We Embark as Passengers

 We Embark as Passengers

(“May he give you what your heart wishes for. May he make all your plans succeed.” Psalm 20:4)

We embark as passengers,
take our seats, yawn our way into
the excursion
and wonder about the eyes that gaze upward.
We watch the eyes of those who gaze upward.

Prepaid, our tickets are not punched,
no baggage, just a few snacks to tide us over.
We hear the whistle of cow’s breath,
the drifting of black-eyed susans passing
a day in the sun. We wonder at yellow
and mustard. We watch the canola grow.

Our destination is not fixed, we may wander.
After a day of travel our weariness gives way
to curiosity. Who named the jonquils? Who
painted bananas? And do you remember the girl
whose hair was like daisies?

Long before these tracks were laid down,
long before engines and asphalt,
others traversed the open sky from the
middle of the continent. Did they dream of
oceans, or create myths to explain them?

We feel the ancestors within us,
we feel the pulse of their ancient songs
as they keep time to the long train grinding
through the valley into the next depot. What
sunsets await us in the crowd gathered for the
next ride out of town?

Please Look at Me (a reworking of Psalm 13)

Please Look at Me
a reworking of Psalm 13

(“But I have trusted in Your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in Your deliverance.” Psalm 13:5)

I sent a letter, I tweeted a tweet, I posted it and messaged it and
none remembered? How long? Forever? No faces show up to
share a smile. And all the while, You, the One who says you are
crazy in love with me,
never show up!
So I’ve stored up all the junk in my life. The padlock is broken,
the rent is unpaid. And every day my anxiety fills the dusty corners
behind the cardboard boxes and ashy picture albums.
How long, damn it! How long? My mind is being wrung like
a dishcloth, then run under hot water and wrung again. And
my friend, (I thought) has all the cards. They have the weapons,
I have my tears.

So, will you please look at me.
NOW
god? My eyes are grey around the edges, red from the crying
that has emptied all their defenses. I would rather sleep,
no, rather sleep and die. Then I’ll no longer fight for the love
of friends
or companions. And they can say they won the big round this time.
My shakiness only confirms their assumptions. I cannot stop the
shaking.

Don’t tell me I’ve been wrong by relying on your love Divine one, I need
joy
so deliver me from the harsh looks, the mental crooks, the shivering
hooks that keep pulling me back into doubt and deep cavern darkness.
I am still alive, so I suppose you have treated me generously. But today,
I just don’t feel like singing.
I just don’t feel like dancing.
I just feel like a call from a friend would

Open my sky again.

The Cocoon Broke Open

The Cocoon Broke Open

(“Many people are suffering—crushed by the weight of their troubles. But the is a refuge for them, a safe place they can run to.” Psalm 9:9)

The doorway was locked to him,
he would not have entered anyway.
The doormat said, “all welcome”,
he knew he would have to become like them.

His wounds were invisible to all but his friends
who listened to his soul.  

So people thought his tears were
for dramatic effect. They thought he should control
his emotions. They thought God should have healed him.
They thought he must have done a lot of nasty shit to
be so broken so easily.

And maybe he did.
And maybe he didn’t.

He tried the promise of sanctuary in the habitat of
pews and stained glass,
to tents and loud guitars,
to youth groups and flag football,
to speaking in tongues and baptisms in ponds,
to trying to stop rainstorms with mighty prayer
and repair the breaches that
did not desire to be repaired.

And finally, the cocoon broke open and his
slimy
wings felt more vulnerable than before. For a moment
he wished
to be back in the front row, reading the hymns, tapping his toes,
and imaging halos around the choir members.

In time his wings were dry, and fluttering,
getting his bearings, he landed upon the first place
he could find. Her hair was auburn as she worked
in her garden. He alit upon the top of her head, resting
before his next excursion. And then, unexpectedly he
heard her thoughts:

“Now I feel like a Disney princess.”

I Never Did Like Roller Coasters

 I Never Did Like Roller Coasters

(“Most of all, have a true love for each other. Love covers many sins.” 1 Peter 4:8)

I never did like roller coasters,
my fears mounted as the car clanked slowly to
the top while my heart raced faster than the last
loop whizzing through the electrified air. In fact,
I called out my eighth-grade girlfriend’s name as
if she were a deity ready to catch me. I was in Tulsa,
she was in L.A.

I never did like roller skates.
I could coast well enough, stopping was the scary
part for me. My knees scraped the concrete when I
put on the brakes. Never mind trying to skate backwards,
all my best friends could.

I never did like solo obedience.
The tight fit of the iron box pushed all the air
from my lungs.
Yet, I pretended well. No, I pretended sincerely.
I watched my friends sin easily. I watched others
wear their morality with courage. I could do neither.
But, when you are at the top of the roller coaster hill,
your options are limited.

