Family Tree

Family Tree

(“Make friends with your opponent quickly…” Matthew 5:25a)

I am your family tree.
I am roots with your branches,
I am wind to your clouds.
Every chance has passed us by,
and I’ll take this one again to
ask about your anger, to inquire about our pain.

You hold it in, but artlessly;
there is no question the burn you feel.
I may have started it, it may have preceded me,
but all the same,
we should walk ancient paths together,
carry our mutual sorrows without blame.

You begin. I will listen. You’ve carried it
a decade. I’ve heard your complaint. Talk now
where only the trees can overhear; the forest is
safe with trails trod by dozens who backtracked
to conversations
began in the heat but never
subjected to the cool of the day.

You begin. I will not answer. State your case,
but remember, we are the same vine. Sun in sun.
Rain by rain. Seasons when the dew is dormant.
Seasons when the fruit reclaims its sweet-tongued
joy of summer. We are joined, twig to twig,
and the days are getting shorter to speak the
same language again.

You are my family tree,
and so walk with me before the night
puts everything to rest, deletes the words but
leaves the pesty narrative inflicting our hearts.
You begin. And we will share the apples the
orchard provides, sweet as sweet on both of
our tongues.

An Oblique Ghost

 An Oblique Ghost

(“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21)

I have sat bent in half
on the stairs into the garage
with its concrete floor and mildew smell.
I have waited to confess what everyone already knew,
and had not passed the test,
but had not lied. Had hoped grace was in the air
though I feared I would lose everything.

I was naked while they stared.
I was white, pasty, such an oblique ghost
that my skins showed the stains from every tear;
they were rivulets down my temples, my arms,
my chest and my thighs. I should have learned how
not to cry.

I don’t go out much these days. Don’t look for new friends,
old friends sometimes scare me. My wife, my children, my
beloved grandchild and my dog, my social circle is safe
but small.

I have sat with my darkness longer than most. (Although,
that is not fair, I have no measure to compare your darkness
to mine.)
Pain heals nothing.

I am not cynical, and maybe bitter. But there was a moment
lifetimes ago when I heard laughter rise from hallways and alleys,
alpine lakes and friends always too silly to dwell on the
consequences for long.

Today I might call you, take you away from the crashing crowd
yelling at the asphalt concert,
to a quiet café for an hour or two,
and ask you,
or even beg you

To let me cry as long as I need
and to allow me to say anything, anything at all
once again.

I Remember Boarding a Train

 I Remember Boarding a Train

“Daniel went to…his friends…so that they might request compassion from the God of heaven concerning this secret.” Daniel 2:18)

I remember boarding a train to nowhere but
it still headed straight north.
The steel spun and clattered on the rails like
Ezekiel’s angels with faces and chariot wheels.
I had embarked on a journey
hoping to change the world.
The scenery was foreign to me,
the night descended like a dragon’s cave
and we wondered where the mood would take us
that had begun with such enthusiasm.

Riding it for three years (or so it seems)
I lost a traveling companion for each one.

A friend who knew laughter and told the
same stories over and over again. And still
I listened.

My sister, frail but stony, it had been ages since
we rode the country together. And days before
Christmas
she finally sighed. I left the train behind and flew
to her family, my family, three nephews, one niece,
and a great-great nephew with a smile like hers.

My classmate, my beloved Hermia. A friend who
made the sunrise giggle and could make an entire room quiet
as she spun her tales. 50 years ago we were teenage
super friends
and 50 years later the same. She suffered and
she suffered well. To the last her eyes inhaled every
friendship she ever had.

I remember boarding a train to San Francisco but
stayed on it for two round trips. What could we find
on the streets and hills but steep houses and leftover
frills in Haight Ashbury? Our stories filled the silver car
until we finally disembarked to watch

Street-performing mimes and grab some pizza.

We were not sure we knew the answer, we are not sure
now
if we changed the world.
But none of us are the same, riding and going
nowhere
together.

