re confined inside a cramped stone basement
averting your eyes from the next claustrophobic wall of sound.

Joy is not for the faint of heart,
but for those willing to confront the darkness
and the detours
that stop us in our tracks. Deeper than the cellar floors
and the shadows, higher than the star-view disguises,
wider than ecstatic proclamations, and closer than
the bud to the branch

Is the unmovable space where love abides,
where transient meets immanent,
where music from within captivates us
when continental shelfs shake us to our core.

Tiny Birds

 

Tiny Birds

(“I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.” Philippians 3:8)

Passions can become extinct, dying embers of past certainties.
The warmth was only a memory, the friction of feet on asphalt
created the heat. As long as we kept moving the sparks flew
unreviewed, but sure to impress at least the occasional traveler.
Rarely leaving the main road we followed the stripes set before us
as sure as directions drawn on a map. We never looked for moss
on the north side of trees or rocks. Warned that detours were destructive
we stayed on summer highways where mirage snakes kept us company.

But a few of us felt the heat was oppressive. It was old and coal,
it was scorch or chill. We soon lost the color in our cheeks,
the wonder of the breeze, and the other creatures we had left
behind
because they refused to be our kind. We put them in their
own boxes outside and let the sirocco sort it out.

One day someone looked.
She took their eye off the road.
She emptied her pockets of charcoal and dust.
She saw two swallows dance like adolescents
100 feet above in the vibrant blue. Spiraling upwards,
they pierced the sky in precision, swinging within inches
of each other’s bodies, green wings pushing the air behind them.

The same day we all looked up
and saw the two lovers soar to the far corners of the horizon
in a clear sky, vacant except for their celestial display. Circling
our peripheral vision, they were barely spots as they
swung around the invisible center. The radius between them
decreased as they glided, the air guiding their elegant ballet.
We lost track that day of everything, except two tiny
swallows that captured all

We had ever wanted.

We had walked face-first, fallen full speed
into the dark. We lost our way in our birdwatching,

And wondered if it was better to be
tiny birds
with a joyous song.

Love So Slow

Love So Slow

(“Christ himself was like God in everything. He was equal with God. But he did not think that being equal with God was something to be held on to.” Philippians 2:6)

You’re not my type (my mind knifes as I fall asleep)
You’re not enough (my past strikes as I awaken)
The slightest silence and I am gone on another hike
around the edges of sanity. I would not have fashioned
my brain this way.

My mind is on constant rewind
back to the entitled days. The hidden greys
that belonged to men with unbridled consciences,
with untamed storms that leaked out every pore.
I shivered at the worst, ignored most at first,
and hoped my fears would never happen. I
wished away summer days with my feet in the streams.

Proving the curse a mistake was the dream
of my bedtime stories. Fantasies of
magic wands to clear my head of all the wrongs
I committed and all the damage I inflicted
and all the pain from songs I wish I had written.

Worse yet I fancied the light, rose in the ranks,
laid my hands on the sick, spoke like a prophet,
and wasted my best on hiding the rest which
dwelt in darkness too deep to define.

(Crying after midnight, sobbing insomnia,
and prayers that only groaned without relief.)

I would have beat myself into submission to
gain admission into the holiest place.

But well down the road I read the words again,
the sigh and gasps of embrace. Sand beaches,
baby children, dogs with ironic names became
the hymns I misheard from the beginning. And

You were my type after all (my soul kites and
my heart steeps in the love so slow it clings
to everything)

War No More

 

War No More

(“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward mankind.” Luke 2:14)

 

You were alerted that the sun would rise early the next day,
yet you kept your eyes averted and knelt under shadowy rocks.
How could you miss the noise and thunder,
the voices lifted in wonder, the wings heating the embers
like bellows in fiery love.

And yet, concerted, you asked others to join in your
announcements of doom from stage to stage,
field to field, church to church, and age to age
until we all believed the story was as dark as you
preached it. We read the books, we watched the movies,
we believed the demons, we waited while you continued
unabated in your
end time and end earth talk
of bloody wars and civil conflicts
and reversing elections. God must love you
more than the rest of us to let you in on a thousand
foggy secrets.

You diverted the river of peace; you inverted the love
meant for worldwide jazz combos improvising on
perfection and light. You missed the diamonds
gifted to you in joy, you cast off curses with the
remnants of coal.

I reject your dust and ashes.

There are melodies only heaven can compose,
each solo a thread of the tapestry,
each voice a stone in an eternal mosaic.
But you can’t hear them, you’ve perverted them
into dirges that hang on one dirty note.

While God courts us, we flirt with machines of war.
With peace as the promise we keep drawing our swords
as if one more lopped-off ear would bring a golden age again.

Lay down your burdens, lay them down, down, down;
lay them down by the riverside to

Study war no more.

For Everything

 

For Everything

(“Consistently give thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah” Ephesians 5:20)

For the shots that missed and for the love without cost,
we thank you o Lord.
For the homes well-lit and for the late sunset tones,
we thank you o Lord.
For the few who left and for the friends ever true,
we thank you o Lord.
For the blues well-worn and for the unclouded hues,
we thank you o Lord.
For the scrapes that healed and for every birthday cake,
we thank you o Lord.
For the stress today and for slumber’s deep caress,
we thank you o Lord.
For the day we’re born and for the kingdom’s ballet,
we thank you o Lord.
For the dance of spring and for a budding romance,
we thank you o Lord.
For the ice of winter and for its extruded nights,
we thank you o Lord.

