That Leads You Home

That Leads You Home

(“At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you together.” Zephaniah 3:20a)

 

Slightly lower below the
sunrise hills
there glows a beacon that
leads you home.

It does not screech, it only beams,
it intervenes between hope and
bleak shadows that have
occupied your mind.

Some days the sun shines
but your shoes are not ready for walking,
The next day the fog lays
across the hills hiding their ever green.

There were no frowns, only furrowed
foreheads and unlikely thoughts of what
had turned this dark so soon. Some mornings
beckon with a better tune.

Suddenly our riches were fading, our coins
melting in the danger of the day. Quietly, though,
a new economy was coming, a new exchange,
all for all from unguarded watchmen who found
their pockets full of misting and rainbows.

Overnight someone sent invitations,
late afternoon we all made our plans,
early evening we gathered the adulation
we felt when we knew our clan was meeting
with us for good.

The Smile Stood Sideways

The Smile Stood Sideways

(“Then he carries it back home. He speaks to all his friends and to the people that live near him. He says, ‘I have found the sheep that I lost. So come to my house and we can all be happy together.’” Luke 15:6)

The smile stood sideways climbing up his face
like a flowering vine, like hibiscus, like morning glories
following the sun. The music overflowed above
the neighborhood fences and filled the street
with anonymous dancers celebrating like summer
had arrived weeks earlier than expected. Even the
babies twirled.
No one refused the invitation,
no one remained alone.
No one made up excuses,
no one showed up full-grown.
When the lost are found our aging
reverses its course and we giggle like children
when a favorite friend walks in the door.

The day was one shade darker until the missing one
is found. The day was nearly done with its light,
fading as the sun began to take its rest. But
we
could not stop the search, we would not until
we found the one we loved, isolated from
all the others we loved. Our hearts were
troubled until we found her, caught between
yesterday and a hundred weeks of looking.

We exploded in joy, a full orchestra of rejoicing;
we carried her back and called everyone we knew.
There are smiles so broad they sit sideways on their faces
because love has completed its journey home.

A Pathway Home

A Pathway Home

(“His body, the church, is the fullness of Christ, who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 1:23)

I think I am ready to go home or
at least meet someone for drinks. The streets
can be so lonely this far down the line.
I think it’s only a couple of miles from here,
I think we could be there by noon.
I’ve been to the wildlife refuge and only found
ducks and crows,
but it’s a good place to be alone.
But sometimes solitude is louder than
a baby grand piano in a starlit shed.
I can hammer the keys now,
I can freeze the melody between
octaves. I can miss my notes more easily
until everyone can tell I haven’t played well for
a while.
I think I am ready for some shalom now
or at least chant the words to pre-christian
tunes.
It is all so big now, so far beyond my reach;
it is daily decreed that my silence will increase
as the hours slowly turn toward afternoon.
And yet I still believe, below the surface,
above the moon,
within the moments, outside the fine-tuning
of string after sting, there is something larger than
the hole I carry within my chest.
There is something closer than the rain
that falls on my forehead and shapes my footprints.
There must be a star that sits above the sky;
there must be a vision that sees dreams like candor.
There must be a pathway home that takes me
past the homes where friends a half-century ago
we had coffee and talked about god and northern lights
and record collections and our favorite bands.

There must be a pathway home.

Oh Home That I Knew

Oh Home That I Knew

(“Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be moved.” Psalm 55:22)

Oh home that I knew;
Oh yard with weeds higher than my waist;
Oh sunshine that kept us California tan;
Oh days so old, I will never get them back;
I would lie in the sun forever back then.
I would answer the phone never knowing who called.
I would walk barefoot on the asphalt
by summer’s end. I would write reams of
poetry about unrequited love.

Oh young man goodbye;
Oh brain full of ideas that transposed;
Oh songs full of borrowed chords and melodies;
Oh front yard laughs, I will never get them back;
I can still hear the hesitant teenage angst.
I would walk by your house and hope to see you there.
I would ride 10 miles on my 10-speed
to see you smile. I would even name poems
with your name in the second line.

I carried a hundred pounds on my back,
I waited a hundred years for your glance,
I wanted some kind of freedom, some brand of freshening air
straight off the bay. I wanted to ride
on the sailboats the rich folks owned.
I wanted to tell you why I was so shy.