 

Travel With Friends

(“The earth is full of Your loving-kindness, O Lord. Teach me Your Law.” Psalm 119:64)

Warm it up or ice it down,
the earth is surrounded by divine attachment
forward and back.
Travel with friends, buy an old custom van,
and take off not knowing where to go;
that is the only way to never get lost.

Stop the first night where you land as the sun
blinds the driver’s eyes going down. No one likes
camping
so a hotel somewhere outside of Amarillo will do.
One friend is on the move, another is seeking treatment
for a fatal disease, two are sisters who are leaving home
for the first time to see what wonders there are down the road.
And the driver, he thought he knew his destination until

The next day doing Denver, he began to wonder why he
had no idea what direction to take. One convenience store clerk
said the way west was easy, but it all felt like the rattan weave
of a straight back chair. Stopping for directions every turn
and disorientation, the advice was harder to follow as the day
was lazy and did not contribute
to the need to know what direction to go.

They drove for hours, and tensions grew high. Lowering
their voices
the sisters wondered if they would ever reach the campus
of their dreams
on time.
The driver trembled for his friend so ill he barely breathed
his anxiety at all. But his face had grown red, his hands
pale and cold, and the one on the move propped his head up
on a pillow found behind the back seat.

The temperature rose as they iced his fevered brow,
the road was surrounded by angelic anonymity
over and under.
Travel with friends, driving a custom van,
and rounded the day knowing why they were going,
though lost,

They found the love that enraptures the universe.

I Would Dance If I Could

 

I Would Dance If I Could

(“Lame men and women will leap like deer, the voiceless break into song. Springs of water will burst out in the wilderness, streams flow in the desert.” Isaiah 35:6 [The Message])

I would dance if I could
(just a reminder to my friends and former peers:
I once moved across the floor like lightning,
sang till my throat was dry).
I would be a dervish if the offer arrived in the mail.

I suppose I will one day again
when I reach the lighter home within,
but now it all stays dense like granite,
matter in solid form keeps slap happy words
from making a dent.

And I’ll tell you plainly why: people I depended on,
who wore my same uniform,
whose feet I once washed, whose children I once hugged,
make potions in their laboratories that make feet stick
in the mud. Sinking sand and nail-scarred hands cannot
share the same mansion.

Nowadays the ones I see dancing scare me to death,
the ones singing songs in broad daylight and spreading spit
and virus
over the enraptured audience
make me shiver. I’m back to singing
Carole King songs again.

The rivers of life I once waded in
are dammed up at their source. The pipes
have broken, the cause unspoken but suspected,
they burst heavy with silt at the seams.

As mirky as my mind is, as cloudy as my heart,
I still await the showers that open poppies and
make the sunflowers peek from the sides of the road.

As achy as my knees are, as arid as my throat,
I still await the ballads that repeat mercy and
make the sun-children speak from the joy of the Lord.

"Get Over It"

 

“Get Over It”

(“He made no distinction between us and them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith. Acts 15:9)

I remember when a friend told me to get over it,
a friend who never knew what it could be. “Get over”
the wounds of my doing or
the bullets from the guns of comrades in arms.
Get-over the masks that pretended to be pretty
until they saw
the ugly in me.

And in telling me to
get over it
they only
added to the shit
that piled high as the steeples of a
country village church.

(Although I lied when I said there were
reporters outside the door.) The only ones who knew
or wanted the truth
were those who had dropped their stones to throw
a long time ago. Their pockets now empty,
they moved through life with an ease that accompanies
the lightness of those who have eschewed judgment and
chosen love’s pervasive brightness.

Oh, believe me, I’ve gotten over many things. But some I still
burrow through. Some I need a boost; bend now and let me
stand upon your knees. While some are still a necklace of mud
drying in the heat.

