To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

(“Our temporary minor problems are producing an eternal stockpile of glory for us that is beyond all comparison.” 2 Corinthians 4:17)

It rained like the notes of a dusty upright piano played
in the parlor corner behind a dozen conversations.
The massive maple frame vibrated and rang,
and thunder background awoke the lazy gathering
like fire.

What is this dissonance, where the lost chords,
the freezing droplets at my back door? Who first
struck the white and black, the lightning aimed
like a late attack upon our senses?

What hands hewed the wood and studied each joint
to take the strain of 236 strings and 17 tons of tension?
What hand threw the flood and fire that started in the wall
and climbed while no one watched it smolder overnight,
after each guest from young to older left for home?

Whose frost wet the embers? Whose mind chewed through time
and swallowed the old piano whole which hands
on which mother and child suffered etudes and
dreamed the Beatles best tunes?

The home was empty when the fire attacked,
lives were saved, but memories and melancholy
still litter the battlefield where the uncompromise began.

Would you walk alone, now, with the sound alone, now;
would you settle for less once the music is silence and
the wedding photos are sloppy burnt? Will the

Stockpile of grace
consume all that was taken
and replace the hand-me-down piano
in a new parlor in the Father’s house?

Between Connections

Between Connections

(“Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12)

It is in the connections our synapses fire,
the gaps between place and space, between
arrival and departure. And life is filled with
gaps,
filled with tears without reason,
smiles without memory,
and cause without effect.

We are lost in the distances,
circling the block hoping a new neighbor
will come into view our fourth turn
after so many mornings with the same
faces we have never spoken to.

All the energy we possess erupts, sparks
traversing
the zero between integers,
the minus between pluses,
the forever between creations

From eternity past until a new millennium.

The snow hill behind our house in North Dakota
is as close today in Spring and facing the Pacific Ocean,
as when my college daughter scooted across the ice preschool
to climb another slide down the frozen slope; our tiny white
Maltese Poodle, skipping atop the crusted snow.

The love is in the space between that memory and today’s moment.

The first girl’s smile, the Christmas with the Lionel train circling the tree,
the first view of the fair-haired maiden who chose to marry me;
each is alive, unfaded and exerting more power than the instant
they occurred,
merged in time and mixed with longing for their present tense now.

Between connections I live in the cracks where cement disguises
the solids made mostly of nothing, and thoughts seem concrete
as touch and smell.

We do well to continue, this day to the next, refusing to fear
lost connections on our journey toward perpetuity.