Oh burden I bear,
Oh heavy words that weight me like sand;
Oh moonlight that deceived me on the front porch;
Oh fancy dancers how memorized the songs;
I would unload this accumulation of grief,
I would call on the phone to ease your awkward mind.
I would drive the two miles to your house
by the end of the day. I would write it like
a letter and leave it to lighten your day.

Look to the Margins

Look to the Margins

(“Then a Samaritan man traveled down that road. He came to the place where the hurt man was lying. He saw the man and felt very sorry for him.” Luke 10:33)

Look to the margins,
take the drive to the edge of town,
find the strangers just behind the fences.
You know their names because
they have visited in your dreams.
Write them down next time,
bring them around next time you
grill steaks for the neighborhood.

The ecclesiastical tornados blow right
past the bloody messes left behind
by unfortunate destinations. The professionals
are keeping score, they tick each item off their list,
and having finished for the day find another way home.

Let them sojourn. We can take the drive
to the edge of town and put a few friends in
the back of the pickup truck.
Let them settle. Learn their names, and their children’s,
and their pets’. Learn the way their eyes ask
only for sanity, only for cold water, only for
an escape from the rain.

You used to play in the mud in front of your
suburban house with the lime-green porch.
You used to know everyone’s name that
waved from the sidewalk, every neighbor whose
child was just looking for a friend.
You used to hope that the popular ones would take
you in
to their treehouse, their club house, their secret pledges
made with bandanas around their necks.

Look to the edges,
just outside your peripheral vision. Take the journey
around the alleys behind the restaurants in the middle of town.
Some can’t afford the trip at all. Some would rather walk
than be caught riding the rusting bike they’ve had since
last Christmas.

Expand your boundaries, now that you know you have them.
You’ve seen their skin baked by the sun.
You’ve seen their loves hidden behind pulpit blinds.
You’ve heard their muffled cries. All they want is
to be welcome in your home.

The World Feels Diluted

The World Feels Diluted

The world feels diluted today, though I know it is
full, brimming, flooding, overrun, sculpted carefully by
sun and moon. I am breathing just fine, but I ache like
I’ve chased after an elusive friend always on the edges
of periphery.

The world feels static today, though I know it is
swift, breezing, rounding, tick-tocking, waving slowly like
rushes on the riverbank. I am walking just fine, but I
need to make myself clear. I need to find where I left
the only daredevil self I ever knew.

There are footprints on my soul that are eroding. Some
left by ghosts
who will never walk the sand with me again.
Some left by men I shared meals and questions with,
whose words are now decades old. We should meet on
the beaches again, or the racquetball court, or a rec room
full of couples who decided laughing was better than lectures.

The world feels muddy today, though I know it is
fresh, bursting, greening, never done, molded like pottery
in a master’s hands. I lost my breath recently, my legs feeling
every reason to cut the journey short. But where would I
go if I stopped wandering? Where would I find you if I only
stayed
home?

Put On Another Log

Put On Another Log

(“And so I remind you to stir up the gift of God that is in you…” 1 Timothy 1:6)

Don’t watch me burn.
Sit by the fire and warm your hands.
Pick up a guitar.
Wink at the girl across from you.
Tap your feet in the blackened soot.
Sing the song on the top of the sky.
Repeat the words that first made you fly.
Tell the story,
please tell it again.
Tell the story we have heard a hundred times before.
Show us how you memorized it,
or how your grandfather revised it generations ago.
Point out the constellations, I can never get the right.
Big Dipper. Little Dipper. North Star. Pleiades. Obscured by the
lights from town.
Pass out the wine you found on the final excursion
to the vineyards last fall. Do you have Dandelion,
and can we share?

Put on another log, we want to stay until early morning.
The stack is at the back of the property, dried, I hope,
after winter rains.
Teach us the song we’ve forgotten, let the blues harp
take the lead. The toddlers are dancing in shadows of the flames,
the teens are hoping to kiss for the first time tonight.
It is late spring and the air is cool. There are extra
sweatshirts inside the shed. The smell of last autumn’s
smoke still clings to sleeves and hoods.
A dad in plaid is shaving sticks of their bark and
handing them to kids with hot dogs in their hands.
Later we will burn some marshmallows, the embers will glow
blue and orange,
one baby is cuddling with her head on the side of the new
black Labrador puppy.
One is nestled in Auntie’s arms, eyelids are slow semaphores
as sleep pulls him close.