Where has salvation taken you?
I remember softball when your daughters told their sisters
to drop the ball when the boy with a limp rounded the bases.
My soul is as pained as his ankles.

Though my limp worsens, I would hasten to your side,
even if you had lied about what hurt you. Be silent or
speak, without judgement I would seek the way the
Spirit talks in comfortable rhythms; She knows the path
to every lineage of pain woven between heart and mind. She
forces no rhymes, but, in freedom, in grace, in truth, gives space.
I would compose no rebuttals,
but hope to be the vessel to contain your pain
until we both are visited by the peace, the dove,
the carefree goose who saves us from enslavement
to rigid stories that require a fairy-tale ending.

My story is messy, grimy and tear-stained.
My story is painful, timely, and unstrained
by requirements of strict interpretation. “Get
over it” sometimes frightens me from the oil
that can only be poured on open wounds.
I am still hoping to round the bases with the help
of a few errors from my friends.

One Playmate Who Knows

One Playmate Who Knows

(“Isn’t it clear, friends, that you...are children of promise?” Galatians 4:28 [The Message])

Some days it seems the children do not
want to come out to play.
They stay inside measuring the hems of everyone’s
pants and dresses. No one confesses they would rather
skip a rope. The work is their burden, the burden is their work;
and wouldn’t God be offended if they ended just a stitch too soon?

Besides, the children outside do not care what you wear,
the bubbles will float wherever the wind delivers them.
The sprinklers will spray the serious toward laughter and
the moonlighters toward day.

Some days it seems adults have forgotten their childhood friends.
The days come to an end too quickly, the porches sit quiet and empty
while one man’s tears plead for someone to search their memory
and remember his heartbeat, imagine his throbbing pain,
look south, or up, or in, to find him again. All he is hoping
is one playmate who knows, so their own tears well up in
Summer-time pools.

He must have fooled himself. He thought it was always family.
He must have misspoke far too often, mistook the blossoms
for perennials. But they do not bloom here where he has been
transplanted.

Come find me, I am not hiding. I never was good at hide-and-seek.
Ollie Ollie Oxen Free, please come and see me. My green lollipop
has melted, stuck to the preheated cement. But every word,
every card, every letter, every vowel was always meant to tell you
I could never give you up my friend.

The sun is setting, children are heading indoors, and still I sit,
praying, hoping, crying behind the bushes so no one sees,
that you will remember the playful days when skinned knees
meant no harm, and funny bones were cold, electric, warm;
The days when hearts were mended before the next game of
marbles in the alley round our circles of dirt.

Note to the Reader

Note to the Reader

(Those whom the Lord has paid for and set free will return. They will come to Zion with singing. Joy that lasts forever will crown their heads. They will be glad and full of joy. Sorrow and sad voices will be gone. Isaiah 35:10)

A day and a half in bed,
the pain battered my body until it finally gave in
and would not move into the morning beams across the sheets.
Though I tried; brushed my teeth, combed my hair, my body
refused to rise longer than it took to put my toothbrush down.

Over ten years creeping to my office,
calling dear ones, reading with half my understanding
hiding behind my skull.
Writing sermons for a sunny Sunday,
and laying in bed on every Saturday,
I was cornered by the hammers that never relented,
that bulldozed the memories of the epoch

Before the pain.
Calls at 2 a.m. and racing to the hospital.
The homeless friends whose needs never end,
the hope that the next home I visited would laugh
at my mistakes.

But this time, this church, this pastor had no ease, forced humor,
and fewer friends because the moments he battled the pain were split
between the neediest,
and his need for naps. Vacations were spent on couches
with his children,
or in bed in the Caribbean. The beach could wait until the pain
might abate.

He burned more energy, saw fewer people, prayed fewer minutes,
left early and arrived late; all to conserve the quarter tank allotment of
every single day.

