Waiting on Hold

Waiting on Hold

(“Then a dispute also arose among them about who should be considered the greatest.” Luke 22:24)

I called you up with my remaining time of the afternoon.
I waited on hold; I laid the phone on the desk while
scanned the internet until you picked up. It wasn’t
your fault
you were running late. The demands on your time
are endless,
and I called without an appointment.
So I waited on hold; patiently wondering how you had changed
since the last time we talked. I heard rumors
that you had traded your throne for
a camp chair in the middle of nowhere.
As soon as you were settled you looked in
on the children whose scrapes and bruises spoke
more of abuses than playful stumbles in the yard.
You touched their wounds delicately;
you understood their cries instinctively. You
interpreted their prayers silently and
slowly learned their names. You sat beneath
the sun with each one of them telling their stories.
You cradled the smallest ones who barely formed
a dozen words and had not yet found yours. You
always said your name was a mystery. But your
reputation preceded you. Even at your pinnacle you
mixed with the least of these, you decreased to
come down to their size.

--Hello, it’s me. Do you remember? Thanks for answering
my call. I just wanted to say I’ve learned from your ways and
will not stall another day to jump off my high horse and walk with
the poorest on the dusty road.

His Favorite People are Pilgrims

His Favorite People are Pilgrims

His favorite people are pilgrims,
some solitary, others in twos and threes.
His favorite roads are dusty, just outside
Jerusalem or
Oklahoma City.
He knows they have been plundered,
he has seen their limps and empty pockets.
But he would walk with no one else,
hold his tongue with no one else,
unveil the shadows with no one else,
than those
who journey five or ten or a hundred miles
in a day.
Rocks are their pillows,
stray dogs and cats their fellows,
and they shop for food at farmstands along the way.

Sometimes the rain feels like sloppy snowflakes,
sometimes it quenches like a cold draught of beer.
Sometimes the rain nourishes the roses and onions,
sometimes the rain is steam rising from an asphalt highway.

They talk slowly, their numbers are in flux.
Companions at heart, but known for only hours,
some dance like puppies, some shrink like soldiers
who still cannot hear the symphony’s percussion without
holding their ears.

One (or maybe all) find their inner chamber filled with
specters, unruly guests of the past. The same one (or maybe
everyone) fears what lies behind the
locked door at the farthest reaches of their heart. They
know what abides there,
they fear it is still alive there,
and tremble to think of turning the key.

Are we locked outside? Or imprisoned within?
Can it open from in and out? Does the combination work
on both sides of the door?

His favorite people are pilgrims,
some lonely, others solitary and free.
Their feet stir up the same dust, their journeys
wind between street signs and churches,
up to caverns of quiet, down to valleys where rivers
sing with question marks left open.

Sometimes the conversation is revealing,
sometimes it is more human than healing.
Sometimes the silence nourishes the love and vision,
sometimes the trek is a memory

And shame is finally
a place to unlock hidden closets emptied
long ago.

Half the Supply

Half the Supply

(“Here’s what believers who are in low positions in life should be proud of. They should be proud that God has given them a high position in the kingdom.” James 1:9)

The days are dry without end, the summer light
grills the ground, the constant beige baked into every
rock and stone. And hours since the light is gone
the rugged desert floor radiates the same heat
toward the stars. Stingy with its release, the air only
becomes breathable
a pair of hours before dawn, before
the sharp light and arid sky provide
only half the supply life needs for thickets
and underbrush other ecozones display
with less effort than a butterfly gliding
bloom to bloom.

We walk soon after dawn, before noon and the
straight-line blaze from the sun and its rays overheat
every possible path. Flat as a billiard’s slate, no shade
breaks the invisible beams; no respite for earth and its
captive passenger to take a breath, wipe the sweat,
and hope new rain will fall swallowed by washes
and sent to start the seeds awaiting the second half
of verdant genesis.

And while the wait, and during the walk, some
30 feet distant on the dusty floor, a color far outside
the decorator’s wheel; a bright, a sheen, a damp magenta
and intense yellow;
the solo desert flower caught the eye. The parched earth
below a gasping sky had offered more than the forests
of coastal mountain ranges.

In its poverty the desert offered an isolated endowment;
the smallest of flowers from the poorest supply
greeted the eye with more reflection
than a thousand on a rainforest floor.