Strengthening

Strengthening

(“He went from place to place…strengthening all the disciples.” Acts 18:23b)

I just dropped by to say I heard the clouds
talking this morning in a colloquy with the sun. They agreed
gladly
to break by noon and flood the day with glass-blue
rays on the afternoon. I
only mention this because I know how much you
have longed for the beginning of wakefulness
to rouse you from the doldrums. You once knew
the lift of renewed songs and friendships grounded
in conversations that lasted past the sunsets of summer.
I came to remind you that the stars can be seen
from this side of the world as well.
I came to remember, right next to you,
the way the air felt holy when we first heard the story
that the conclave of heaven with earth foretold.
And we decided, this time, that time, to believe it
like every other story that invaded our disquieted minds.
Do you remember? Will you remind me while I
walk beside you on this late sunshine afternoon?

My Basic Intentions

My Basic Intentions

(“Whoever loves pure thoughts and kind words will have even the king as a friend.” Proverbs 22:11)

I fashioned the words I needed to
cash in the debts I was owed. I would never
ask for repayment directly but hint at
the mindless muddle it left me in.

Should we meet up to discuss it;
will you repay me when you can?
Or should I write it off, call it grace,
leave it alone transformed like mud into gold?

I’ve got words inside me I have rarely spoken,
fortunes I have not spent. I don’t need the cash,
I didn’t mean to bring it up again.
Rivers sometimes overflow their banks.

I would rewrite the note I sent if that would help.
I should not have raised the subject at all.
I am afraid that trees sometimes fall without warning
and unpredictably finish the day on the forest floor.

My intentions were pure, or so I hoped;
it was the wording that got in the way.
I did not know how to bring it up and
now I wish I never had.

So now I’ll say it all out loud; I’ll recite
what were my basic intentions. I’ve erased
the moment from my mind and left it behind
to feed my roses that have just begun to bloom.

That Pinpoint of Time

That Pinpoint of Time

(“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 22:13)

Did your time feel like it was funneled down a
vortex slide into a single pinpoint of everything?
All the past and future convened to meet in a super mass
of holy magnitude and whirlwinds of exceptional mass.
It seemed as if the air had solidified and the ground turned
like a twirling toddler getting himself dizzy and falling
on the floor.
I was going to hold the door open for you to walk out
into the sunshine. But you were lost in your encounter
with all of time meeting in the single space you occupied.
Your yesterday caught up with you,
your tomorrow greeted you on the back end. There was no
escaping the way that time began to unravel your straight-line
existence. You could do nothing but smile and test the
air to be sure it was still breathable.

We had met years ago when time still ran a straight line.
We knew where we had been and hoped we would enjoy
where we were going. We never thought that we would
encounter the fullness of the mystery of the tornados of time.

While everything moved horizontally toward the edge of your existence
you could count the days by moons and suns. But here was all creation
swirling around you, day and night meeting each other from
front to back with future and past sharing places under your
gaze.

We did not expect to find the Spirit moving in such a way that
we could find her no matter which direction we faced. It was not
simply our past and future, but the rule seemed to be that whatever
direction we looked the divine had been there first. It was only
a hint, but it seemed the crucial mass of time reminded us
of the Spirit that occupies everything. Yesterday and tomorrow
were now full of the light that shines without the sun. Frightened
at first
now we twirled ourselves at the invitation of the Spirit that
filled all things front to back, top to bottom, horizontal and
vertical, we knew the diagonal was fully filled in that
pinpoint of time.

Composition

Composition

(“Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.” Proverbs 16:3)

I had just sat down to let my mind wander between
muses of immunity and sirens of mediocrity and I spotted,
coming across the lawn and toward my adolescent apple trees,
a doe of uncertain years loping across my view.
It was not unexpected. She was one of a dozen who would
venture to my yard over warm summer days.
She made me wonder where she goes after nibbling
the buds off my roses. Next year I’ll find a way to
keep them off the menu for my four-legged visitors.
But today she sauntered past leaving them, maybe,
for a midnight snack the next time she comes around.

I started the day by rolling the burden on my back
to a stronger companion who volunteered to show me
the way home. I walked along streams of consciousness
and pondered how I would start this poem. I still
am not certain it has begun at all.

My daughter told me about rescuing a baby bunny from
the jaws of their big tabby cat named Timmy. She chased
him into their garage where she thought she had him cornered.
But he slinked through a slightly open door into the
laundry room. She caught Timmy and he released his prey.
Chasing him back outside, she quickly let her three dogs out into the yard.
She scoured the house, looking everywhere for the
injured bunny and finally found him hiding at the back of her
clothes closet in the bedroom. No wounds were visible, just
a spot where bare skin peeked through the fur. Taking him
outside to let him out in the wild near a grove us bushes,
there was a mature rabbit waiting, its mother, she was sure.
The rabbit ran and my daughter loosed the baby bunny
into the bushes.