He cried more than he laughed. He stumbled more than he led.
He wanted someone to see him, see him as he was;
a brittle body with a head on fire and a soul thinner than onion skin.
He wanted a friend to simply take his hand, stroke his head,
sit in silence, offer him wine, bake him bread, not be offended
when he said

He wasn’t clear where his faith had gone these days. The more he
prayed
the more the pain
pulled the skin tighter over his head.

And so he left the only thing he ever loved. He resigned. He moved.
And spent this last weekend; Saturday and half of Sunday; in bed.

Note to the reader: Perhaps the Scripture and poem do not match. That is the point, I think. For my present experience belies my belief that my purpose has not diminished, though the disabling pain increases. I am not without hope. I am weary, torn, lonesome and no longer tempted to lie so people will not worry about my spiritual state. For this last season of my life, I shall be, attempt to be, attempt always to be, truly real.

My Silent Chair

My Silent Chair

(“Peace be with you, dear brothers and sisters, and may God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you love with faithfulness. “ Ephesians 6:23)

I wait for the next tick of the clock hoping ease
will find my silent chair.
I've always wanted to be more than I am,
better than I appear,
and I alone know the secret places I've stashed
the inky past.
I cannot rely upon my myriad attempts at regeneration;
the cushions have taken my form. I leave my chair but
my dense impressions remain.

How many times have I begged for peace when yesterday's creases
keep stalking me down?
How many loves have I preached only to envy another fleeting and
manufactured fragrance?
How slowly my faith has weathered, the silt below me all parts
of my beginning?

So they ask me how miserable I am. They ask in love, they ask in concern.
But there is no cure and no end to the pain. More than the decade of arrows
to my brain,
the spears to my soul have gouged me far past my prime.
And I have turned towards and away, inward and awry, passion and pedantic;
only to find the same heart beating, the same blood pulsing, and I wonder where
the new creation begins after far too many endings for my taste.

I will cheer for you. Yes, I know the hunger after the crisis,
the ennui after the knife is removed when all believe the healing has begun.

I've started more times than you realize. I've stopped even more. And I can
only depend on what I hope is the love-of-Christ and
the interests of a
few-dear-friends.

Attractive

Attractive

“And everywhere he went the people brought the sick to the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch just the edge of his coat, and all who touched it were healed.” Mark 6:56

I hope I never lose the wonder of the attractiveness of Jesus. He was always available, always approachable. And, those who were attracted to Him were often those on the “outside” of the acceptable society. Wherever He went people brought others to Him, laying their sick friends at His feet, knowing they would not be rejected.

It’s not that Jesus enjoyed crowds themselves. In fact, Jesus seems to avoid them most of the time, and never brags about them in the least. The gospel writers mentioned that Jesus fed several thousand with only a few fish and loaves of bread, but this was only to emphasize the greatness of the miracle. Jesus was always looking at people, not masses.

More than once, after healing someone, He would command them to keep quiet and tell no one about what He had done. That is a strange strategy if you want to be a famous religious leader, right? Jesus didn’t care about being “famous”, He cared about His Father’s mission. If people came crowding to because they thought He was going to take down Rome, they would be sorely disappointed. Or, they would be disappointed in His methods, to be sure.

Jesus did not whip crowds into a frenzy of excitement. He did not use the crowds to assess His own success. The crowds came to Him. He was the attraction, the lodestone that drew people with every sort of need to Him.

My favorite minister, J.R. Cissna, built a church of over 1,000 people in Tulsa, Okla and served there over 26 until the mid-1970s. But, when I knew him, he was the happy and content pastor of a congregation of under 200. He had been the target of a church “coup” when an assistant pastor, encouraged by a few folks, took over the Tulsa church. Cissna told me the story during the three years I served as his assistant in the smaller church. But he never blamed the young man and never longed for the “larger” congregation. All he ever did was love the people God gave to him; and I was one of them.

