Destroyed in an Hour

Destroyed in an Hour

(“All these riches have been destroyed in one hour!” Revelation 18:17a)

You thought you would stand forever, didn’t you.
All the reports showed your finances were strong,
your ledger was balanced on the best side of your fortune.
The birds stopped mocking you, the dogs lapped at your feet,
the acolytes lined up by the hour to praise your silvery age
like it was the highest building, like its final floor reached
above heaven.

You spent your spare time circling the globe, you were
given trinkets made of gold. You imagined lines and lines of
supplicants waiting for you to speak the magic words that
would turn their lives around. They knew you were the poverty
breaker
and wanted to be captured by your unnatural mission. They
were certain there was a secret equation that would turn the
water to wine, their tears to diamonds, and their disappointments
to opalescent stained-glass windows that let the golden rays
fall across the paltry collections of misguidance they
had invested their time to believe.

You survived the earthquakes; you held on when the markets
tanked.
You laughed at the storm that leveled everything within
miles of your epicenter. You were untouchable. You were
slippery and had closed every deal with your fingers crossed
behind your back. If someone failed when you pulled the rug
out from under them,
you told them they had simply picked the wrong place to stand.

But there were pests you did not see, insects that lived between
the cash and the plastic you stored behind the walls of
infamous portraits. The agreements you forced you forgers to
sign soon ran out of time. They payoffs you slipped into the
hands of the survivors weren’t enough to keep them from finally
speaking the earth-shattering truth.

Your money stayed intact. In fact, your accounts became bloated,
but too many people now, fooled for so long, began to prophecy the
crash of the one who the world had called beyond and completely
blessed. You crashed as your ego shattered; your scruples were the
first to go.

When your deals shriveled, you swiveled and found
no one was left on the opposite side of your lavish mahogany
desk. Your conscience was seared and you blamed it all,
the meteoric rise and the asteroidal downfall, on
lies a flunky or two had started and could not be stopped.

Briefly you rebounded. But within the hour everything
you built for your name and leisure was over. You could
admit it if you wanted. You could heal from the haunted
cobwebs that left your mind, so deceived and diseased,
that you stood on the first floor and opened the door while
weeping that your reach had receded like a dirge from a person
that no one knew.

Unsnapped

Unsnapped

(“To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless.” 1 Corinthians 4:11)

I became unsnapped from everything that
held me tightly,
untethered from the orbits that explained everything.
The strings of lights hung from the eaves,
the deer wandered through the yard. I was
learning to walk, to explore, to live like a
vagabond, a drifter, a nomad. We were better
at being ragamuffins than royals, so we pulled
up an old folding chair and wondered what the singing
was about.
We were enriched in our poverty,
homed in our wandering, healed with balms
of lowly scents from the muddled petals from
flowers that grew in the forest.

The truth is, I always feared being poor.
And I missed the beloved’s smile that looked on
my paucity as a gift. What should I give away
to know your love deeper than I have before?

Once again, I hold onto the things that have escaped my grasp,
the memories that were felt so deeply that they
color my moods like finger-painting.  It is too late
to learn to play a new instrument or think about
buying one. I should play even if I play alone,
leaving the sound to encase the walls of my sitting,
to gently adorn angels I imagine live between the
strings of my mandolin.

I unzipped myself from velcro attachments and
found, though poorer, my days were fuller than I knew,

Cast Our Words with Flyrods

Cast Our Words with Flyrods

(“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Luke 14:11)

Can you spare an hour, a sliver of time,
a coffee, a piece of pie,
an hour to see me the way I am?
Can we careen into the afternoon like
skis on powder?
Can you join me and then leave
a piece of you behind?
When I began writing this I
had no idea
where it would end. Starting on a day
when the walls enclosed my room and
then now in the sun in the early afternoon.

I was reading a new book, a book of words and
the word called grammar. I read slowly, letting
each sentence linger on my mind like wine on my tongue.
And once the reverie was complete, lost in pages
of scholarly guesses the

Breeze manipulated the bamboo windchime,
hollowly, wholly, and brought my eyes back to
blue skies, green scenes, and a hummingbird
spotted like a border collie. I had never seen her
before.

My invitation still stands. I have circles where no
one exists except in my imagination. I have a thousand
contacts in my phone,
but none of them live close to home. Silence
is untranslated. And that makes writing a greater challenge
than transcribing the conversations of a dozen tables
late afternoon at the bar.

My opinions have changed on their axis; my outlook
is a search for meaning on a sea of love. So, if you can,
if you will, sit at my table and tell me your tale. We can
cast our words with flyrods into the evening. We can
walk past the stream where crows try to sing and
children laugh at everything mid-July.