There must have been someone who hugged me
when they saw my ashen face depart the coaster car.
There must have been someone who removed their skates
and held my hand to walk on the sidewalk downtown.
Could there be someone who saw both my
mask
and my
face
and still shared our mutual disgrace? There is not room
in the crowded box for another body,
but another soul might fit quite well.

Sing Me Closer

 Sing Me Closer

(“I have spoken once, and I will not reply; or twice, and I will add nothing more.” Job 40:5)

There was once a man, a preacher, a laborer,
a well suited-and-tied man. He could pray beyond
the boundaries of time that ticked away at the end of meetings.
No flowers, little elegance, simply words strung together that, more
than
once,
made me wish I could pray exactly the same.

There was once a man, another, a hopeful, a bull,
an untailored man. He could tell you what God had said
right in the middle of the first man’s prayer.

I often wondered why either of them were there.

I do not fault them; I nearly envied one. My prayers were
drops of tears when alone,
perfect informal eloquence when presiding. But never so long
that anyone suspected I had learned a holy language. And
never so specific
that my words could be mistaken
for palm-reading, fortune-telling, or guidance from the
Almighty
who (I hoped) could speak quite well on Her own.

Today I go through a week of days with no live conversation
for hours at a time. I have spoken once, then not at all until
the night begins to fall.

I would give this gift.

But no one knocks on the door to accept it.

I despise spiritual language. I do not have the mystic’s vocabulary.
The only dialect that has ever moved me,
the only accent I’ve learned that removes the pain
are the words that wrap around your heart so hard
you feel like you might die,
and you might as well,
in the love that feels more divine
than pews and prophecy,
pomposity and prayers
combined.
Sing me closer so I can breathe,
touch my hands, warm, and I may, once more,
believe.

The Hole in the Sky

The Hole in the Sky

(“…love one another earnestly with all your heart.” 1 Peter 1:22b)

I must apologize; I mistook the hole in the skies
as sabotage. But it looked like a hole on the frozen lake
augured for ice fishing and attracting northern and walleye.

But I looked again and there it was, a square, directly above my head,
where the azure had been sawn with equal sides. I would not have
noticed it,
but I was watching hummingbirds hover just opposite my face
and ascend like tiny bottle rockets to the uppermost limb
of the old walnut tree in the yard. Then two flakes
of cottonwood snow
drifted higher by and I followed their floating trajectory.
One dipped and circled the tree and rose again toward the logging
road behind my house.
The other rose on the currents like the ascension.

That is when it appeared, this grave dug in the sky.
How was I to interpret such a vision? Who would explain
such a thing?
I waited for an angel, I waited for a messenger,
I slept and waited for a dream, I woke and waited
for a vision. But none would come.

And the sky stayed punctured. And, afraid the whole earth
would leak through the hole, I panicked and turned up the heat.

I am only alive to describe this to you because
nothing happened to deflate the blue above or the
green below. It was just a hole and nothing more.

The few who saw it too presented their theories and
dissertations to a panel of judges at a table strewn with
flags and bibles. The first said the moon had broken the sky.
The second said it was the end of rainbows as we know it.
The third, oh the third was persuasive. An act of God,
to be sure, (except, the author interjects, wasn’t the
pre-hole sky an act of God too?) An act of God, he said,
dropped the mic, and put up a tent just outside of town
to wait until we all got sucked up through the hole or
fell into the one next time that would take us to hell.

I am still unsure why the sky was punctured. I am not sure
it has stayed that way.
I know what I saw, and my testimony is true.
I do not know its significance, only that I wanted to
share it with you and
maybe call some friends to talk about it over drinks tonight.
None of us know much anyway.

A Sky Waiting to be Filled

A Sky Waiting to be Filled

(“Are any among you suffering? Let them pray. Are any cheerful? Let them sing psalms.” James 5:13)

A sky waiting to be filled with
tears of pain
or
songs of joy. It surrounds everything.

A friend’s gaze sitting on the swing
waiting
to reflect back anything
in your heart today.

The breath moving and silent
carries the human cries from
within the infinite soul to
the eternal ground of being.

Angels may hover, they may not exist,
while some insist on squeezing confessions
out of the unbelieving.

And I hope to simply be satisfied with

Being seen.

Soar

 Soar

 

Verse 1. I've seen your eyes frightened by the coming night,
I've felt your shivering fear of doing wrong, missing right,
I've heard your fears, I've seen your tears,
And all I want to do is lead you to

Chorus: Higher heights, greater love,
soaring sights where the sun kisses
your fears away.

Verse 2. And I would blow your fears away like dandelions.
I would sing your tears away like newborns smiling.
I’ve heard your fears, I’ve seen your tears,
And all I want to do is lead you to

Chorus: Higher heights, greater love,
soaring sights where the sun kisses
your fears away.