The fire, we kept it fanned. We planned for a few, and more than
that
stayed quiet and late. In the morning we will wash down the night
with coffee for the handful who never went home.

I Tried to Count the Stars

I Tried to Count the Stars

(“Jesus answered, ‘The foxes have holes to live in. The birds have nests to live in. But the Son of Man has no place to rest his head.’” Luke 9:58)

I tried to count the stars last night and
thought of you.
How naïve to believe they were
just lanterns swinging from an overhead dome.
I tried to measure the miles from them
to where I stood
and fell asleep as the earth turned toward morning.
I tried to count the years in our days and
wondered how we mourn a friend’s passing one morning,
and attend a christening the next.
Light and dark fight it out for our
attention. We are membranes with ears,
eyes diffusing summer leaves in sharp relief.

I assume I have passed you on the street a thousand times,
or met you on an overpass while chrome machines roar
underneath.

I tried to think my way through the last two decades,
pray my way into unconscious flights of ecstasy.
I have missed every face I’ve known,
have remembered la anciana begging on a sidewalk
in Cancun.
I’ve trimmed my roses before the snow fell and waited
until May to watch them bloom.
I’ve seen the rain spit up dust on a Texas afternoon.
I have swallowed my song too long
fearing the tune would elude me.

But I’ve watched, though I rarely see,
your way through the galaxy and your
face that dropped tears on the cheeks of a child,
on the forehead of a child,
on the first blue tulip, the first daffodil.
And I wonder how many abodes we count looking
for home.

I Will Come See You Soon

I Will Come See You Soon

(“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” Luke 4:18a)

Brother man, you really set it off when you landed in this town.
“Gospel” was your favorite word,
but people heard with ears so tired it sounded like babble.
“Good News” is what you proposed, echoing the First Igniter
who stood to declare the Story all creation had listened to hear.

You were known for your Harley and Big Bad Bob
your Excitable Boy. (He was named after Bob Marley.)
Four legs and Labrador energy,
he kissed everyone full on the lips while expecting a game
of catch
in the living room.
You bought a sidecar just for your trips through the hills
along
the Columbia river.

The poor were your heartache, the earth was your cause,
the outcasts, oh, let’s be frank, the gays that were kept
from wearing vestments. You walked in their parade. You
collected more canned food than pickups could haul.
You fed a hundred on Christmas, recruited our town’s best
chef. You joined me for Thanksgiving, sometimes just five
around a table.

Every word was like a roman candle, some called you irascible,
others saw only the flames of love. You shall always be
my favorite Lutheran,
and I your favorite lapsed Pentecostal. You called me your pastor,
but it was your friendship I treasured.

You and I, no longer standing behind pulpits, lived only a half mile
from each other. I would turn the corner, stroll past the view where
the river can be seen between the trees, then walk up your driveway,
inside your sliding glass door, and find you watching a classic movie
that you had watched a hundred times before. Oh Brother man, I
have a wife to keep me company. You have no one. Our visitors
are
zero. And I mourn the emptiness you bear.

So I don’t know
if it had to happen this way. But life started to leave
you weary, it leaked from every pore. Your heart, so
over-exposed,
had less than ten percent to give. You coded
four times
in ICU, Covid invaded your lungs and the man
who never canceled a service or appointment
now relied on a tiny cohort of friends. You would
breathe on your own
for the shortest of days.

They call it
comfort care,
and you are feeling no pain. Today the
chaplain
anointed you with oil, your friend standing by
while the nurse disconnected the last tunnel of
oxygen that pumped your lungs full.

Your body was beaten, but your body is tough.
I do not know how long, brother man, before
you expire; slowly, or all at once.

When you do, slide like the ocean breeze into
the slipstream as Christ leads you home. Please
wait for me, I will come see you soon.

