A Different Degree

A Different Degree

When every footprint sinks to a different degree,
displacing the mud or sand beneath the weight of
one single
human being,
we detect the evidence of another life form
to speak and eat with, to smile and tease with,
to joke and to wander the skies from sunset horizon
to midnight apogee. We who walked the same woods alone
turn full circle more than once or twice over, expanding
its diameter three feet at a time to discover
another to break the silence of the hillside forest,

Until turning the last degree, on the periphery of vision
we meet. My heart stops, my hands shake, my mouth so dry
that words are pasted on my tongue and down my throat;
yet so anxious to speak after speaking has nearly been forgotten.

I turn full and final, the circle that meets you eye to face,
and, though no words are spoken, I see you are dressed
far too conservative for me

And turn the circle round with my footprints sinking
to a different degree behind me.

Keep Listening

God’s Message; “Guard my common good: Do what’s right and do it in a right way. For salvation is just around the corner, my setting-things-straight is about to go into action… Make sure no outsider who now follows God ever has occasion to say, ‘God put me in second-class. I don’t really belong.” Isaiah 56:1, 3a

Why do people classify themselves as “conservative” and “liberal”? It seems these labels cause divisions more often than they define anything. And, do these labels help our spiritual life at all? Here God says that we should be careful to guard the common good; doing what’s right and doing it in the right way.