Bridge 1. I’ve been full of doubts, afraid and misunderstood.
And one mouth then another tangles all my words.
But my scrambled thinking has been safe with you, my second guessing
safe with you.

Verse 3. And now it is time to soar, leave the nest, flee the fear,
take to your wings, fill the air, your song will appear.
I’ve heard your song, I’ve seen you strong,
And all I want to do is lead you to

Chorus: Higher heights, greater love,
soaring sights where the sun kisses
your fears away.

Bridge 2. And when you fly overhead, circling the trees and clouds,
When you land at my door, silent save for angel sounds,
I'll only say, I’ll be sure to say, I am glad that you are
safe and free.

Spoken: And if you need another wing, just ask me for anything, my words, my smile, my laugh, my hand, and I’ll boost you higher to glide again where eagles sing.

Chorus: Higher heights, greater love,
soaring sights where the sun kisses
your fears away.
So soar. Soar.
Dear angel
Soar.

A Day to Play the Blues

 A Day to Play the Blues

(“And so my harp is tuned to the key of mourning, and my flute is pitched to the sound of weeping.” Job 30:31)

It’s a day to wear a long black coat that covers you full and low,
from your knees to your feet. It’s a day to pretend to walk the dog
and leave home with just the leash.
It’s a day to hide your tears from the many who would never understand.
The sun has little to do with it, high and bright,
or
hidden and cloud. Wanting to see a friend take to new heights,
but they tremble, glued to the ground. And the sounds of music
they hear, the soothing chords,
are merely morse code for liberation.
It's a day to shake like exhaustion, to feel the cold you hoped had
finally melted in your soul.
It's a day to hide your pain, you’ve carried it too long anyway.
(Or so friends and experts say.)
Wanting to share coffee with a friend, but they demure,
certain and unsure like the first flickers from wet logs in
a campfire.
It's a day where sitting silent would be good, if there was someone
to sit with.
It’s a day where sitting alone feels more like abandoned.
The sky has not answered back and neither have the distress signals
flared toward the sun early in the day.
It's a day to play the blues, but you need two. No,
you do.
It’s a day when the ghosts of those who have walked away
refuse to leave your heart, your shoulders, your brain, your tears,
every muscle fiber, and you would be rid of them if the replacement was not expensive.
If it would help to spend it on yourself, you would gladly shop all afternoon.
But this is a day to walk incognito in the world and hope that someone
recognizes you tomorrow.

An Extra Pair of Angel’s Wings

An Extra Pair of Angel’s Wings

(“Nevertheless, you are doing the right thing if you obey the royal Law in keeping with the Scripture, ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’” James 2:8)

I have paid my dues for being unwise,
(that’s putting it mildly)
I have missed my deadlines, wildly looking back
at what might have been.
And I wonder where I left my heart this time.

I want to walk the mountain trail,
feel the rocky floor. I want to breathe the
snowy air. I want to drink from chattering streams,
but I cannot do it alone.

I walk, day this, day that,
alone. And yet if someone offers to walk with me,
I usually shut down, just say no.

I need a nameless soul, unformed clay,
without definitions or conditions. If
I know too much about you, I may fear to be myself.

Yet, you know more about me than most others.
Has this led us to a cliff of no return? Did someone block
the access down the mountain? Is the trail marked, “one
way
only”?

I am weary. Overworked? Perhaps overlooked.
The valley calls me, plush and green where the robins sing,
and hawks glide along the upper frame. I want
one
who has heard my song to
sing it back to me just one more time.

And here I am, writing about me. My impulses to
stretch beyond myself are muted; my heart is
either shrunken
or hardened. Is it possible that passions
that once filled my heart
have leaked out and dried in the summer drought?

For one more day the tears fill my eyes and have
nowhere to fall except upon my naked feet. And
one more day I’ll walk and listen and breathe and
search to see if anyone has left an extra pair of
angel’s wings along the path.

What If We Had Never Met?

What If We Had Never Met?

What if we had never met? That’s not impossible,
is it? I used to think I could dig deep enough to arrive
for lunch in China. I’d still be digging today or
melted and scorned by the molten core of my home planet.

But, what if? Would I still be afraid to dance? Would
I like to meander more or less? Would I let strangers take
my snapshot
or be shyer than all the rest?

When if we had always supped? Sharing bread and
bottles of wine,
would we have lasted longer as friends or
wandered like wobbling planets? Would I cross
states
to find you? Or remain solid as ice, permanent as pavement
and never leave my assigned place?