My Soul is Wrinkled

My Soul is Wrinkled

 

My soul is wrinkled,
it is dislodged from the space where
it once felt like a home on the edge of fire.
My soul is shrinking,
it has lost weight. It is buoyant and
leaves its moorings when I am not looking.
My soul is tingling,
it is super-charged and overheating.
The songs that used to feed it now
send it cringing to a neutral corner.
My soul is marooned,
it is waiting for the rescue to arrive
but the sun has blinded, how unkind,
and the waves have erased the laughter of
the pardoned.
My soul is narrowed,
a tiny flow between the cross-stich gullies
fully wanting the summer rain, the kind that
falls on miniature and massive, the kind that
no one predicted.
My soul is swallowed,
it is reversing the recipe that once made it
palpable. Now it is culpable for every heresy
councils have denounced for centuries.

My soul is ageless,
it once was captive but
now is captivated by
a world so fully stained that
every sunset is as viscous as an oil slick,
every breeze plays in a different key than
the day before.
My soul is effervescent,
my soul does not fit within the
bottled expectations of factory-made songs
meant to make you put your hands up,
meant to make you wave them,
meant to make you clap them,
meant to make you stand up.
My soul know what is needs now,
my soul knows it very well.
My soul is wrinkled with time which
is just fine with me. My soul has
enwrapped me with a handmade name and
will speak it to me in a whisper when
reversals attempt to revoke it again.

Pensive Windows

 

Pensive Windows

(“He and everyone in his home were devout and respected God. Cornelius gave many gifts to poor Jewish people and always prayed to God.” Acts 10:2)

Teach me to live with nuance and ambiguity,
deliver me from the sin of certainty.
I rehearsed my script, made all the pieces fit,
knew who was cold, guessed who was hot,
discerned who was in, assumed who was not,
and loved the sinner and not the sin
which never made sense to the to the hordes
that lived outside my redline boundaries.

Teach me to live between the clouds and the storm,
release me from the vows I have sworn
that ignore the same flesh and bone who
walk in parks,
laugh at splashed sunlight,
cry when time has deleted their first love or child,
pray with the poor,
move next door to the homeless children
who never knew the names of the preachers up the road.

Let the ink run on the page, let the colors swirl like uncaged
cardinals and bluejays.

Teach me to hear between hymns and tragedies,
deliver me from the sin of duality.
A little gentler and a lot less brutal,
let the total view from the back seat of the universe
ignite my imagination. The rain that falls on my apples
and walnuts
waters the hedges and thistles. And the rivers wash
the footprints of history to the sea.
Finally.

At Home Weary Hobo

 

At Home Weary Hobo

(“I will put my teachings in their minds. And I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Jeremiah 31:33b)

You are at home weary hobo,
we have seen the ashes of age covering your
face.
You are welcome repainted wanderer,
we have heard the dirges of miles echoing each
trace
of the journey. Here and now
we
invite you in.

Oh mother, hear your children. Oh, look inside their
reflective eyes. You are more than the pain inflicted when
you asked just a moment away from home. You are not alone
and
the drill sergeant words that keep you from healing
are barbs that stuck after the shock waves were gone.
Oh mother, see your children. Let them silence the
monotonous loops ingrained. Let them love
away the shame.

You are found wrinkled plow horse,
we can feel the scars upon your back.
You are cherished smoking candle,
there is joy enough with us to ignite
the night until the morning has waxed
wide enough forever

To light the way for each vagabond
to the eternal day.

It Is Lonely, You Know

 

It Is Lonely, You Know

(“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in. I will eat with that person, and they will eat with me. Revelation 3:20)

It is lonely, you know,
taking breakfast by yourself.
It is solitude for an hour, the sun upon the back porch,
but then the quiet invades and screams there must be more
than waiting.
(I’ve left the front door unlocked for ages.)

I would go into town, meet the gang for lunch,
but my cat has run away, and most of my friends
live state-lines beyond my reach. My feet ache
from starting my walk south and turning around.

I’ve heard the songs you sing, hands sometimes raised in the air;
I’ve seen the prayers you pray, sometimes kneeling on the ground.
Where does all that seeking leave you?
Which direction does your face turn,
what concerns you most after your encounter with
holy moments better than the building around the corner?

