The Shortest Sentences

The Shortest Sentences

(”He took the seven loaves of bread and the fish and gave thanks to God. Then he divided the food and gave it to his followers, and they gave it to the people.” Matthew 15:36)

And the plains rolled slowly from the feet of the hills,
westward and looking, gazing and turning the questions upon themselves
over and over again. The crowd filled the grass,
every blade bent or broken. There is hunger here. There is thirst
and desire. There is aging hope, and fame sinking down the drains
of earlier expectations. The antique prophets spoke,
the burnished teachers with sparkling swag turned the thunder
to cuss and spit and anger. The wrath of God, in their hands,
was just the politics of borders.

But new and older, without a place to lay his head,
another spoke with patina. Our hunger deepened, our thirst
a dry and violent hole cracked well past autumn. Yet, the

shortest sentence fills us like banquets.

The slightest promise

Coaxes rain from the empty skies,
and empties our eyes of a life-full of precipitation.

We crossed the borders and He knew us,
we marched with refugees on the sands of worn leather,
arriving later than we had planned,
the party must have ended,
the budget overspent,
with only the roadies left behind packing up the
double-bass and banjos.  We doubled our pace

And discovered

There is not late, no ever, there is not there, nor never,
only fullness and every hungry for more.

And Most Remembered

And Most Remembered

(“These are the stains in your love-feasts, as in your company they shamelessly gorge themselves; rainless clouds they are, carried along by winds; fruitless autumn trees, twice dead and uprooted.” Jude 1:12)

It was true, the banquets often lasted too long,
but not from verbose speeches and lengthy awards;
it was the people who would not leave for love of
a place to call their own. Their own homes damp,
their kitchens ravaged by dust that settled upon their poverty.

It was true, the banquets never solved the source of heartaches,
but they reminded (the bread with the wine) each diner of
the better time now within the refuge, inside the comfort
of unlocked protection and embrace. Their own faces
showed the joy at the tables and bounty in their voices.

It was swift, the aroma that switched from pleasure to scorched,
but the beginning of the overdone courses was slow to come out of the dark.
They hugged as well as they had at first, smiled the same gritty teeth,
but hazards implied their overheated eyes lusted authorship,
(their songs, their recipe, their work, their cutlery)
and might take the whole kitchen home unless applauded properly.

It was true, there were fewer at the tables after the fruitless left,
the clouds that mimicked showers, the dead pretending life;
but the joy rose higher, the wine flowed freer, the bread was
shared unhindered

And most remembered why they came.