For the wings of angels, for the footsteps of pets,
for the mess of our lives, for the failings you bless,
for forgiveness and grace, for lace and tablecloths,
for picnics and breadcrumbs, for love and found,
for the sounds that wake us and the sounds that make us
laugh and hug and pray with our tongues tied up.
For lightning, for thunder, for asphalt, for gravel,
for every thing
and everything

We thank you o Lord!

The Whispers are Fainter

 

The Whispers are Fainter

(“’I am the Lord's servant,’ said Mary; ‘may it happen to me as you have said.’ And the angel left her.” Luke 1:38)

The whispers are fainter now than they ever have been,
the attraction to divining the exact instructions for my
next move
has waned so only the mud remains to be seen,
mucking up everything I once believed.

I wanted to be the Lord’s servant too, and blew every
opportunity until
I was set adrift so far beyond the crowds
that the only voices I ever heard
were the voices I always fought with
in my head.

It is likely my ears will go numb from
disuse
and all I’ll hear are the digital hums
that dig their way past the defenses (happy
images
of palm trees and beaches as sleep washes over
me.)

Transparency is all I ever wanted you to see,
but now I am embarrassed to say I do not
perceive my own inner workings. I once had
a toy,
the visible man,
a clear plastic body assembled with everything
from skeleton to skin. Blue veins, red arteries,
white bones and all the organs including a perfectly
dormant brain. His liver and lungs sometimes smelled
of airplane glue. It’s likely he died on my dresser somewhere
between the Monkees and Iron Butterfly.

And now I am stagnant and feel as lifeless as my boyhood model;
my soul has shrunk or is shrouded by decades of ash while
onlookers applaud my survival after the crash.

And still I ask, “how has it all happened, and what was it
you said that set me on this motionless moment?”

And perhaps another time I would have signed it;
your loyal servant. And scratched my signature in
plain view.

The Seeds Live in Silence

 

The Seeds Live in Silence

(“Solomon did not want the noise of hammers and axes to be heard at the place where the temple was being built. So he had the workers shape the blocks of stone at the quarry.” 1 Kings 6:7)

The seeds live in dark silence through the cool days
of early Spring. Dogs and deer and rabbits and humans
walk over the dirt of the tiny graves.
Tombs are always quiet places; filled or empty,
embodied or embalmed.
The first hour of the morning, while dew rests on
new grass
and the breeze has barely awakened,
you can hear the respiration of the world
as the last star fades before the sun.
Daybreak rarely shouts its glory.

As the sun arcs across the sky, we count the days
by dying and reviving; a cycle of seven and the
calendar mentions we are back to the same day again.
The seeds find photons of light and, still quiet,
stretch their shoots up like worship. Before the next
solar circle the buttercream blossoms will smile at the morning.

The hammers fell so loud you could hear the crack of wood and bone
all the way down the hill and to the outskirts of town.
Three more accused, three more collapsed with the grain,
not against it. No one held their tongue; it was a Friday
night fight
to the death with wagers placed by soldiers with
nothing much to do. They offered cigarettes to each other,
gawked at the naked shame and hoped the dying would be
over soon;
dinner was waiting at home.

Tombs are always quiet places, especially the first hour
of the morning.
But one tomb, borrowed; a gift really, held more than
broken bones or punctured hearts. One tomb rebirthed
us all as the angels spoke that

He had risen and paved the way for them to meet him
later in the day.

The women who approached the silent grave left to follow,
to tell what they had seen and heard, and yet,
in their silence,
were unsure exactly what to say.

We Have Upstaged You

 

We Have Upstaged You

(“The captain of the soldiers was looking at Jesus when He cried out. He saw Him die and said, ‘For sure, this Man was the Son of God.’” Mark 15:39)

Was your voice like the rasp of a
fountain pen on parchment after you cried,
“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”
Did they think you were the king of thieves
hanged between robbers on your cruel throne?
Perfection, you were abused;
Compassion, you were accused;
We only saw our own reflection
in the eyes of the one who started world
from thought to mist,
from rain to mud,
from mud to dust and from
dust to breath again.

Did the spittle from the deeply pious
mix with the blood that ran down your brow?
Did the taunts and derision spin in your spirit
while the spikes tore at your flesh?
Did the crowds laugh? Did their tongues wag
and their heads vibrate like bobble-head dolls
and insatiate know-it-alls?

Did your heart break when they offered the
sour alcohol
on a dirty rag to see if Elijah would return
to lift you off the wood where the blood had dried
against your back? Did they ever realize
they got it wrong?

Warriors die as heroes, martyrs as offshore legends,
POWS in redrock dungeons. You died like

Humans die
and yet so divine.

We have upstaged you with our mighty pageants,
powerful senates and threats of hell. We might as
well

Follow Caesar,

If not for the one standing there who saw you
as you are.

You died so human and yet so divine;
the first word heard after you loudly cried
and slumped in a final exhale of breath
was spoken by a pagan soldier when

He saw how you died.

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”