Lately beloved names escape me. Fascination with new ones
unmakes me. What if we had not feared so much? What if
we let the river take us, peaceful and strong,
along the banks of the mountains to the
open sea
and straightway realized how friendships are far too
geographical.
For me, it is no laughing matter. I can ache for a face
I have not seen in nearly 20 years. I can long for a voice;
no, the tone, not the words. I can long for a voice that meant,
“Do you need some company?” at the first hello.

Today space separates me from my if-onlys; yesterday, death.
Time has made our shared secrets thinner. I have no illusions
about eternal bonds, not with everyone, I guess. And
I hate to say I’m

lonely.

I hate to say it at all.

What if I had stayed just one hour longer when
all you needed was another human to see you
better
than you saw yourself?

What if I have divorced myself?

Today one day whole
would be the beginning of me.

My Invisible Skin

 My Invisible Skin

(“I’ve said these things to you so that you will have peace in me. In the world you have distress. But be encouraged! I have conquered the world.” John 16:33)

It isn’t guilt these days,
it’s the suffering, the sheer pain of squeezing
the most moments from each slant of the sun.
Do I miss friends who no longer understand?

I once had a plastic model, a man with invisible skin.
Inside were the organs: stomach and liver and arteries and veins.
I never learned much from him, or from the frogs I dissected in school.
All their insides blended in dirty wash-water grey.
It is fortunate I am not a physician.

At any rate I wish there was a picture window
to my soul
and it could be viewed dispassionately,
entirely undressed.
I would no longer need to rehearse my
answers, no longer hide what gathered dust
in the rafters. And I would be happy to sit still
for every x-ray snapshot.

Scolding never healed a headache,
surprise inspections alter few behaviors.
If you could see through my plastic skin
would you dissect my present from my past?
Would you think my last iteration was more
tattered than the first?

In the end it matters little,
though surgeons have whittled away at
a few of my organs.
My within remains intact,
my invisible skin only covers
a mosaic whose colors sometimes change
but whose essence has remained the same.

From the Center of the Web

From the Center of the Web

I was requested by a relative to be named later
to write a poem about a spider. I think it was a spider;
I am not certain, but I know she does not like the bald ones.
My guess is that it was another animal that I have forgotten;
short term memory sometimes short-circuits that way.
Of a certainty though,
I do think I know that
this creature was to be intelligent.
Which makes me think it was not a spider for
spiders
have tiny little heads and very limited cranial capacity
for even a brain of average intelligence.
That is, except if we are talking analogously,
for a spider can carry much more brain power than
a midge or a mite.
The test, I suppose, would be its vocabulary.
Does it know the alphabet, can it rhyme (which this
poet cannot)? Can it count
and tell me that, as an arachnid, it must, most definitely have
eight legs?

“To have more would be preposterous,”
said the creature from the center of the web.

If you must know, this was all my grandchild’s idea.
I have never written about bugs and hope never to again.
I was informed, though, that as intelligent spiders may be,
they have not concocted a people spray to kill threatening men.

So I thank my grandchild Sage,
and bow to their extraordinary wisdom.
Also, I have never ridden a preposterous before,
but someday hope to have the opportunity.

Please Take the Lead

Please Take the Lead

(“We must keep our eyes on Jesus…” Hebrews 12:2)

Please take the lead,
my steps have lost the time
and I cannot find the cadence again.

These days (no, most of my days, most of my

Years)

My first moment is pathetic,
then becomes septic,
while the tears take time to build
and shed later in the day.

Please take the lead,
I do not follow well anymore.
I am silent the whole day through,
not out of some imposed vow,
but because there is no one to talk to.
I cannot find the radiance again.

I’ve been told you inhabit everything,
so you would think I could see you
no matter which way I look.
That’s a fine thought. But my heart
is still a stone that crumbles too easily.

I am weak, everything about me deteriorates
in my depression and mistakes.
But I used to think I was good. Now I am
no longer sure.

I talk a good game,
but honestly, again and again,
I stub my toe, or worse,
run head-on into an unsuspecting passerby.
One more person I should explain myself to.

I’ll tell you the truth now, I did not want to write today.
It is dark at noon. The air is heavy as untuned pianos
masquerading as sandy beaches. And I know that
image makes no sense,
but neither does this burden I can never lay down,
that haunts me forever,
that drowns every sound of a simple chorus of joy
away.

I would curl around anyone who didn’t care
about my shame. I would talk endlessly.
(no I would not. my talk has been my undoing)

Please take the lead, I cannot see beyond this fog.
I’m tired. I’m alone. I’m foolish. I’m a failure.
I make a mess of the best summer days and
cry on all the rest.

These fears, these anxieties, are only paper-thin.
And just beyond them is where beauty begins.

(yes, I wrote that earlier today. but I am still stitched,
and taped, and stapled, and wrapped in butcher paper
someone left on the shelf.)