Atop the Ancient Peaks

 Atop the Ancient Peaks

(“My command from God was to bless these people, and there's nothing I can do to change what he has done.” Numbers 23:20)

Stand atop the ancient peaks,
turn your eyes toward the borderline.
What do you see, what do you know,
what do you give to all of those on the other side?
Did you find a better place;
do you live where no terror can touch you?
Then hand it down from the mountain,
send the safety you have boasted of,
find the few who speak your language
and invite them higher to sit with you.

Take their stories deep within,
hear their ballads of uncertainty.
Add their name to your banners,
fly their flag along with your own.
Find the beat of their drums inside
your own pulse. Take the steep path
down along the cliffs and meet them
at the end of the road.

Tear down the fences,
obliterate the walls.
Speak their language, I know they will teach you.
Your day starts at quarter to nine
and theirs a half hour before. You have the time
to share the daylight,
you have the rhymes that connect families
to the windy faucets of your excursion;
you have accomplished more than you expected,
and you have more to offer than your shambled objections.

Sit across from their newly camped grounds,
stoke the fires that keep us warm. Lead them to
the place
you created, the safety of your offering.
They are fathers and brothers, daughters and mothers,
they thirst for protection too.
Be the blessing they already own,
be accountable for their welfare and well-being.

Jokers see nothing past their own noses,
thieves see everything they do not own.

But you can see, if you scan the horizon,
more and more dialects you need to learn.
Open the gate and let the floods wash their
crinkling skin, offer the food you prepared for
undiscovered orphans. Take their hands and
learn their pulse that palpitates the same as your own.

Love is Enough

 Love is Enough

(“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34)

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough,
and yet we stuff the heads of congregants
full of lead-weight conspiracies
so all they will see
is a world so dark something needs to be destroyed.

Love is ageless,
was always ageless,
will ever be ageless,
and yet a certain few, who will remain nameless,
are convinced we’ve turned the corner into everlasting
dark
ness.
Flash-fire weapons are the only solution.
Forgetting that the ammunition and collateral damage have
caused the pollution
that keeps us from sitting in the sun.

Love is divine,
was always divine,
will ever be divine,
and still we insist on justifying more hatred toward
completed souls whose love we do not understand.
We still insist on strangling the message from women
whose prophetic words open the world wide to seditious
hope, (the million dollar men broadcasting their rants against sin
only see the prophets as pernicious heretics who, no longer burned,
are shunned with fire and fury.)

Love is costly,
was always costly,
will every be costly,
and yet we kick the homeless out of our towns,
make them find shelter in locked sheds when the snow flies.
And we put our money into new chairs and chandeliers,
a fancy sign and then resign when the pay does not match
our preferred lifestyle.

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough.
Let’s smooth the rough edges that
make the meek cower and the brave
go elsewhere to find
the kind of love
that suffers on crosses,
never draws lines,
but always draws the circle wider for
all humanity to enter.
Love is always front and center.