I Do Not Dance Enough

 I Do Not Dance Enough

(“Then the men asked, ‘Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive?’” Luke 24:5b)

I see the stars and I want to keep them company;
I see my protection above and within it all.
(I committed the crime; I was not framed.)

A chihuahua barks while a fat stellar jay perches
in the tree outside my window. Hummingbirds sweep
by the feeder
on my redwood deck and speed to the walnut tree
branches for refuge.
(Someone once told me I do not dance enough.)

I visited the San Gabriel Mission more than once as a child,
and created a model of cardboard and green tempura for
a school project. I was 10, and, even then, knew my art
would never hang on a wall. I wanted my mom’s opinion,
and after stalling for the longest two seconds I ever knew,
she said,
“It’s unique.”
I knew what she meant and never made a model again.
(She did like my writing, though.)

The air is light today with a full July sun. The leaves wave
at one another vivified by the river breeze. Shadows on
the siding hint that the afternoon is waning. I may walk along
the marina later
or spend time finding celluloid reels for a future viewing.
(I ought to ban “ought” from my daily life.)

So, vocabulary fails the description. My words are
unvarnished models of a universe I have met. No longer
the center,
life spills from light-years and babies’ mouths, from
empty tombs and full moons, from synapses and
the way light dances in signals to the brain where
we process everything.
(No one deserves life or earns it. We are born in the minute
we breathe the Spirit.)

The Throne Among Us

 

The Throne Among Us

(“For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us. He shoulders responsibility and is called Wonderful Adviser, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6)

“Pass on by and don’t say a word,”
they reply when they repeat the lies of violence
and then turn with a smiley face on their sticker heart
they have pasted on their foreheads.

Why do you leave us waiting without wings?
Why do you see darkness when the light fills everything?
Why do you leave us to wonder
how you came to your conclusions?
Facts are facts, not your affection for sledgehammer delusions.

Oh, speak my Prince,
and move upon these streets of stone.

Oh, seek my friend,
the truth that will not bend to the seismic intentions
of words you attribute to angels
but smell of demonic design.

Oh, rain my Prince,
upon these barren lands where we paint our
rock gardens green because nothing ever grows.

Oh, listen friend,
to the streams that wake us,
the rain that soaks us,
the sun as it coaxes us to
open like roses in the face of love.

Let go your arrows, empty your quiver,
spend your words with liberal fascination
that the throne above is now the
throne among us
and it calls us
to speak more like
the Prince of Peace.

Among the Beggars

 

Among the Beggars

(“How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! So the Law allows a person to do what is good on the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:12)

We have songs to learn, spotlights to replace,
audio to check, dress shirts to be pressed.
We have prayer and candle time, cymbals and strings
and amazing things that we find so deep in the Word
that you never would have heard it if we had not used the
sweat of our brow
and our holy pickaxes
to reveal it to you.

And now you want health care when all we need do
is scare the virus away? Now you want mandatory masks
and ask us to keep our distance when you know we are
commanded to bundle up and spew our songs up and down
the aisles? If you had as much faith as we do
you would hold hands in a circle of prayer,
grab your neighbors to make sure they are there
and expose them to the health we share in the glow
of our communal, exclusive, pay as you go, enter
at your own risk,
faith.

II.

Today I find myself among the beggars asking
for alms of science. Today I find myself outside
the windows missing the rah-rah reformed protestations
that once filled my purpose like a balloon with wet sand.

But I know more, having learned more, now I do better.
The doors are closed for a while, the instruments mute on
high holy days
only because we value the lives
of those who are just flesh and bone
and filled with sunrise colors in the image of God.

I am no longer surprised (but I mourn instantly, constantly)
by the grand proclamations: Higher. Deeper. Farther.
Wetter. Steeper. Better. Jesus broke the
rule-of-the-7^th-day because it was a day to be healed.
I will break the rule-of-the-1^st-day for the very same reason.

I will do good on the day of His resurrection.

Dignity Unsatisfied

Dignity Unsatisfied

(“The one who gives to the poor will not lack, but whoever shuts his eyes to them will receive many curses.” Proverbs 28:27)

There was one adult I always respected,
and shared my adolescent poetry,
and played my untidy chords;
there was one I took every girlfriend to meet,
and played the Airplane’s newest release,
and shared my latest role upon the stage.

So you will be surprised that she, who I knew
cared for people like cats, and cats like people;
you my blink your eyes upon reading that,
at my daring hope

To somehow help the poor,

My mother would quote Jesus and say,
“We shall have the poor always among us”,
and feel she was satisfied my
pre-frontal cortex, not yet fully shaped,
would take that authoritative word as
an answer full-measure and complete.

(I never thought she
had justified)

I only thought she simplified the complicated,
and authorized ignorance among those who hated
the time it takes to too understand the coin-laundry of the less
against the dry-cleaning of the more.

Perhaps she was right; even now, I cannot find the
perfect way
to scribble a few lines of poetry that
(I had hoped)
would help or dignify the poor.