We kept up a phone relationship until he died in 2004. One of the last times we talked He said to me, “Mark, you’ll never guess where I am ministering now.” His voice was always full of laughter. “Sulphur, Oklahoma. The church has dwindled to eight people. But we’re working on it!” He was 86 years old and breathing life into a once thriving small-town church. And he did it the same way he always had: he loved the people God gave to him.

I think J.R. knew something about the attractiveness of Jesus. You see, when Jesus healed people, He didn’t give them a lecture, He didn’t ask if they deserved it, He didn’t ask if they were Roman or Jewish, poor or rich. Always, Jesus simply saw the need.

I hope the American Church can rediscover the attractiveness of Jesus. When we hear of thousands of high school kids walking out of their classes in response to the Parkland, Fla school shooting, will we give them a listening ear? Will we be like Jesus and allow them to bring their hurt to us, His church, who represent His healing, love and protection?

When men and women march because they feel their concerns about racism, equal pay, domestic violence, poverty or sexual harassment are not being heard, how will we, as representatives of Jesus respond? Will we learn to hear their stories? Will we learn to be just as attractive as Jesus to those who have been hurt?

People ran all over the countryside to find Jesus wherever He was. They did not hold back. They knew that they could even touch His garment, that they could literally beg for His attention and not be rejected.

Let us make our homes places where people are welcomed. Let our speech be seasoned with grace at all times. Let us find friends among the loneliest, the least likely, the ones who are begging to be heard. Let us be attractive. And, once people know they can be heard, we will probably see many also healed.

At Least One

At Least One

(“Then the King will say, ‘For sure, I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of My brothers, you have done it to Me.’” Matthew 25:40)

I noticed the color of his voice, dark as midnight,
sorrowful as rain. I saw the sadness in his face, wrinkled in pain,
eyes squinting, the hurt unrestrained.

I expected the warmth I knew, the grace of noon in spring,
the mercy early and new. So much time had passed from the first
to the last
time I understood the best I could do
and the worst I had done
were not loaded upon a scale nor
could cancel each hellish act
with deeds done well.

I knew it now, embraced it how,
son and daughter, brother and sister,
are the new names for my anonymous past.

Today I could not understand, the frown, the hands
clenched like a widow’s upon the casket’s edge.
What loss could change the songs of heaven to
simple silence, a long pause of eternal time,
(a mere second of you disapproval took forever
as you scanned my face from eye to eye).

You looked at me, and the pain was a cannonball of sorrow,
as you looked upon the disregarded, the unrobed, the lately regarded
worst of sinners and simply said to me plainly, amen and
world without end:

“He was my friend” 

Reading Dizzy

Reading Dizzy

(“A house is built by wisdom. It is made strong by understanding.” Proverbs 24:3)

He pulled the rotted handrails from my front porch
resting upon treated redwood front steps green. He meant
to replace the old splintered rails that with deep wounds where
the grain had run. From icy tan to dusty brown to the
aged grey of old wood and men, the rails showed the years,
and the work the power-frost had wrought upon the handhold
that now was nearly faded from day.

But he’s a spinning top, a whirligig jumped off the table
and clattering between wooden legs and fleshly feet,
fast, furious, so much a blur no one know what he is.
His label is indecipherable; the more he spins, the less he shows
of himself to us.

But he knows, he thinks, the words that tumble faster than
his works,
will make up for the languid faults everyone knows and
everyone has read who did not know. He speeds through the story,
and then speeds to the solution for your story, and you are
never sure who began and why your car was now scheduled
for a break job in his garage.

He calls the friends with the handrail, and, though he means well,
he may have to put it off a day, the brakes need him now, need
him faster, show him better. And you never mind very much; a week,
a month, or until the next frost when you will mount it yourself.

He moves so fast; he is still afraid we might read him real,
and then, what tender would he possess to gather the next friendship
to replace the sadly spoken ones; the broken ones who left,
he thought, because the label was clear. The spun as well as he, and
spinning

Read no one’s labels at all.

