Verbs Like Green

Verbs Like Green

(“But as for you, return to your God, hold fast to mercy and justice, and wait on your God continually.” Hosea 12:6)

What if there was a new name for everything;
not verbs like
green or
running. And have you caught your limit yet?

What if hills were lions’ manes, the clouds fastened to
nursery rhymes?
What if Saturn’s rings were alligator dreams, the stars
tethered to geothermal springs?

What if no one was king, what if you were circular?
What if fences were holes in our theories? What if
space/time was clearly a one-way street?
What if the universe is on virtual repeat,
the daylight a single page in a book?
What if everything shook loose until
random was sequential, rational was inclusive,
geology was playful and
immigrants ruled the world?

I won’t say love should be defined,
I won’t say wine should be refined,
I won’t author definitions,
I won’t offer explanations.

I won’t be I. I won’t. I want to
be we. I want. We.

What if we are stick figures drawn
by a kindergarten class.
What if every notion was our last, every
first a cats-eye marble left by
debaters who decided

There could be a new name for

Nearly

Everything.

Wait for the Green Breeze

Wait for the Green Breeze

(“He told her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed from your illness.’” Mark 5:34)

You cannot carry the crowd upon your shoulders.
You cannot lay down the law and expect everyone to obey.
You cannot walk through walls, you cannot dig to China,
but we can hire the verbs together,
watch the sky untether,
and wait for the green breeze that makes
the rocks hum.

You cannot dictate the future from your comma.
You cannot lay down a straight line to curve gravity back.
You cannot always run, you cannot cook without fire,
but we can rent the day together,
question hymns together,
and wait for the tide to turn that
takes us home.

Are your feet cold today, this February,
has the ice stained the impulses that leapt like fawns?
There is a melancholy that fills the spaces,
there are hard stops and soft memories that
fill our minds with faces that once kissed
our silences. Some have gone too soon,
and it feels we may never stop mourning.

How you fill my heart departed loves, how
your laughs and questions marks sit upon
the opening of the day

And mark it with smiles, tears, and
a longing to replay walks through courtyards
where we manufactured words to fit between
our cobbled dialogue.

We wait for the touch that makes
all whole again.

Tiny the Grass and Green

 

Tiny the Grass and Green

(“But as for me, justified, I will behold your face; when I awake, your presence will satisfy me.” Psalm 17:15)

Tiny the grass and green,
finally the sun and shone.
Dropping the death and doors,
hoping the waves and curl.

Closing obliquely fell along with
shadow the dusk and sigh.
Flowing the pray and knees,
slowing the song and final.

Lullaby me,
beside me chair your sweetest stare
at the scent of yellow, the rose and petal.
Inside the forest and tree,
reside the mirror and me,
stopping the wound and cut,
just at the moment, just when the shut
measured in and remeasured out,

The portrait and the face.

My Trees are Old

 

My Trees are Old

(“And the seeds in the good ground are the ones who hear the word with an honest and good heart, hold on to it tightly, and produce fruit as they patiently endure.” Luke 8:15)

My trees are old, gnarled and unruly.
They toss their fruit like tennis balls on
the grass courts of Wimbledon. Cherries,
peaches, and plums. Their blossoms prepared
a pink and white carpet on the mini-forest floor.
Their life began a generation before
I stepped onto these three-quarters of an acre.
Now I own towering douglas firs
and more rhododendrons than is proper.
The roses hug the west wall and drink the sun
between raindrops. Red for passion, yellow for friendship;
they whisper that growth is slow and never inevitable.
They ache for my care lest their canes tangle. I put off
their winter pruning this year, so their arms and elbows
are thin as a grasshopper’s legs.
The wilderness begins at the end of my
back yard, a logging trail at the bottom of the hill. I have
not yet
grown weary of green.

At the Table

At the Table

(“And he said to me, ‘This is the table that is before the Lord.’” Ezekiel 41:22b)

The restaurant was darker than most, the walls splayed with
lights of neon green. The large booth received us well, our family
that dines together and fills the air around us with high notes
of merriment,
low notes
of secrets,
intervals of silence between an almost-forgotten joke
and the beginnings of laughter (the respectful kind
that knows a father’s punchline well before he gets there.)

Before the food ever arrives the server greets our little tribe,
and we would feed her too if she didn’t have other things to do.
Philippine Paella family style is the majority vote and
the food arrives before the royal princess can finish
her third story about her best friend and learning Mandarin,
and cousins and the new dog that owns the home.
She carries the conversation at six and nearly seven;
theater and spotlight runs deeply in her veins.

Once a year our scattered family tries to meet; the
hug is Minneapolis with Dallas, Chicago, Baltimore,
California and the Pacific Northwest the remote abodes
strewn across the continent.

We fish our favorites out of the giant pan before us,
sweet mussels and sea salt clams, luxuriant crab and
salacious shrimp, along with sausage, fragrant and spice.
All of it resting upon rice turned playful in the saffron sauce.

Food needs a table, meals need a family; we never remember
the quick peanut butter sandwich at home for lunch or
the leftover meatloaf spread across competing rooms for dinner.
One does homework, another reads, and others watch Jeopardy
with memories barely jarred.

Lord, Your table is spread, made ready for our hunger. We need
so much more
than we ask for or order.
So teach us to remain long after the check has arrived,
help us remember the clatter of kitchen sounds
every time we find ourselves eating and drinking
together

At the Table of the Lord.

You Know the Grace

You Know the Grace

(“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9)

Clothed in gold, washed in spring rain,
the grass is thick, the streams parade life
and young men’s dreams from foothills
to the pregnant river of long poetry;
creation’s own form of praise.

Surrounded by breeze, underneath these old
feet each day is cool with dew that never
dropped upon the soft green blades
of this playful morning before.

We wore our castoff clothing like
princes;
Our half-scales and jazz chords like
incense.
The music we hear, though
assembled before a not ever was played,
is beyond our talents; the gift is
in the singing;
what we never dreamed of before.

And yet, the key can sour with time,
the odes and dirges overtake our jubilant hymns.
And yet, the day can bristle with age,
the plush rose petals brittle and late.

Rich with melody, yet faded with age
we may forget the sun on our faces,
the soft earth’s carpet on our back,
and the words that sent us leaping may
fashion weeping instead.

What, day of joy and night so old,
how may I find, discover, define,
and hold forever
the single afternoon memory of a
meadow spring—unvisited for decades.

How old is Your gift; the music, the rain,
the warm, the same thoughts that
once coaxed love from uncertainty?
But ageless is not old; but ever.
And the song; redemption’s dialogue of
God and man

Will remain the tune I whistle
half-forgetting its title.