The First Chords of a Folk Song

 The First Chords of a Folk Song

(“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1)

It was time to get serious again about all the subjects
that kept us in line. The law, the rules, the injunctions,
the tools, the courtrooms, the judges, the preachers so used
to fudging the tightest belt out of the most
ill-fitting passages they could find.
It was time to unwind the heresy that anyone
could be happy
simply tasting the rain on their tongue
or
dancing like a toddler with no one in particular.

For a while their lecture halls were full,
for some time the students took notes in bluebooks,
transferred them to laptops and cleaned up
the illegible handwriting that had made them miss lunch
dates
with too many friends.
For a while the pseudo-prophets prospered.
No one doubted their word. Not one. And those who did,
(we all knew who they were), those who did were treated
like outcasts and backsliders, though most of us believed they
never belonged in the first place.

After a while the acrid smoke blemished the best presentations,
after a while the manufactured scents caused women to cry,
after a while the flags that waved, the allegiances pledged,
lost their luster when everything was a battle,
and no one could escape the arrows’ gleaming light.
The doors were heavy as lead and the post trauma songs
only sent true believers home.

And then, like fireworks on New Year’s Eve,
a toddler spun at the edge of the campground,
a puppy danced in the campfire reflection,
a mother cried who had never cried before,
and hugged her baby who (she knew) had escaped
the death that had been peddled in pamphlets
passed out by preachers and their proteges. A mother
who had insisted the pamphlets were literal and inerrant,
a mother who had never missed a class before.

And then like nothing ever described,
the dawn broke; water, sun, and sky met at the east end
of the river. There had been baptisms, there had been ablutions;
but now it all was oceans that kept the dance going, that
kept showing the songs that opened like the first chords of
a folk song no one had ever heard and
that everyone knew.

To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

(“Our temporary minor problems are producing an eternal stockpile of glory for us that is beyond all comparison.” 2 Corinthians 4:17)

It rained like the notes of a dusty upright piano played
in the parlor corner behind a dozen conversations.
The massive maple frame vibrated and rang,
and thunder background awoke the lazy gathering
like fire.

What is this dissonance, where the lost chords,
the freezing droplets at my back door? Who first
struck the white and black, the lightning aimed
like a late attack upon our senses?

What hands hewed the wood and studied each joint
to take the strain of 236 strings and 17 tons of tension?
What hand threw the flood and fire that started in the wall
and climbed while no one watched it smolder overnight,
after each guest from young to older left for home?

Whose frost wet the embers? Whose mind chewed through time
and swallowed the old piano whole which hands
on which mother and child suffered etudes and
dreamed the Beatles best tunes?

The home was empty when the fire attacked,
lives were saved, but memories and melancholy
still litter the battlefield where the uncompromise began.

Would you walk alone, now, with the sound alone, now;
would you settle for less once the music is silence and
the wedding photos are sloppy burnt? Will the

Stockpile of grace
consume all that was taken
and replace the hand-me-down piano
in a new parlor in the Father’s house?