It remains lonely, you know,
after lunch by myself.
The sky is sun, the air is roses, the grass is fully awakened.
My eyes are rain, my breath half a prayer, my mind slowly mourning
the silence that makes all my thoughts shout even louder
that happiness is still far beyond my reach.

I’ve sat at tables before full of bread and bounty;
I’ve heard the thrum surround the forks and knives
while stereo conversations fill the kitchen counters with
more than just casseroles. Laughter is the echo that remains

After everyone has gone home.

Christmas Gifts in July

Christmas Gifts in July

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, I give to you. Don’t let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful. John 14:27

Now that I’m retired from ministry there are a few things that I’m beginning to understand about life. And, there are a whole bunch more questions, but we’ll leave that for another time. Here is one thing that I’ve learned: No none likes to be told what to do.

Even the best leaders in business give people objectives and not specific instructions. A leader who is constantly telling people what to do quickly is seen as a micro-manager and someone who does not trust her team. But, if they can delegate responsibilities and allow others to accomplish the objective in their own way, the team members see themselves as valuable and trusted.

I wonder how often as Christians we tell people what to do, or what they should be feeling, or how they should be experiencing the world. “Jesus left us peace. So, you should feel peace no matter what is going in on your life.” “Jesus left us peace. Here are four ways to achieve that peace in every circumstance.” “Why are you so anxious all the time? Don’t you know Jesus gifted you with peace.” And on and on and on.

I understand that sometimes people respond to such exhortations, and I do not want to exclude them entirely. But we also need to take a step back and realize none of us experience peace (or joy, or faith) one hundred percent of every day. And, some peoples’ lives have been so disrupted by hardship, that for them, even accepting that peace is possible is an immense challenge.

I almost decided not to write about this verse today. Most who read this already know my situation, and I won’t belabor it. The short story is I retired early due to health reasons and now my wife and I live with my sister and brother-in-law in Texas. Patti is working, I suffer pain every day, and do not have a vehicle at the house. I would much rather still be in Washington near our daughter, but we have to finish paying the mortgage on our home there before we can move back.

All this is not how I envisioned my life at 64. So, the situation, along with chronic pain and clinical depression, have produced a situation that is not conducive to feeling a lot of peace. And, if someone wrote me a letter with this verse as a heading, I probably would not receive it well. It would sound like they were telling me “Hey, dude, buck up. Grab the peace that’s there for you!” (As if, after 40 years of ministry I was entirely unaware of Jesus’ promise.)

But, if I received a note that said, “I’m thinking of you. I know this is probably one of the hardest times of your life. Wish I could do something. Try your best to find some peace in the middle of it all. I understand how difficult that must be right now,” I would rejoice. No, I would weep, with joy. It would be a human touch that transmitted the presence of Christ.

When my mother died in 1987, she was only 53 years old. She lived in Upstate New York and had bought a Victorian home she hoped to remodel into a Bed and Breakfast. Unfortunately, she never was able to fulfill her dream.

When we heard of her death my sisters and I met up in New York to grieve together, comfort her husband and each other, as well as have a memorial for her in the little village she had called home. We pulled up in front of the old house in the car we rented. Though in some disrepair, it was beautiful, and fit our mother’s sensibilities to a t. We walked up onto the porch that circled the entire house, knocked on the door, and our step-father beckoned us in.

After hugs and greetings, he gave us a tour of the house. One thing caught my eye almost immediately. In the corner of one room were at least half a dozen wrapped Christmas gifts. But Mom died in late July, so I asked about them. Those were the gifts Mom had bought for us and her grandkids, but never had the funds to mail.

In the middle of our grief we all laughed. Mom always made sure to gift her kids, and especially her grandkids. It hadn’t gone without notice that there was nothing under the tree from her the previous Christmas.

We looked at each other, picked up the gifts, turning them over, looking at the labels and wondering what exactly to do. Eventually we unwrapped them. I cannot tell you what the gifts were, I do not remember. But it affected us deeply that Mom kept those presents wrapped and ready for us.

