The Dump Truck

The Dump Truck

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

The dump truck backed up to my brain
early this morning before I noticed.
With a mind already full of
sensations and untimely fascinations
there was little room for the weighty dirt
it unloaded. No one alerted me. No one
called ahead. It was there to dig through.
It was there with no refund in sight.

Besides all that, summer hid behind the hills
and left the morning full of pre-autumn chills.
I needed to unwind the creases left inside by
a cable so tight it leashed me to tomorrow’s
unpaid bills.

But then I saw, or probably heard, that my neighbor,
my brother far away on the northern plains,
had received the same delivery this morning. The
hard earth filled his lungs nearly cracking his ribs
as the dump truck drove away.

He didn’t have the cash to hire a junkman to haul
the dirt away. I didn’t have the expertise to help him.
We both shuddered,
we both wondered,
we both cried,
we both prayed,
we both wandered into tomorrow far too
early in the day.

I do not know what will happen with our respective
piles of dirt.
But I’ve seen neighbor dogs stand on sand piles like
kings of the neighborhood. The blue jays nap on
top as well. Perhaps planting jonquils, perhaps a
playground for squirrels, perhaps we can photograph
our uninvited landscape. Didn’t we come in filthy
for dinner when we were young, our feet caked with
mud from ancestral dirt; didn’t we?

Once the Evening Falls

Once the Evening Falls

(“Jesus put His hand on him with loving-pity. He said, ‘I want to. Be healed.’” Mark 1:41)

I would rather be hugged in mud than
sit in sanitized lectures.
Come closer, let me feel your breath.
Sneak up on me like my tiny chihuahua;
she sniffs at my feet if I do not notice her.

I would rather receive one knowing glance than
open a hundred cards in the mail.
Come closer, don’t leave it to chance.
Surprise me like the birthday when
a friend I had not seen in 40 years showed up
unmasked and asking nothing.

Share a bowl of oatmeal with me,
let our fingers touch as you place it before me.
Cut the sandwich diagonally and let
the noon pass between, lingering long enough
that I do not forget your voice

Once the evening falls.

Come Ride with Me

Come Ride with Me

(“A voice crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.’” Luke 3:4)

I’ll tell you a secret from the mud bottom of Spring,
I’ll whisper the honesty of gravel where I’m scrambling,
I need a road trip,
a route 66 trip,
a Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, Navajo Nation
and curio stand trip.

I need a sedan without air-conditioning and keeping each
other awake
across the long stretches, whining across the deserts,
curling up the mountains with
tires
that should have been replaced thousands of miles ago.

I want to hear your mix tape,
your stories, even though you’ve told them
to me before.
I love to hear the story, morning by morning,
and at the rest stops where we pause for two hour naps.

I know your music well and hear it for the first time
every time we travel.
I’ve memorized your sagas, down to verse and dogma
that cement them too familiar to be surprised again.

But you surprise me even though I’ve know the road since a child,
you sing along with AM radio, crying and laughing before the song
is done.
We pull in stations from Mexico and wonder why FM
was ever invented. We keep it tuned until the signal sounds
just like the tires across the inky asphalt. We turn the wheel,
we tune the knob
searching for another list of night songs to take us home.

It seems I’ve always been on the road, and now I sit
in a tight rectangle, wanting the sun to burn my face,
the wind to wake me as the white lines hypnotize me,
and feel like the first time I ever ventured out alone.

I never feared a wrong turn, never wept my failures;
always watched for the screen doors that looked
on like lemonade stands operated by children. We were
the proprietors
of a season that leaves a hat blown into the desert,
a heart that watches for midnight dwellers in the
air from afternoon until night.

Come, let us ride. The highway still needs construction,
the scenic route awaits your company. Though you have
always been with me,
I ask you

Come ride with me again.

Mud in His Hair

Mud in His Hair

("Learn to do right. See that justice is done—help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights, and defend widows.” Isaiah 1:17)

You preferred he sleep with mud in his hair.
You preferred outrage at a man who slept in the shed
because the pastor thought it was better than shivering in the rain.

You stretch walls to the sky to keep out infestations,
slick-dirt children and mothers with desperate and
hollow eyes. You call poverty an invasion,
refugees criminals and serial adulterers saints.
You kiss your flags in pagan idolatry and expect an
Amen
at the end of your national anthem.

You expect a throne, a crown, barbed wire and cages;
you bow before liars, stand inspired before hitmen with tongues
like asps. You never tire of banquets to honor
the alternative facts
you've chosen to spoon feed to
your progeny; tiny birds unfeathered in nested bubbles.

Toss a roll of paper towel
to the man with mud in his hair.
Give him an orange on your way to
Starbucks. Deny him a night without rain and
complain that the pastor
let him sleep on the concrete again.

Maintain your buildings, guard your doors,
and you can transfer all the blame to every
sluggard who sleeps in the rain.

Mud and Roses

Mud and Roses

("What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?")

The smell of mud and roses,
that is how the chosen perceive the world.
We cannot embrace perfection, but love the spaces between
earth and bud, bloom and dirt. First the rain leaves pockmarks upon
the garden bed,
then the earthworms sneak along the perimeter before light plays
upon the newly broken clods. Robins meet for morning breakfast
and coffee
and a little to go to feed their young.

The perfect green stems with new rubbery needles embrace
last year's old growth now gray and stiff, their thorns more apt
for a Messiah's crown.

You cannot work the ground alone. You cannot inhale the garden's perfume
in a florist's shop. One is rich, one is sterile. And yet in the garden they are
the prelude to the day, the annunciation of sun, the breeze's benediction at
the lowering of the afternoon.

The chosen do not consume doctrine devoid of mud nor roses apart from
the dusty hands that tended them.

Faith is the moment where earth and roses meet, where lotuses bloom on
muddy ponds, where divine and human see each other in the beloved space
of imperfection's grace.

Out of Mud

Out of Mud

(“You will indeed go out with joy and be peacefully guided; the mountains and the hills will break into singing before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” Isaiah 55:12)

Spirit move me like gloved trees, leaves reaching upward
toward every shaft and molecule of life. Make the forest wave
with hands and feet, with saplings casting skinny branches
in amplitudes of praise.

Spirit split me like creviced peaks, crests returned eastward
toward every ray and upheaval of change. Make the glaciers pine
with cracks and ice, with alpine lilacs framing the lakes
in lavender worship.

Spirit soak me like muddy hills, paths left by the hooves
of goats and lambs circling coat verdant coat. Make the grassy slope
with earth and dark, with happy comfort a soft blanket
in choruses of song.

Spirit, I am not clothed with foliage.
Spirit, I am full of fractures and caves.
Spirit, I am not soaked, but dry and would
rely upon Your hidden springs

For a new day when silence simply means
I’m drawing a new breath to sing to You again.

I do not mean to be impatient, nor pedestrian.
I only mean I have mostly run out of mud to run in,
sprinklers to jump in,
hills to nap upon and
words that once flowed free and fresh as

An alpine lake with necklaces of lilac.