If You Decide to Dig in My Earth

If You Decide to Dig in My Earth

(“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17)

If you decide to dig in my earth I
hope you find something
worth your time. I know where the bones are buried.

My daughter prayed that her hamster would live
one night on New Year’s Eve. I don’t remember the little
rodent’s name, but when we looked the next morning
he was dead. I never could explain why Power
and Love
could not keep him alive.

I don’t blame you for wondering how
certain flowers grow in the soil of my heart.
I see the all of it, you only see the part.
I have piled layer upon layer to hide what
I hoped would never be seen. I figured I would wait
until I was
80
to dig to the bottom again.

We buried the hamster in the back yard between
bulbs for tulips and daffodils. The ground, nearly frozen,
broke beneath our trowel. We laid him in his grave,
hoped the earth would welcome him. We bought her
another hamster weeks later. He escaped one day,
never to be found and maybe still haunts the house
running around the rafters 20 years hence.

If you want to know what is unseen in me,
I am ready for you to ask. If you want to hold me
hostage to my past,
I don’t mind. There is truth in all of it.

Spring warmed the bed where yellow and red
popped from the earth toward the warming sun.
And my daughter wanted to exhume the tiny body
planted a season ago. The same trowel that prepared
his final place
poked beneath his grave. Unearthed, the plastic
sandwich bag which was his coffin
contained only tiny bones, a skull as small as
popcorn. Her curious eyes and curious hands
silently greeted the remains.

It is no lie that my garden hides relics
I wish you did not know. But I will reveal them if,
after seeing their whiteness and death,
you stay for coffee and see me the same
as you have from the first.

The Spaces Between the Letters

 The Spaces Between the Letters

(“For it was by God’s grace that he experienced death’s bitterness on behalf of everyone!” Hebrews 2:9b TPT)

How could I let them do all the thinking for me,
how could I take so long to use my mind again?
I pulled up to the first sign of life, the first certainty,
the elemental arguments that proved the doubters wrong;
and I parked there like a big rig overnight where
night can last a lifetime.
I left it in neutral, let the engine run,
let the heater keep me from the cold and frozen landscape
I thought I understood.
I left it in neutral because
I had let the ink speak for me,
think for me. The flat black and white
was cemented like a shrine; never mind it was
thousands of years before my time.

So, every time you sought me, every time
you needed help,
I searched the documents like dispensing prescriptions
and wrote them for your life.
“Don’t divorce” (though he hit you)
“Be in church” (though it caused you pain)
“Get a job” (there were none)
“Just abstain” (addiction bites)
“Pray some more” (mine was saccharine)
“Read this book” (parts made me cry)
“Bible study” (genealogies too)
“Plead the blood” (on my honor)
“Use the Name” (nothing stronger)
“Take more walks” (depression’s cure)
And I never told you that
the prescriptions I wrote
did nothing for me at all.

I know so much less now, yes, nearly agnostic.
I know the minus and the plus now, and how unforgiving
pen and paper become.
I know you better now, with my faith somewhat rarer;
I would learn the silence, I would learn the pauses,
I would memorize every tear on your face.
I would empty out my own doubts
(if you would receive them)
and simply walk beside you though
the world has gotten larger than either of us
imagined.
The spaces between the letters on the page,
scribbled on the yellow lines of my legal pad,
are greater than the sounds of the alphabet.
There is more air in the molecules,
more space in the universe,
more doubt in the certainty,
more quiet between hello and goodbye.

He tasted our pain. He let the bitterness that
brings us up short cover him like a veil.
I cannot explain it, but he wrapped himself in darkness,
and inhabited the spaces between our doubts and
our faith.
And still I am hollow, and still he dwells in
the echoes we wish would fade away.

Answers no longer satisfy me; I would be a traitor
to give them to you.
But, this open space where souls meet, and eyes,
is the only place I have felt alive.

It Has Been a Slow Death

 
It Has Been a Slow Death

(“…as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” 2 Corinthians 6:10)

It has been a slow death I know,

From

Circles on a carpeted floor,
sharing cups of 7up and
crumbs of sourdough in makeshift
remembrance

To

The names I have heard you call
good men and women
who were once the all
you proclaimed to love.

And now I feel the death all around me,
the demons of power arcing above the towers
that once called us to joy (the soul’s sorrow,
the spirit’s release),
that once called us to mercy (the word’s story,
the gospel’s free speech),
that once called us to believe (the child’s trust,
the riches unleashed).

And now I see the black figures swinging swords
and aiming nooses, surrendering the peace for
a withered podium of power. And now I hear
the funeral song and I cannot endure

The divorce

Of the ancient faith from its ineffable source,
the crucified one, the suffering Son,
the one acquainted with grief.

I have died today as well
and do not know which world to enter.
The worst abuse, like stripes on a weary body and mind
has found its endgame in the final clod of dirt
tossed upon the casket of my once
vibrant faith.

From the ground up, from deep within the earth,
poor again, having nothing but the me, the seed,
the pleading for life beneath it all,
something still breathes that was smothered.
Something still reaches that was buried.
Something still sees that was blinded
by the shuttered standstill of sight trained
in only one direction.