She and Timmy are still fighting.

The Recitations of Love

The Recitations of Love

(“Fools make fun of guilt, but the godly acknowledge it and seek reconciliation.” Proverbs 14:9)

He wanted to jot his emotions down before
the ink dried on the page. They were fleeting but heavy,
they were deep and they were noisy.
He had learned to be impatient about the past
indiscretions. He once thought he had a gift
for painting the unknowable but discovered the
colors ran faster than his brushstrokes could keep up.
He leaned on what he had learned to love, the daily way
his inclinations moved his heart. He knew, and would
try to remember, that prayer was nothing more than
unspoken breaths caught on the dawn of a pink and
orange morning.

He captured his pain, the reminders of how little he gained
from underneath the burdens of tripping and falling where
he wished he had stood strong. The past was a long arc
that followed him down the halls and around the alleys
like corner store bullies waiting after school.
He walked around the block searching for a new place
to bury the thoughts that haunted his steps from day
to the midnight at the end of the week.

But if he stopped for just a moment, if he stood still
and let the light bleed into his eyes, he could hear the
words that started with a look and drew him closer than
he thought he deserved. They were indelible and could
not be erased.
He learned to listen again to the recitations of love,
the mystery that turned upon the timing of the ancient of days.
He could not deny the past, but he no longer needed to
die every day. He replayed the liturgy that played like
a butterfly near his shame and dread. He smiled again and
began again to pace himself in and out of his heirloom of
life.

Destroyed in an Hour

Destroyed in an Hour

(“All these riches have been destroyed in one hour!” Revelation 18:17a)

You thought you would stand forever, didn’t you.
All the reports showed your finances were strong,
your ledger was balanced on the best side of your fortune.
The birds stopped mocking you, the dogs lapped at your feet,
the acolytes lined up by the hour to praise your silvery age
like it was the highest building, like its final floor reached
above heaven.

You spent your spare time circling the globe, you were
given trinkets made of gold. You imagined lines and lines of
supplicants waiting for you to speak the magic words that
would turn their lives around. They knew you were the poverty
breaker
and wanted to be captured by your unnatural mission. They
were certain there was a secret equation that would turn the
water to wine, their tears to diamonds, and their disappointments
to opalescent stained-glass windows that let the golden rays
fall across the paltry collections of misguidance they
had invested their time to believe.

You survived the earthquakes; you held on when the markets
tanked.
You laughed at the storm that leveled everything within
miles of your epicenter. You were untouchable. You were
slippery and had closed every deal with your fingers crossed
behind your back. If someone failed when you pulled the rug
out from under them,
you told them they had simply picked the wrong place to stand.

But there were pests you did not see, insects that lived between
the cash and the plastic you stored behind the walls of
infamous portraits. The agreements you forced you forgers to
sign soon ran out of time. They payoffs you slipped into the
hands of the survivors weren’t enough to keep them from finally
speaking the earth-shattering truth.

Your money stayed intact. In fact, your accounts became bloated,
but too many people now, fooled for so long, began to prophecy the
crash of the one who the world had called beyond and completely
blessed. You crashed as your ego shattered; your scruples were the
first to go.

When your deals shriveled, you swiveled and found
no one was left on the opposite side of your lavish mahogany
desk. Your conscience was seared and you blamed it all,
the meteoric rise and the asteroidal downfall, on
lies a flunky or two had started and could not be stopped.

Briefly you rebounded. But within the hour everything
you built for your name and leisure was over. You could
admit it if you wanted. You could heal from the haunted
cobwebs that left your mind, so deceived and diseased,
that you stood on the first floor and opened the door while
weeping that your reach had receded like a dirge from a person
that no one knew.

To Sculpt Vignettes

To Sculpt Vignettes

(“Listen to me! For I have important things to tell you. Everything I say is right.” Proverbs 8:6)

I looked ahead through the tunnel vision where I hoped
to see a light at the end. It had all been so simple then,
a new day of discoveries or a day trip with friends.
We would ride to Oakland and sit in a coffee shop in
the 70s
where words were spoken from a tiny stage. Where
I first read the early lines of my poetry and sometimes sang
songs I had just written for the girl beside me. We would
drive back home in my best friend’s blue VW bug feeling we
were the luckiest posse alive. We could have studied the
words like the night before a big test. We could have
memorized the verbs that made the evening pass like
an old freight train at night.

I was too nervous to try busking in the park. My skills
were crowded, my fingers careless across the strings.
I did know the songs so well, though, that they came out
of my dreams and into the waking room covered with
psychedelic posters of my favorite bands.