To Console or Call

To Console or Call

(“More than anything, keep loving each other actively; because love covers many sins.” 1 Peter 4:8)

It all smelled naked to the untrained eye;
like shame in the garden, rain during harvest,
so we covered it up with fragrances and smoke.

We were frightened and cold.

It all was larger than our own small acreage;
like memes in their orbit, tales oral and ancient,
so we hid in closets or glued green leaves on our broken branches.
We were broken and old.

Our minds were bigger than our bodies could take us,
our dreams unlimited have become finite over time,
the choices, from tears or sins, stares and pain,
have little chance of presenting themselves again.

Old friends, has my behavior surprised you? I must say,
you are as fragile as recent as I can remember. I would
not fail you even when frightened by the swordplay that,
I must say, wounded and nearly destroyed us both.

In these final few chapters I am wrinkled,
the band of pain is tightened around my brow and
I could use the eyes flashing with acceptance,
the voice sure with remembrance of both our broken wings
and broken hearts,
the standing invitation that never asked questions
and the pool of forgiveness (just mercy, no suggestions)
where wounds could be both cleansed and forgotten.

My feet are cold, my eyes are tired,
new friend are kind, but old friends are desired
who,
knowing all love all. We all were in the garden,
we all took a bite, we all have cursed and all have
accused, and now, as we ease toward our final mooring

I would give all for you, old friend, to console or call,
with love covering all. 

My Quiet is White

My Quiet is White

(“The Lord your God is with you.  He is mighty enough to save you. He will take great delight in you.  The quietness of his love will calm you down.  He will sing with joy because of you.” Zephaniah 3:17)

I shout from the wilderness of the invisible illnesses; pain and
psychic refrains which repeat the black hole madness that it is only
air that keeps me alive. My pillow remains tearstained long after I
rise and feel the explosive tears like lava ready to flow hot again by noon.
Each one that falls asks, “Where are you?”

It was fine for a time, when friends were just a block away. Dale
in his garage, rebuilding his 66 VW bug engine, or riding up my driveway
on his Honda 450. There is no one closer than a day’s drive. And,
since You are all-knowing, I know you will answer, “and you were lonely
back then too, weren’t you?” That’s my argument, my pain, my agony,
and my plea: If you are mighty enough, why haven’t you saved me yet
from me?

I’ve told you about all this before, how many who once made my heart
bounce like a spring picnic with the few faces who never gave away
the accidentally spilled secrets and wine. I’ve told you before that,
among the dearest of them also were lying faces who lie from top
to bottom with lips that once kissed my cheek in welcome. I am
finished with friendship, unless, in Your delight in me, you
pour perfumed salve in the wounds, and bring back to my path
one or two with unlocked hearts who won’t try to crack my
own combination.

My quiet is my white noise. Sound annoys me. I would welcome
an unknown who simply opened my front door and wiped my tears
without a word,
than having to answer the pounding; doors are startling;
or the ringing; phones are disheartening.

If You will love me silently, then please silence me preemptively.

Now singing, that’s what I need. Let the other three or four begin,
and let me just join in when I’m ready. You know the music that
started like buggies over potholes; but we supposed it was better
to play,
than to keep our instruments locked within their cases. Sing,
like Fire and Rain, and the Hallelujah Chorus again.*

*If anyone who reads this feels the lonely shadow instead of the
lovely presence; now you know you are not the only one: friend?

Carrying

“Four of those who came were carrying a man who could not walk.” Mark 2:3

Dale was my best friend throughout High School. We met our freshman year and both went to First Christian Church in Concord, CA. We were not at all alike. I was an artsy hippy, involved in drama and music. He loved tech work and cars. But, what bound us together initially was a girl. We both had crushes on Sheri. Also our same age, she attended another are High School and went to the same church we did. We both had huge crushes on her.

Backtrails

Backtrails

(“And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life.” Matthew 19:29)

It wasn’t a refund I wanted; I had cash enough already.
I could exchange size for color, color for capacity, capacity for brand name
and still be equal to where I started.