Something breathes…

But today is one gasp away from
diving beneath the mud and blankets
and never venturing out again.

Come Near

Come Near

(“But God brought him back to life…” Acts 13:30)

Make no mistake, I believe in the resurrection,
but sometimes, here alone with the hours crawling by me,
I scratch my head over the rising from the dead.

When the air is heavy, the room is empty,
my mind is leaden and my head sinks beneath the
horizon between earth and sky;

When no one passes by and words are weaponized,
I long to see the view from the gondola of a
hot air balloon.

Or perhaps to hear the voice (another voice than mine)
tell me it is okay this time.

But even as I try to write about the doctrine I should have
no doubt about,
everything I think I know lives on the brink of termination.

But then, resurrection never precedes death, does it?
But why has my life felt like dying for so long?
And You, who have died and now are alive,
I wish you would visit now and again
in the voice of a trusted friend
or the face of children hopping with
eyes like fireflies against the forested backdrop.

“by faith, by faith, by faith,” they say,
and I believe them. They know every jot and tittle,
but cannot fathom the pathos of the heart.

“come near, come near come near,” I plead,
and they distrust me. I know every flaw and dimple,
but cannot discern the presence of the Son…

…until the breath returns to my lungs, until the apples
hang like Christmas bulbs, until a fawn crosses my path
and watches me like a puppy unawares. Until I see

That He inhabits everything, and has before the dying,
before Adam-and-Eve-ing, before creating the breathless void
we travel on. He is the last and was always the first,
ever present before the light began.

The Recurrence of Curves

The Recurrence of Curves

(“Violence shall no more be heard in your land, nor devastation or destruction within your borders; but you shall call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise.” Isaiah 60:18)

I wandered into the
silence of violence,
the recurrence of curves.
I heard people speak to thousands about
heaven and hell in an
isolated haven where love was offered
as a plate of hors d’oeuvres.

I heard the word exclaimed from the balcony behind me,
and lived to see the crumbling of cathedrals.
I walked around every block and preached in
neighborhood parks
the almost-good-enough
but
often-not-quite
good news (those who never raised their hands
might eternally scorch their feet.)

I circled enhanced audio that improved the tone
of the scrambled message I’d learned.
It was always love, but often-not-quite
love. It was always sung in the key
the chosen few knew. Once or twice
a bluebird flew the coop,
but usually everyone remembered the tune.

Yet I had, subconsciously, quieted the song that was
ever-love. My circle was too small for my heart to inhabit
and make room for other residents, natives or civilians.
But my heart made no distinctions; but my circle
made no exceptions to the rule; until my circle was
broken when my own pain broke through.

Pain, sadness, I am done with the madness that defines differences
and rallies behind nations that have not learned that
when someone turns their back on you; everyone knows.
So I stayed facing the sun though I preferred the clouded corner
where no one would see me weep over weaknesses I thought
were drawn outside the lines.

And today, though some stand opposite the sun from me,
we still see, though some forget, the same blaze without regret,
the same consuming love that, now and not yet,
draws, full-orbed, every agitation and argument,
every skirmish and squabble, into the orbit of mercy
and defeats, by dying, the technologies of death.

Stop Weeping

“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’” Luke 5:17

Two processions met on a Judean road one late afternoon. At the head of one was a weeping mother, grieved at the loss of her young son. Coming toward them was a great crowd following a traveling preacher and his disciples. The contrasts couldn’t have been more acute.

With Love and Hope for Jonathan B.

With Love and Hope for Jonathan B.

(“Keep your eyes open for God, watch for his works; be alert for signs of his presence.” Psalm 105:4 [The Message])

The sun shone warm on a finally day,
after ice chips chilled the spring awaiting
blossoms and new birds, eagles stopping on their
way to Alaska;

Today our backs are warmed this tardy spring
when baseball begins on fields behind the schools,
and the long legs of cross country occasionally slip
on hoarfrost in early runs.

Most of us would wake this day with singing joy,
accompanied by the rhythm section of mower and clippers,
descants peeped by robins and jays warning the pet dogs away.

Most of us would not have to wipe a thing from our eyes except

That one of our boys died yesterday. He borrowed another’s heart
nearly a decade ago, married the best in football mania two years ago,
and loved the lady and her son, a little man as happy as the big man who
found him; the boys were big together; one with a borrowed heart,
the other with invaded blood perking through his tiny veins. Neither
gave up on the other.

But doing one of his many loves; there it is, I believe, the more loves
a man has, the more faithful he is to the one. Doing one of them
at the antique shop he caught his breath, swayed, and caught it again.

He had fallen more times than anyone wished the last two months,
the late weeks of winter; and the doctor hoped he could wait five
year
until borrowing another organ again. But it wore out. He wore out.

He would not sit, he worked, and played, and loved, and embraced
the world he grew up in. Basketball days and football nights, prom
and church programs, Christmas and Thanksgiving with grandpa and grams,

And he fell at the feet of a man who knew his father well. CPR,
911, more breaths, more contractions, more pressure upon his chest.
He was young, there was no doubt he would make it.