But I sang them nakedly and rarely ventured outside.
I rehearsed them alone wishing my voice could tune
the melody just so. Now I am old and my range has been
shortened by the passing of time. I can barely sing my
rhymes I hoped to retain.

But I could speak. I wanted to sculpt vignettes that
were lit from above. I wanted a better name than just
the sound
of cloudless days. If I am lucky, I’ll write
a piece good enough to stand upon the smallest
stage in the park
and be heard by someone who nearly and only wanted
to be reminded of love a league or two ago. I’ll play
the notes on black and white keys while I recite the words
I hope will make you smile.

The Jangly Sky

The Jangly Sky

(“And I heard the altar saying, ‘Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.’” Revelation 16:7)

The sky above me was jangly while the
sun sent spangly shadows between the trees
darting between leaf and leaf in waves and unruly
particles.

I pondered swiftly the ways our puzzled faces
looked when carrying what we thought we had lost
between us like luggage on the floor. We left it to
the microscopes to explain it all.

We tried to disguise our worried visage, we begged
our distrust to dissuade us like rain on the desert floor.
We had heard the words come from the distant past
and we pretended to understand it at last. We were
foolish.

We let our fears of going outside capture our guarded mind.
We listened to the clanging caught between windchimes and
crows. We pretended to know the answers while we
started the afternoon with the same doubts. We were
disingenuous.

The sky stayed the same throughout the waning day,
the sun scooted over a degree or two seeking the western
horizon. Underneath it all we remembered deer in the
front yard and rabbits in the back. We were
persuaded.

We admitted we had run short of easy answers and so,
simple as we were, we let the light play across our faces.
We moved, quick and stealth, following our canvas thoughts
to their storied end. We knew now that every view would need
to bend.

Overflow

Overflow

(“Your barns will be filled with grain, and you will have too much wine to store it all.” Proverbs 3:10)

There were nights when the only light from the stars
could be seen from the bottom of a well. So narrow the
constellations
were lost while the earth turned toward morning.
The problem with homemade telescopes is
they whittle the sky down to only a sliver view.
Pointed so accurately they could not see the
waving grain or the vats full of wine just a few
steps away from the bottom of the shaft that kept
it all watered so well.

Climbing out to see the midnight sky, the expanse
was effusive with pinpoint twinkles a million years old.
And the moon, large as harvest, lit it all like a ragamuffin’s
lamp. The wheat waved like happy scarecrows,
the wine flowed like a bride’s long veil.

We heard the sound of a distant choir that hung
above the night, the angels laughing like teenagers
caught dancing on the hills. Our point of view
opened the set list of the universe to our ears and eyes.
It all seemed an accident, a lucky alignment of
coincidences that conspired to break us open from
the inside out.

This was the beginning, the answer to the refrain
that repeated the verse and chorus over and over
again. This was the overnight song we had heard about.
This was the overflow, the existential evidence that
there was more than just the wingspan of our limited reach.
This was the abundance promised by voices that
translated divine music into the lingua franca.

The Prepared Abode

The Prepared Abode

(“The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.” Psalm 145:9)

It’s not over yet, our journey has barely begun.
From packing it all up to fleeing like the sun.
We can follow the ways of the wind,
investigate every sound from burping frogs to
fizzing hummingbirds.
There have been craggy razors on the rocky edges
of the ascent we chose. There are pebbles in
our shoes as we start the way back downward.

Here I am to greet you at the other end of the road.
I’ve been waiting for the announcement that you
are just around the corner.
We both took the long way, didn’t we. We smelled
the dangers in the dust firsthand. We even contemplated
turning back more than once. The nuances of the path
sometimes took us by surprise.

It’s still not over, even after you arrive. We’ll recount
our stories
like vagabonds slogging through our messy investigations
into numerous dangers we dodged and the times we
fainted without cause. We thought we might have to
pay our dues on the overdrafts we wrote against the
skies of patience. But

We arrived finally and understood the haven of rest
that waited our winding trek over trust and uncertainty.
Between here and there we were rejected by
handfuls who has sworn their devotion. The misinterpreted
our detours that took the long way around
their biases and preoccupations.

It’s no over yet, our sojourn will continue I suppose,
walking the world like a drifter counting planets
in the midnight sky. From front to back we knew
we never lacked what pulled us on. We found our
home in the company we kept treading upon the
earth until we discovered the prepared abode.

Rounded Winds

Rounded Winds

(“Search me, God, and know my heart; put me to the test and know my anxious thoughts.” Psalm 139:23)

I took the journey willingly
(well, at first).
I had no idea what the yard would look like
once the light of day revealed the rubbish
in the wake of last night’s swift and rounded winds.

