After the Hail Crashes

After the Hail Crashes

(“Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?’” Luke 6:9)

Against all odds the desert birthed life into
the cacti that stored life when the sun dried out the
cracked soil with promises of nothing.
How hard should we work
when life is at risk? How far
should we walk
to find water for the tongues that
feel like sand?

We could never afford the time it took
to repopulate the unfortunate whittlings
that hung from the broken sky. We had
taken the day off, if anyone would believe that story.
We were faithful to set our feet in concrete
and refused to move when the clock marked its
clanging announcement that the day was off by
at least a hundred degrees.

Bring back the daylight;
banish the orders that keep everyone in the dark.
Watch the desert rose;
touch the barbs that keep you awake.

Sometimes the sun grazes the entire horizon
immediately after the hail crashes and bounces off
the sod still awakened. Sometimes the sun
hastens to melt the stones left behind.

It’s all measured on the average,
the mean between the two extremes.
Someone said that balance was the word,
but I think I’d rather be all in than
try to find the middle between up
and
down,
or silly and serious. Work if you want,
heal if you must,
hug without caution and love like
tomorrow is not promised.

Sanity demanding, I’ll be sitting outside your door
waiting for you to return home on a Saturday afternoon.

After the Words

After the Words

(“In the same way let your light shine in front of people. Then they will see the good that you do and praise your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16)

After the words are finished,
before the meal has begun,
during the early hallway of evening,
we might have time to compose another
sonnet, or, better yet,
sing something we all know by heart.

Before the night drops the dew,
after the moon glows undone,
during the late slant of afternoon,
we might find the time to fill a plate or two
for the neighbors who ran out of money before
they ran out of food.

We don’t need a new agenda,
we don’t need to push hard.
We don’t need an invitation to
start a party among the unknowns.

Before the sun drains the dark,
after the birds announce the morn,
during the corporeal rays starting to warm,
we might find the ones we left here
are poets and prophets who,
have callused hands for sermons and
chef’s hats for the daily benedictions.

We don’t need a host of angels,
we don’t need another spire.
We don’t need a well-written tome
push us closer.

We only need a word, we only need
the silent seeds sown with no one watching.
We only need reminders how free it seems
to feed our neighbors, our kin, our global

Language of love divine.

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.

Long After

Long After

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

Mostly I hear the printed word in tones full of objections;
a growl, a frown, a scowl, an upside-down offer to set me straight.
Lay aside your weapons and I’ll lay aside my wounds;

It’s fascinating the way the mind
inserts moods into the minuscule scribbles on
the back of a napkin or
the screen of a phone.

Happen upon our long history, friend,
not the two or three minutes that have fueled our silence.

What I would really like, you ask?

I would like to still smell the roses
long after you’ve left the room.