Jesus told his disciples that he was leaving them a gift: his peace, his shalom. Shalom is more than feeling calm. It is the common greeting in Hebrew, and is a desire for wholeness, purpose and goodwill in a person’s life. It goes far beyond living without anxiety. Jesus’ gift is purpose in life that is not defined by career, popularity, good looks, or any of the outward measures we use. It is an inner awareness that we are so valuable to him, that he has bequeathed that purpose to us forever.

The disciples didn’t respond exactly as Jesus suggested; their hearts did become troubled, they were fearful. Within a few hours they would see Jesus taken away by military might, tried unjustly, beaten to with inches of his life, and hanged on a cross in the cruelest form of punishment invented by mankind.

Peter denied Jesus out of fear. The disciples scattered during the crucifixion, later to be found huddling out of fear in the upper room. But, after the resurrection they discovered the peace Jesus had promised. Now some of them would be treated in the same way. Yet they would ask forgiveness for their persecutors, they would pray instead of denying the love Jesus had brought into the world.

I do not want to tell you that you should be experiencing peace in this very moment. Grief over our mom’s death overshadowed our happy discovery of the Christmas gifts. Of course, it did. And the struggles of the present, the pain of the past, the fear of the future can all work against the sense of peace Jesus promised. But I do want to remind you that he did promise that peace, well-being and sense of purpose. I am slowly learning that, now that my “purpose” is no longer in being a professional minister. Indeed, much of my time is spent simply nursing this 11-year-old headache. One day this week I spent only eight hours out of bed.

But, if you will accompany me on this journey as we seek to let the presence of the risen Christ give us peace, maybe we can encourage each other in our difficult moments, and avoid simply telling each other, “Hey, you oughta have peace.”

To Go Home

To Go Home

(“This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who went before me, because he was before me.” John 1:30)

So you saw him eye-to-eye
and jumped in the womb when his
mother came calling.

You saw the spirit land
like a dove on his shoulder
and heard a voice announce his call.

You baptized him,
and wondered,
wishing it was his hand upon your head
that lay beneath the waters.

So you touched him skin-to-skin
and did resist his righteous request.
You leveled the earth before the lamb,
the world’s sin-eraser,
and got yourself in trouble with
politicians and kings.

Me, I feel stranded here,
moored upon earth in a square-foot perimeter.
Me, I’ve landed here without seeing,
without touching,
without knowing a heartbeat within my own,
an uncancelled thought, a ghost of a holy touch
on my wrinkled brow.

I write from emptiness, a well dry as crust,
a heart of tears so salty they are dust upon my cheeks.

I cry out, I appease to empty space above and within.

You saw him eye-to-eye,

Me, I’m just waiting to go home.

Come and Go

Come and Go

Some days come and go,
and others are slow like the
local swimming hole after all the children
have gone home.

There is no drifting, splashing or
tick-tocking to mark the ions of time.
Some days they all stand still, hovered just above
the memories after

All the children have gone home.

These are the places in my dreams,
the spaces between the buzzing summer when
thoughts were younger
and the approaching winter when
only the silence has much to say.

Some days drag and push,
and others rehearse memory
in slow motion like the schoolroom clock before
all the children have gone

Home.

I Will Sing of the Freedom

I Will Sing of the Freedom

(“Always give thanks for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 5:20)

It was sometimes the precise language that bothered me,

like indigestion after too many doughnuts. I cannot seriously
thank God
for detention camps and quarantined families.

And to offer gratitude in the name of the authorities who put them there;

who do not see the dark-haired mothers scorched upon the road of escape,
who refuse to hear the broken candles of prayers cut off before the answer

who defy the cries of wrinkled notes with grandparent's phone numbers scribble inside.

You tell me to give thanks, and I will, for families with such life that dare our borders
for refuge and asylum from the eardrum-splitting violence of their own homes,
their kindred villages, to seek a hand to help them across the border
to air with less smoke and more invitations to join the
purple majesties and and golden grains. No one told them

half-way through their journey

that families no longer matter in the land they heard was free.

I will give thanks for mother and fathers, for older brothers and sisters,
for baby girls and boys. I will utter praise for the progeny of the Father
who come to our borders and scale the wall if the must, to find just a speck
of justice on
the other side of the fences.