Marinated Phrases

Marinated Phrases

(“But godliness with contentment is great gain.” 1 Timothy 6:6)

I am completely serious and
honest this time.
The pain clamps my jaws until
my teeth nearly bleed.
It grabs my neck, glues my skin to my
bones. It stops the best words from forming,
the best days from flowing,
and leaves me restless for hours at a time.
It is a cage-match with an inexhaustible foe.

So, you’ll understand how satisfaction
is a goal too far.

But then I hear a saxophone and trumpet riffing
in silvery smoke. Noon becomes a jazz club
for a moment’s distraction. I may pour a whiskey
or take a nap.

And then a crow squawks atop the pine in my
backyard, warning the other mystery fliers that
the chihuahua is nearby. Robins and stellar jays don’t
mind, but the crows are the guard dogs of the sky.

I still am curious and
promise this time to
listen for the lyrics in the birdsongs,
though the translation is spurious
and the electricity still scars my eyes
and hog-ties my mind. Sometimes

I just let the hours accelerate
with no other choice but to
pass the time.

(I cannot pull phrases out of thin air,
I will use the ones I marinated overnight.)

Pacing myself
I dream of events that never happened,
wishes that never were fulfilled,
loves beyond definitions,
and occasionally
the fault that lay at my feet from
craving the sweets in the tension between
 health and happiness.

Oddly, I can see my soul healthy in mental
landscapes inhabited by nothing but unleavened life.
Sadly, in my waking hours
I feel a fraud and wonder where the
truth is.

And another hour limps by. 

Not Quite an Hour

Not Quite an Hour

(“When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’” Luke 16:17)

I had hoped to find you there, maybe in a corner, sitting with no one,
and catching up on every done, every right and wrong. We would
laugh at our serious adolescence, condole upon our misshapen dreams,
wonder at wisdom that left our coffee bitter,
some friendships, and some others, that started to the letter and
ended not answering the phone.

You would tell me of your husband’s passing, the one love you found
that took all of you, the full of you, and befriended the broken heart
you had finally come to understand. But he was older, 15 years or more;
but he was stronger than the teenage crushes, more settled than
the bad boys who usher in adulthood like a customized playground.

It would be not quite an hour of soft words, and the first tear forms.
The water rest, a captured bubble, filling in your lower eyelid, and
like me, like you, like many others, you do not blink, for as soon
as you do,
it will break the surface tension with the heavy tear dropping from
the icicle warming and settling like a mountaineer upon the crest of
your cheek; the frame of a face that denies forgetting.

I would mention my loves, remember time in 80 or 81 we
heard Terry Talbot sing his ballads to Jesus. You never flushed
nor squirmed and even joined our hands as pray floated from
the gymnasium floor to the ear of the Father. And, perhaps
a God who calls himself Father was the chief hurdle for your faith.

All I know, you were always gracious when at 19 I opened a
can of “Four Spiritual Laws” and spoon-fed it to you without any
thought of even heating it up.

But here we are, and I hope, when the dinner bell is rung, we might
meet you again, we might laugh as silly old friends, mention our
upcoming hip replacements and European vacations; and, with

30 years since placing eyes on each other, 20 years since hearing
as voice,
we might be content to skim the surface, yet comfortable to
open the curtain of our backstage lives, with nothing to lose
and so little time.

Meet me at the banquet, sit beside me at the table,
I expect to have a day full of errands,
but would rather break bread with a friend.

Half Done

Half Done

(Love each other in a way that makes you feel close like brothers and sisters. And give each other more honor than you give yourself.” Romans 12:10)

Our house was home-made décor, half done projects
on the walls, a green bean bag and dentist’s chair
on the living room floor.

It was mostly home, though the horticulture lacked
for purpose or design; the landscaper sneezed too readily
once hay fever season began and the weeds had a heyday
from fence to falling fence.

Sun tea was always brewing atop the flat verandah roof,
mom sunbathed will past afternoon and 45,
the black lab found the shade only after nuzzling each
visitor to their knees.

We liked the summer East Bay and found new ways to
play the same games, old ways to ask the same girls
for dates we were certain would turn us down. We lived
in town
and drove an hour to spend the day at Briones. (I’ve
written about it before. See my anthology, published after
my demise, and filed somewhere between Berkeley skies
and Jesus’ people meeting at Jacob’s Well for burgers and fries.)

Our house was occasional Goodwill influenced, though
we shopped mostly for clothing at St. Vincent de Paul.
I found platform shoes and denim blues, along with
paisley flannel shirts and macramé beads that looked mostly
like watermelon seeds.

I share all of this to say that, of all the ones I’ve known and met,
I miss you the most; the one who sat with me when the world
had ended. I miss old VWs and pool parties, talking about nothing
as if we were solving the world. I miss you, (never let me
regret
having felt it this well without telling you about it.) I miss
so many conversations that still have commas, and never
ended until

The words left unspoken fell upon the backyard pasture,
mixed with the lawn gone to seed and settled somewhere close to
or north of Petaluma.