Execution Hill

Execution Hill

(“Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.’” Luke 23:34a)

We pretended to walk across the river,
we made fun of the way others swam.
We filtered our sarcasm through a dozen
courtrooms filled with hungry spectators.
We expected a show, we expected to know
how the day would end and why we held on so long.
But we let loose of our story and demanded dancing
from a one-legged dog. We were not cruel,
just vastly misinformed.

We never expected the sky to storm from noon until
three, we had been told to expect sunshine on our sublime faces.
We were informed that we were born for this;
we believed it like a phone call from the government.
But we put our trust in iron, we put our hope in blades
of steel; we outsourced our future to magazines full of powder,
to derisive wars of words. We nailed the truth
to the wood.

We followed the dark procession,
we were there for the show.
We had nothing more to do that afternoon
than watch the slow execution of a trio of criminals,
(or so we were told.) We had heard the stories,
and met a few fellows who said they knew the
man in the middle
from an encounter along the road. They were
convinced they were healed. They were convinced
he didn’t belong hanging naked in front of the world.

We didn’t expect him to speak,
we expected little from him at all. He saved
those fellows along the road,
surely he could save himself like a king on a throne.
But we heard, quieter than the breeze, and loud as a
man innocent by degrees. It was forgiveness he eased
from his throat as we watched his life ebb away over those
hours.
It didn’t matter if we knew beforehand, now we knew
exactly what we had done. We stopped our talk and dice games,
and lost our exuberance for parades to execution hill.

The Eyes We First Loved

The Eyes We First Loved

(“Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16)

Faintly the sounds of the vinyl spun
as we believed we knew all there was to know
of love.
We danced longer so our parents wouldn’t call
us home too soon.
We loved sandalwood, we wore paisley,
we adopted patios on summer nights
as our own.

But we have forgotten the names of those
whose eyes we first loved. We have traveled far
beyond the five-cent coffee and
newspaper kites we learned to fashion after
school.

But we remember the faces,
we remember the spaces, barely inches between us,
as we navigated parks with sloping hills,
as we wondered if holding hands was a portent
of something more.

Some of us cry as much now as we
did then,
some of us more.
Some of us try to call the same number that
we remember. Was it 415 or 213? The area codes
have changed.

Our houses were built so closely that
we talked through the windows to the girl-next-
door. Our houses were larger than life,
our flower beds were planted by someone before
we were born.

Did you ever ride your bike to visit the girl
who lived just far enough that your calls were
long-distance? Did you remind the night that some
names
are never to be forgotten?

We marry, have children, raise them to be better
than we thought we had been. But maybe
we lost
our way when we gave our first pet dog,
the one who danced around our two-year-old grinning;
when we gave our first dog Princess away
to a farmer so she would have more fun
chasing rabbits in the fields.

We should have kept her. We should have found a way
to acquaint a gray merle Australian Shepherd
with houses that were now smaller than we remembered.

Like an Autoharp

Like an Autoharp

(“My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27)

It never occurred to me, but I’m sure it happened,
someone recognized the riffs I had written so long ago.
So I recorded an alternate version. Disguised my voice.
Detuned my guitar. Hammered the piano strings like an
autoharp. I dreamed
I was Bob Dylan. I thought I could compose something
like pinball percussion. I tamper with the tempo too often.
I staged a guitar circle like it was 1973.

My lyrics stood the test of time, but rhyming was not my thing.
I sat down to write and rose up to play. And nothing new was
created. My mind runs on synthesized loops, my mind runs
in circles. My mind collects bracelets and trinkets and
turns them into idols.

I hear another voice, in the sky, in the earth, in my flesh,
in cricket clicks and blue jay calls-and-response. If I
ever find a way,
I’ll repay those anonymous composers with a cover
of the song
the Shepherd sings.
I’ll recognize the patterns I have heard all along.

My verses swerve from angel-hair skies to red
eyed
monsters in the night. My themes were never good
enough
for jazz. My fingers swell with age and forget
fretboard playfulness. I’ll try again,
listening to the wind,
remembering the way we used to change keys
in the middle of a measure. 

Call Me with Coffee

 Call Me with Coffee

(“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12)

Today light was handed me through a clouded sky,
and so my confidence lies partly awakened
and partly shaken;
life is like that.

Egos are like that.
A flash in the night, a comet out of gas,
a star you saw yesterday hides behind
a hundred moons.

I’ve given up my toys, but not my play.
I’ve given up my chums, but not my friends.
I’ve given up my pretensions, but not my dreams.
I’ve given up the timeouts, but not my curiosity.

Today was wet like yellow raincoats,
and so my letters melt slowly on the pavement,
partly faded.
Memories are like that.

Today is like that.
A wish for the past, a vision that did not last,
a story, a song, a friend beyond arm’s reach
and a hundred years long.

I’ve given up award shows, but not my creations.
I’ve given up tattling, but not truth-telling.
I’ve given up flattery, but not greeting cards.
I’ve given up standing in line, but not patience.

Today could be like that.
I have not disappeared at all. I live within
the chemical flashes of your brain. But your
voice is hidden from me,
and your warmth escaped like the first frost of autumn.
Some fences are like that.

I would have kept you in my field of vision,
I would have revised my strategy until you knew
there were no reasons for walls or silence
or u-turns of offense. Only friends who, like the
molecules of water,
sometimes are drunk from cups and
sometimes empty into the sea.
Today is like that; today, if you think it,
call me with coffee on your mind.

Can We Hear the Whisper?

Can We Hear the Whisper?

(“Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3)

Don’t faint at the irate rantings
of crinkled skin that want to fry the world up
like bacon on the rack. They think they can see,
and all they see,
is darkness, doom, and tragedy. While they wait
for a warrior or a lion to finish off their prey,
there is a better day ushered in by a lamb,
a slaughtered one,
to reflect the possibilities like
fertilized eggs birthing hope.

It is easier,
so much easier,
to elevate the madness of the masses
than to sit in silence with the
sadness of the few.
Penned in like a locked cell,
a walled city shuttered against foreign
interference,
many have missed the inheritance of
a new pentecost that makes us stop
and listen to tongues we have never
heard before,
to see
shades we have never seen before,
to sit in the shadow of trees planted
ages ago
and reimagine every
fighter jet a homeless shelter,
every automatic rifle a garden rake,
and every steel-toed tongue a
poet with healing in their words.

Can time turn in on itself,
can babies lead the parade,
can tigers and fawns share the same lair,
can donkeys convey the king?

Can we offer liberty to everyone and
stop pretending
we don’t know what we are doing?
Can we hear the whisper that, sung often enough
will entice us all to the riverside
to finally lay our
swords and shields down?