I want to posses what no one has sold,
to dwell when no one has lived;I want to dream what never was created,

to hear poetry just like

The first words I thought I heard like sunlight on
Mount Diablo’s golden foothills.

I awake and want to return home. I pass asleep and know
that when the phone rings tomorrow the voice will sound
nothing like
the friends who hiked the backtrails and shared dried apricots
and canteen water.

The home I own is old; the home where we played password
from midnight until 2 slipped from my hands 25 years past.
The floor was our game table and donuts the morning’s food.

I feel like returning; yet places pass through new owners and time,
the siding is replaced, the trees uprooted and, now that I remember

I longed for another place when I occupied the place I long for today.

Who will cash me out now, I am tired of bargain-hunting. Fulfill
my hollow hungers a hundred times over. I want to walk the
dusty paths of undistilled exposure; heart to heart we follow
the old road just like the out-of-town visitors we are.

The Friends without Words

“They feel but the pain of their own bodies and mourn only for themselves.” Job 14:22

We all are stymied when it comes to the right words and expressions to aid a friend who is enduring chronic pain or a life tragedy. What words are there when a man discovers his brother, barely a year older than he, was just found dead and had no indications that his body was giving out. What do you say to the family who lost their jobs, moved to a new city, and within two weeks lost 75 percent of their belongings in a house fire? What do you tell the father young son in his mid-20s just fell at his wife’s feet, succumbing to heart failure?

UnDivisions

“’Do not stop him,’ Jesus said. ‘Anyone who is not against you is for you.’” Luke 9:50

“Can you be a Christian if…” I don’t know how many different ways I have heard that sentence completed. Some of them are sincere, some are trying to find a way to justify personal habits and others want to exclude someone from the Christian club. A mom tells a youth pastor to keep her daughter away from the black boy who is attending the church. October 31 is called the Devil’s Day. Women wear dresses, men wear what they want. True believers vote Republican and liberal is an synonym for atheist.

"He Knows Me"

“He had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people.” Hebrews 2:17

I had an interesting discussion with my therapist yesterday. (Oh no, there I went and said it. Yes, I happen to see a therapist. Actually, I believe it’s a necessity for pastors, or any in the people-helping professions…back to my story.) He was new. I have seen the same person for the last five years and I have developed a trust in her, and she knows my background very well. But, because of a traffic accident, she is out of commission for a while.

Layers, Decades and Slow Curves

Layers, Decades and Slow Curves

The wardrobe I rode in and out of town
I changed for the eyes that would see me
entering from dinner and a movie or
exiting to the hospital 70 miles east.

I could switch so fast then, wake when asked then,
that the wrinkles hardly had time to mark the angle
of my sitting.

Widows at home; white hair, doilies and tea;
the table set for her son’s birthday impromptu with
cake and Down’s Syndrome grins.
A drunk friend alone; doorbell, phone calls and pleas;
the table riddled with half-empty cans, flies and cats
and I sit with my the gentle again.

Day was early, sometimes fog and frost painted the trees
until noon at least.
But still mid-September the sun could manage a feast near
late afternoon; hours before the first full moon asked
us all to watch north past midnight; crashing breakers
in the air,
green and ghost-hued dances while men talked outside
the North Segment Hall
about the approach of deer season; sighting rifles
and walking razorbacks.

I kept up with committees and new friends,
uninvited popups with questions, phone calls with impressions
(maybe I quivered a bit back then)
and smile and wish they might call me again.

Waking now is a slow refrain, long chords held a full measure,
vamped and waiting the lifting of my head. And, there is a place
I hide

Every single tear

That I am no longer the same man,
no longer ready and aimed,
no longer brain-bursting with another idea to try.

I beg an answer while I dream, and all that seems to answer
is a white screen with soundtrack synched like bad jazz.