I will sing of the freedom seekers, I will write the songs that urge them on.
I will thank the Father who loves them forward, the Son, the refugee whose long
and ancient Days are full of families who sought a better home, a greater city,
a place where a woman could decide, right or wrong; and where a man could choose,
up or down; until the seeds took root or the boss cut the check

or until the new land of their sojourn
joined the song and thanked the Father of Life
for the spice, the dance, the song, and perchance,
the greater nation that opens its heart to families
like our families
that once upon a time

placed uncertain feet upon the shores of an experimental nation
that hard-pressed, learned the love of freedom as slowly as a toddler
following its mother home.

The First Place

The First Place

I heard the first place we went was undiscoverable,
they were caverns I had never seen, fissures in the granite
where glaciers had retreated. But now we stood
halfway up the slope like the spine of a giant whale
and we whispered the world between the breaths we took.

I would go farther, see the summit, but the damage done
over years of abuse
and self-styled announcements
has left me panting far below the treeline.
New wounds only irritate old wounds
and now I doubt all will be smoothed over
by the time I’m asked to deliver my final address
on the state of the world
and my place in it.

If you could supply, by grant or by inheritance,
I would comply without counting the dangers.
You know how sad I’ve become, you know my fingers
are crooked and my throat is bare. You know best,
besides the one sweet harbor of my years,
how far the crest of the stars has fallen from me.

I wanted the first place I went was out to sea,
they were trenches deeper than mountains, the wounds in the planet
darker than soldiers’ tears. Now I want to last, please,
at least until
I see the fire fall just once more. Until hose crying for aid,
lie on the ground and watch stars dance like before.

I want to know You have walked through the door
in your humblest theophany (you are the poor, the sick,
the aging, the abused) and we have gladly welcomed
the glad parade from here to home. 

To Try it All

To Try it All

(“Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any of you has a complaint against someone else. You must forgive one another just as the Lord has forgiven you.” Colossians 3:13)

The tour would begin at the intersection of Second Street
and Alhambra road; two boys who had the wind knocked out of them
simply because school had begun. The asphalt simmered,
the crepe myrtles, the trees with a grandmother’s name, spurred us
on. We marched between the cyclone gates with every clue lost
to new boys finding a place sit, a group to surround our shyness away.

I was never sure who I was, or might be, though I had as many friends
as enemies. Bruce good at conversation, introverted, I think, borrowed
time for him to string words into sentences and punctuate them with the
tiny spaces. He hated his name, his first name, I mean; Marion, it was,
and I understood, though we all agreed, for evil or good, that Bruce was
not much better.

Deidre was good for hanging upside down. Her dad constructed the best
swing set in the neighborhood. She hardly used the seats; more often
she hooked her knees
over the cross-beams of the Capital A held the blue and white tubes together.
It seemed she would hang there half the afternoon, and punch me in the ribs
if I dismounted too soon. And she could throw a ball better than anyone but Don.

Don was good for walking home, and singing “Build Me Up, Buttercup” on the way.
Held back a year and big for his age, he was my protector when a bully
or a chum
sent me a private invitation for a meeting behind the temporaries after school.
Plus, MJ, his sister, was the prettiest girl I knew from third grade through
junior high school.

I still was not sure who I was, or would be. Would I gather notions, subtract
emotions, and arrive at a calculated equation, well-balanced and firm? Four years
of cramming every day full like a knapsack for a month long hike still left me
thrilled at wandering, spilling all my wondering in ink and hopeful encores
after finishing my set of hand-crafted songs.

I was so unsure, though, I stopped at every red light longer than I should. “Your
poetry
doesn’t rhyme, kid; your music barely has a tune, dude; and God needs you
more in the pulpit than on the stage, son.” I stopped my pursuit before it had
begun.

Now I’m old enough to say “No,” to the objections and “Yes” to the offers,
but have traveled so far from the connections my extension cord will not reach
from this tiny spot of paradise back to the places I should have rolled the dice
and given it all a whirl.

It’s not heartache, nor a spirit broken by age; it’s regret, and I’ll forgive myself yet
before the next song with too few rhymes is written from where I sit. I miss
every bus I missed, every song not sung, every role I dismissed and mostly
the courage to try it all.