But like I said, I volunteered eagerly.
The first days were Californian Spring
and warmed from there to summer’s late nights
laughing at the same stories we heard every year.
We had no idea what shape the stories would take
further on down the road. We were more naïve than
bold.

I would go home elated and exhausted, the words
and pictures whirling through my mind.
I might wake up if the thunder roared or sleep through
the lightning storm that left the city looking like
a homeless dog.

After the winds rushed through, dislodging
tool sheds and tossing fences aside, the morning
was a mess and my mind was no better. I needed
something to show me the difference between what
was kept and what was swept aside. Every neighbor
had the same questions and wondered whether we could
tell the same stories we had the night before.

We worked in the light of morning toward the afternoon;
we replaced the rubble sooner than we expected. We
were ready to close our eyes near midnight
in peace.

The Best Way We Met Each Other

 The Best Way We Met Each Other

(“Lord, your name will be famous forever! Lord, people will remember you forever and ever.” Psalm 135:13)

Was there something so unruly it threatened to get lost in the mud
of high-sounding words that no one understood? We can tangle our
language in ways that they knots are impossible to tie. And then
no one knows the message, no one knows the time. We just throw
out proclamation sky high and miles wide and figure everyone would
understand
everything we have to say.

It’s not for a lack of good material. We have had a miracle or two
come our way. We passed the daunting chemistry test. We got the
promotion at work. We found parking places at Walmart twice in the
same week. If that’s not God watching out for us, I don’t know what else
it would be.

Is there a quieter pain, is there a memory that is more plain; are their
tender moments when we knew God showed up invisibly but perceptively?
Did a mother reconnect with her own family; did she find that words
had been distorted
and they all could speak differently now out of time? Did a lifelong friend
cry over his wife’s dangerous prognosis and find a distant friend who
reached out to fill his heart again. They had been inseparable, but time
and distance worked against it. When hardship that was beyond anyone’s
ability to change, was there a friend who, over the miles, offered a simple
hand and hope for better all in Jesus’ name?

I remember the dark day in my living room, at the bottom of every
uncertain turning of the earth and the quakes it was threating to bring.
Two men entered, and bowed before me, took of my shoes and humbly
took my feet into their hands, washing them of the grime of the day,
They were once Superintendent at the highest point in our religious district.
They had left the band and now played solo. They expressed sorrow over my
demise. I listened and cried.

The blues still subdued me, the rancor and pain still grew within me,
and friends gathered round, a redheaded fellow musician who loved all
the music I adored,(she turned me) a drummer who could hold time and also hold to opposing
thoughts in one head (he was to be commended for that), a single mom who
needed to know she was not failing her kids, and a widow who simply drank
her full supply of friendship around our dining room table every other week.

And we have not forgotten; we know the name. We will always remember;
we will not forsake the name. We will share cocktails, stories, songs and
poems. We will elevate the best way we met each other and the best way
our healings had begun.

How can we, how can we ever forget the way the sun shined on our
tentative gatherings, some of them around food lovingly prepared. We
were a haven for the hurting. We were a space for the unsure.
And we just tried to act like Christ to each other, as impossible as that
sounds.

We cried, we giggled, we dug in deep, we floated freely, we sang
and learned songs as full as a Christmas morning.

We cannot forget, we will always remember. We were grateful
that healing permeated everything we tried and every time we met.

Everything Universal

Everything Universal

(“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” Revelation 7:9)

The tickets were free and the air was clear.
The arena was packed and I knew very few who were there.
But I showed up because of the invitation;
I drove to the top of the hill to get a better view of
where we were going.
I saw lawyers and doctors,
servers and chefs,
crutches and joggers,
every kind of human I believed.

I made my way down quickly not wanting to miss a minute.
The road was crowded, the line was slow, but no one was
impatient as we waited our turn. I noticed an old friend,
one I did not expect to see at such a raucous and holy moment.
He looked the same and spoke the same,
and I remembered his name the moment he waved at me.
Neither one of us expected to see each other here.
It had been 30 years since we played tennis together
on the weekends.

We parked near each other and walked to the entrance together.
I felt as if her was escorting me. But neither of us had any idea
about what we would hear and see. Myriads filled up around us,
circling the round rainbow throne.

We looked at each other before the singing began. This was the
most indiscrete moment we had ever lived. Millions, and maybe
billions outside the doors were all dancing like the world had
just begun. So many languages but we sang the same song.

We spent the time like we were levitating from the ground.
Gravity gave up its heavy bonds. 

And the Lamb. And the Throne. And our joy. And the Home
we learned we could call our own. Not a single wall,
not a impenetrable barrier kept any of us away. Our
tongues rehearsing native songs that we all understood.
Voices creating a new song from the old. Everything that was
universal
felt local that day.