The Setting of Autumn

 

The Setting of Autumn

(“God has made everything fitting in its time, but has also placed eternity in their hearts…” Ecclesiastes 3:11a)

This is the kind of town where
you can watch Autumn set slowly behind the hills
while
an easy wind exhales with Winter rain.
And yet,
and yet,
I was not ready for the next season nor
expected that harsh pellets of heaven descending
would add to the darkness that remained
well past the rising of the sun.

For all the ice, for all the floods,
for all the harsh north that blew in through
the windows’ thin panes,
there was still waiting to do.
There was still waiting to do
well into the arms of heavy afternoons.
There was still one more word to hear
before the clouds obscured the sun that
had warmed the land. There were no
magic wands,
but there were words that broke through
sleet and raindrops,
sleep and pain.

It was time to listen again.

Top Heavy

 

Top Heavy

(“So be careful. When you think you are standing firm, you might fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12)

Be careful, you have become top heavy.
Be wise, you have become talk heavy.
Be humble, you have not moved in years.
Be kind, you have not slowed the tears
of anyone with god-talk that knows it all
and gets so much of it wrong.

(Don’t ask me, I remember what I used to know
and what I have forgotten now.)

For instance, the rain began at just the time
my apps told me I could take a walk without
getting wet. For example, I told someone I had talked
too many times and when they agreed, I sang a monophonic
tune that took up the entire side of the record.

Check it out, then, when inert gasses convince you
that nothing changes. The wind knows the way to
curl between hills and make the heavy trees sway.

Watch the smoke curl from the factory across the river.
Watch it stripe the horizon like silk candy from a pipe and
watch it next day and the day after. Some days it hugs the
ground with the atmosphere weighing it down. Some days
it flies as the breeze arises from the river and corkscrews
the skies.

All this is to say, please stop sitting in the same booth at
the same restaurant and ordering the same meal. Rebel.
And open the menu to dishes with funny names. Un-tame.

Some Days are Heavier

Some Days are Heavier

(“When someone is weak, then I feel weak too; when someone is led into sin, I am filled with distress.” 2 Corinthians 11:29)

Some days are heavier, the gravity pushes down like a cloud
full of gravel; while just a step and a half over the children twirl
like cottonwood dancing on the breeze. There is little to be said
about geography, myopathy; it is simply the weather that pushed
you around and left an opening in its soul full of dandelions and
dragonflies,
while you drag your disguise under the hailstones you nope no one notices.

But I see. Or at least discern the evidence. A lovely white porch
with
elder limbs for shade and the next day spitballs from the sky
shredded the lanai. Leaves were pureed, paint was splayed with
chips of white and green the jigsaw pieces of an infinite puzzle
or remains. You remembered why you nearly decided it
was a bad idea to put the glass table outside.

Some had insurance. Some had luck. Some discerned the future.
But you, you must have been on the receiving end of judgment
for hail so large to hover so long over a target so precise as
the white porch where people imagined (mostly the uninvited)
your adolescent raucous.

We sat outside on spotted plastic, shared a sigh and a drink,
and though the air was still heavy as iron, the hand of a friend
was better
than the doctrines of neighbors about
the hand of god.