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.

Cottonwood Fences

 

Cottonwood Fences

(“…they rounded up entire communities, to hand them over…” Amos 1:6b)

And now, with everything compressed on the back of the
weekly
garbage trucks,
there is more space for storage.
But why do we lasso entire circles who could have
played in the fields on their own
and put them between stainless steel and
wood slat fences alone?

I would prefer a carousel,
I would prefer a serenade,
a glass of lemonade made by the
brother and sister around the corner.
I would prefer the tales they tell.

And now, with every border crossing open season for
daily
bounty hunters,
there is less space for the high bridge.
So why do we herd them and burn our naked brands
into their sun-thatched ribs
and prod them between cornstalks and
scarecrows back again?

I would prefer a round-dance,
I would prefer a folk ballad,
a cup of corn soup made by the
sweaty brows of mothers and sons in from the fields.
I would prefer their invitation to dinner.

I’ve stopped shouting in the canyons that
no longer echo. It’s time to wake up everyone,
let everyone breathe. Or are you paying admission
now
to hand out just a
few days of freedom?

Once you colonize the land,
what will you do with the firsts who
walked it before
you ever erected your cabins with
cottonwood fences.

Those With Time

Those With Time

(“The Lord will do what he thinks is right.” 2 Samuel 10:12b)

We erect the fences, dividing lines, cutting the earth like a giant pie.
But we do not carve pieces to share, but to make each neighbor fully aware
what is not theirs. We would split a tree right down the middle
to include just a jot, just a little more land to call our own.

We build barriers, at least seven feet or more, to keep me from seeing
they eyes across the board. We know all too well that if we gazed in silence,
without words breaking the sky, without fashion clues or hairstyle whys,
and stopped.

So time took one slow beat at a time,
one tick, the next, one more, and then four,
five slow strikes of the chimes, six the next pulse,
round the straight face of time so slow
you lose count, you do not move, your eyes
head high, his eyes hear the same stroke and

Finally time is one long hallelujah chanted ahead and behind.

Fixed upon that moment, glued to the gaze of two sets of eyes
seeing,
first time, graceful, aligned without interruption by cross-examinations
and proper explanations.

Your fences have served their purposes and now, the only thing you know,
all you can smell plus all you have chosen well, is in this exchange of
pulses and particles and rays; you both have thrown away everything you
learned about the person behind the eyes.

And as time, which has not stood still, but like a river, has made you feel
one with its current and all it carries to the sea; the eyes give way to the same

Slow beat one at a time, one tick, the next, and all you know,
it is not clockwork that has measured so well, but two heartbeats that
surrounded by grace
beat in time; sans orientation, religion, status and sans race.

Grace is the upbeat that tore down the walls and left the world
whole and warm, for those with time to see.

Some

Some

(“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.’” Matthew 16:24)

Somewhere along the borderline where barriers keep
the best in and
the worst out
a new sound announces the revolution we had counted on.

Somehow, without looking pious or smug, with smudged faces
the artists and
artisans
fired the message without powder, shot or laser guidance.

Sometimes the message is seen when failure transforms our resistance
to powerful
logic and love,
lost and found
like prodigals who hear the confession’s echo from every returning son.

Some-why does not answer the question of sentinels who guard
the entrance and
the exit
and have never had to leave home for a far country for food.

Some-who, ears to the ground, understand the vibration of hammers and wood,
unbegun and
never done,
the sacrifice that turned the world on its head undivided and fenceless.