EMTs and a screaming ambulance took over the life support
with missing a beat or shedding a tear. More was to be done
before the weeping begun. Blazing toward the same field he
played upon as an adolescent, they waited for the life-flight
to carry him safely like an eagle rescuing her young.

An hour of breaths, of beats up the chest, the copter set down,
and the waiting was forever until, 15 minutes later, he was rushed
into the bay, the father was shooed away, and they lifted off…

…and lost him somewhere between home town and
and rooms bursting with people, persons, wife and parents,
fellow officers and chaplains, grandparents and pastors,
who all hoped so grimly that the miracle would be granted.

That was yesterday. Today, in love with the family that
has hurt more than they deserve, I am silent, besides these words,

And pray my future words will only serve to support
where one column has been removed.

The Summer Was Bright

The Summer Was Bright

(for my friend K.R. on the 10th anniversary of the death of her son)

(“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.’” Revelation 21:3)

The summer was bright and full of the sky,
The day was quiet, dogs barked and robins reply,
Another long afternoon in the northern plains,
A summer without questions or answers or why,
A morning without answers to the evenings pain.

Where have you gone, my sweet young son,
Why did you leave so suddenly?
What were you thinking, my darling one,
when you waved goodbye silently?

Why did the trees, my eyes still weep,
drop all their leaves so suddenly?
What was the meaning, my sweet young son,
when you left us so violently?

Where are the years, the ones you missed,
why did you leave me to count them?
Who would you marry, the wedding’s kiss,
What smile for your bride, the prayer’s amen?

Where are the dreams, my sweet young son,
Did you leave them reluctantly?
Why do you sit on the porch with me
when I know that you’re gone, gone so long.

The summer was bright and full of sky,
The day was quiet, dogs barked and robins replied,
Another long afternoon in the northern plains,
A summer without questions or answer or why,
A morning without answer to the evenings pain.

It was a day, just like today, like every other summer,
Ten years or twenty, the sun and moon remain,
And I would give my heart, my soul, anything,
To have you home again.
Then comes the day, unlike today, like every perfect summer,
ten years or thousands, the faith and hope remain,
That I will see you, my heart my soul, sweet young son,
Forever home again.

Opening Words

Opening Words

(“Then one day as he was teaching the people in the Temple, and preaching the Gospel to them, the chief priests, the scribes and elders confronted him…” Luke 20:1, 2a)

Shout darkness at the sun, bay at the dawn and call it doom,
your discount words will not render rainbows black. Alarmed
by blinders, the swords and jagged ripsaws of invention
hold no power over the Northern Lights when they visit
the silent boy sitting late night on a rock outside the cave
wondering why his ears ache from the weight of attempted
eclipses of glory.

Write the perfect opening words; let the novel snake its way
through mistrust and doubt, leading protagonists in and out of
canvas walls set up only for opening night. The readers will believe
based on authorship alone, with original sources gathering dust
behind bowling balls and unused ski gloves until trust
has faded like a word from King James obscure.

Open the French windows, push them out into rain or wind,
sun or still, and let the light play on the wall as it will. Reverse
the bay window
with cardinals and jays nearly entering the room,
sip your coffee, break croissants with your neighbor
and watch for another word to drop like dew upon conversation.

Pour another cup and butter the broken bread,
death and life circulate despite our best intentions,
and let the touch, the fingertip of a single hand awake
the cistern of deep unfilled too long. Glory shines,
light reminds that death is, if we have desired,
the transfer without baggage, the day we had hoped
each day would be when we awoke each morning.
It is the final invocation; the location of all in one
without the weight of what’s done is done.

The Blues I've Used

The Blues I’ve Used

(“Our warriors have fallen in the heat of battle.” 2 Samuel 1:25a)

Take these words with you, pass them up the ladder,
carry them paper-flight beyond the roofs, along the arch
helium balloons take unaided by the wind.

Find another chapter to write, quickly lay down the think in ink,
comment on disorderly, wrestle with logicality that
death comes dying to the young to the young who
we thought would battle in the sun in the sun
until they came back home, our very own,
our warriors, our victors, our daughters and sons.

Mama died too early, Father could not face too soon,
too soon perhaps as well.
Me, I’m left writing like I did in school,
leaving off rhyming, limping odd timing,
trying to start out bright and yellow until
the sunny hues are stewed in an instant and
words revert to the blues I’ve used over and over
and never learned to play very well.

Sis is on the mountain, and Sis is in the heat,
Brother is waiting in the windy city,
and I never miss a beat of wondering why
I put off reunions for one more year for cost.

No one dies early, some die barely alive,
No one dies early, we all die on time.
But the battle takes the much too young,
the battle takes the prime and elite,
and I still write like I did in school
pouring ink on the fibers instead of tears,
looking for subscribers to apprehend my fears,
(not of dying, or dying too soon,
but of living too cautiously, venturing only
a day or two from the womb).