Five-Year Plan

Five-Year Plan

(“Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” Proverbs 28:13)

It was meant to be merely a stroll,
a half hour wandering from shade to sun,
tree to tree,
to let the dust settle. I wrote it down
five years ago: “Take a walk and
sort out your options.”

I stopped.

Or should I say the pain knocked me to my knees,
freezing me in time. I’m
the one who has to fight the hardest
just to keep my darkest deeds at bay;
the weeds that grow from the muddy mind
so certain, yet so unwound. I’ve renounced

My sins

As often as a gardener squeezes the constant roots
from the old-growth hedgerow that hides the flower bed

From view.

It was meant to be a meaningful stroll,
a half hour worshiping in shade and sun,
sturdily
letting the dust settle. I engraved “grace”
in the morning mud: “Watch the sky and
wait for rain’s erase.”

I sighed.

The Former Country is Fading

The Former Country is Fading

(“Therefore, accept each other in the same way that Christ accepted you. He did this to bring glory to God.” Romans 15:7)

Did you come to the door just to tell me
that the party time had changed: and
those who peeked from behind the curtain,
were they early or late? or today’s top 10 list
with no room for 11?

Did you think your silence in the face of truth
made it any less a lie? Were the promises you made,
but had no intentions of keeping, worth the same confessions
you eked from the mouth of one already sweating
grief over his own slide down the black volcanic ash?

What word of knowledge did you possess,
to pretend to a microscope into my heart?
What word of wisdom did you purchase,
that inserted a microphone into my unspoken?

Whose prophet are you? And what puppets
wore your hands like gloves? Who gave you permission
to play like Pharaoh and send the helpless to another
desert drier than a year of chastisement making bricks
without straw and without pay?

Whose apostle sent you? That after the wander,
and after the promise, and after another
semi-miraculous crossing, you waited till we
finally caught our breath and announced, after the cure,
that there was no healing after all.

I’ve sent too many home myself, peeked out from the window
and pretended I was not home. You and I are no different
though, I wish you only the best, and
I wish
some of us were not the only
who had to confess.

The day grows slow now
and the former country is fading. This is an old song,
and the words are memorized, while the healing, without
prophets or evangelists or laying on of hands or vials of oil
is undeniably Divine.