Between the Stars and Planets

Between the Stars and Planets

(“I’m now eighty years old. Can I discern what is pleasant and what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats or drinks? Can I still hear the voice of male and female singers?” 2 Samuel 19:35a)

Late into the day the light dims and the sounds around us
are interpreted by the rattling cages of hopeful listening.
We once heard the frogs calling by the pond,
the owls hooting above the trees,
the folksongs sung by young lovers in the meadow.
We remembered that though our children thrive,
our footsteps have become more halting and we
wish we could twirl like them in playful squeals.

We had spent the prime of our days like castles built
above canyon walls. We had armed ourselves with word
after
word, and forgot most of them by the end of the day.
We explored food and the music that accompanied it.
We recited memorized planets from first to last and
all the asteroids dancing between them. We had a way
to look at the sky that discerned between the stars and the
planets and could see well past the end of space, at least
in our minds.

We stayed up late with the best of friends, played music
like it was a carousel. We were serious about our joy;
we played the homemade cassette over and over, two
sisters harmonizing to simple guitar accompaniment.
They sang of oil anointing the head, of sheep imitating
the shepherd and all of it so simple we dove into the songs
like angels swooping the skies.

Today the voices are crackling, the fingers are swollen and
the lyrics escape me. But I remember the people, the warm
smiles
we could wait all day to see, the voices that calmed our
unnecessary anxiety, our uncanny laughter at the silliest of jokes.
Today we would wait even longer because we are spread
across the miles like dots on a map spread across the floor.
And our days are warmer for the joy of our youth.
Some days the evening claims too many of our memories,
but sometimes, unexpectedly, a friend calls to say,
“I miss you.” And you can hear the music one more time.

Of Bread and Music

Of Bread and Music

(“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:51

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had been asking for a rhyme
to bring me closer to another soul like mine. Recent years have left me
frightened of conversation and forays into the depths of contemplation about
God and sunsets and music and the proper tempo to play a hymn.
My abilities have wavered as my fingers bend and tremor. Not
that anyone can tell, but I know my fine motor skills are no longer
fine and have left me with less skill.

But the trio invited me to join them as I walked into the bar
a midday Thursday afternoon. Two women with voices of angels,
one husband, a kind man, buys me a beer. We sit and talk music
and I’m invited to join a group of ukulele students with me on
keyboards. Recent years have left me skittish of forays where my
mistakes can be readily discerned. I’m a music reader and have
never played by ear well. I need to see it and from there it transmits
to my fingers. But they have been left dormant for so long they
miss the keys and come down between them in discordant half tones.

But the urge still moves me, while anxiety pumps the breaks.
To gather around picnic tables and share bread and wine,
steaks and beer, or anything else brought by the few who
(I hear) are as anxious as me.

Could there be angels surrounding us as we pass the
food down the line?
Could there be divine messengers listening in to our
musical etudes and attempts? Could our small talk be
a tactical vest to protect us from blushing at our inadequacies?
Whatever it is, and whatever we hear, whatever we eat, and
whatever we drink,
let’s let make music of heaven sink into our closed-mouth
inhibitions.

I Belong

I Belong

(“It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. This life that I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.” Galatians 2:20)

I spent too many hours drowsy like
a wintertime bear. I waited for a knock on the door
or someone to pour me another cup of coffee.
I could have seen the hills where frozen fog had
decorated them like buttercream frosting. As the
day went on they melted like a cat licking cake.

My failures had piled up higher than I could reach;
my hallway narrowed in my sleep until I only saw
right and left directly in front of me.
I try to remember my dreams, but I fall back asleep
and they are gone.

I try to understand the words I’ve heard every day,
and they swirl past me like the mists that the haze laid
across the rolling field. I don’t ask for pity,
I never ask for money,
I only want to know I’ll make it through the
next decade older than I have become.

Haply, though, the chances were in my favor,
the changes like dusky diamonds on the road
were within the very breaths of my sighs and indignation.
I regretted more than I had forgotten
and ached more than the storms had gotten out of control.
I gave up and when I did

The mountains did not fall, the sidewalk did not trip,
the ice did not make me slip, the time took me no time at all;
I listened to your voice, and for once I knew
all I had been through
led me here. Where else could it have been.

My days begin and no longer wait for a mysterious guest.
Instead I find, more than bread, more than wine,
the wilds inside that lead me like adventure down the
wider halls of wonder. I do not mind the wandering
as much,
for I am no longer lost, though often alone. I am full though
hollow as ever. I belong, from Spring to September, to the
saints who sang uncanny music in my ears.

It Might Take a Choir

 

It Might Take a Choir

(“Now it was Mary who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet dry with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.” John 11:2)

It might take a choir to
inspire any words today.
I am happy that Mary wiped Jesus’ feet,
but everything feels incomplete.

Even still, I have nothing to prove,
nothing less to lose.

So, I’ll write what I wonder,
ask the questions that pain begs to be asked,
scratch my head over churches teaching
the U.S. constitution and
forgetting the beatitudes.

I am sorry, have I said to much?
Did I offend you again?
I’m not sure where to begin,
but I hope we don’t run out of perfume soon
because we need Mary again to fill the room
with the fragrance of love.

It might take a symphony to
awaken my heart again.
I am happy that Mary wept at Jesus’ feet,
I am happy she was so indiscrete
without studying the demographics or plotting it
all on a spreadsheet. She perfumed the room.

I still have too many questions, I wonder where the
love has gone.
We fight for second amendments, we want all
the firepower we can muster.
It is unlikely we will every connect the dots between
the Prince of Peace
and projectiles aimed at human flesh.
I do not think Mary had a concealed carry permit.

I might be wrong. It might take a sonnet or song
to move me close again.
I am happy that Mary was unguarded;
I have been half-hearted and recently a
man of constant sorrow. Perhaps Mary
will show up again,
and we can see close-up again
the love that leaves us defenseless
before the man who teaches us,
who befriends us
even before the music begins.

The Music from Within

 

The Music from Within

(‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4)

One day you can hear the mandolin strings singing just
outside your window.
The next day the fog hangs so close nothing pierces the
heavy silence.
Some weeks are lived this way, and some years.
Some storms turn suddenly away and some
sit overhead like they have nothing else to do.

One day you’re riding comfortably under convertible skies,
the next you’re confined inside a cramped stone basement
averting your eyes from the next claustrophobic wall of sound.

Joy is not for the faint of heart,
but for those willing to confront the darkness
and the detours
that stop us in our tracks. Deeper than the cellar floors
and the shadows, higher than the star-view disguises,
wider than ecstatic proclamations, and closer than
the bud to the branch

Is the unmovable space where love abides,
where transient meets immanent,
where music from within captivates us
when continental shelfs shake us to our core.

The Music Never Stopped

The Music Never Stopped

(“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly.” Joel 2:15)

The loudspeakers are not selective,
their frequency soars across the plaza,
echoes off the stone hills,
pushes the river further downstream,
ricochets off the banks and restaurants downtown.

The banjos announce the time to assemble,
the mandolins sing the same again,
the brass hold back until the crows settle on
the asphalt paths and parking lots.
Congas call the drum circles’ song,
while whirling banners and shawls dance down
the back streets; the streams overflow as feet
skip and hurry to the call.

Even steeples seem higher, enemies shyer,
and confreres delight in the deepening day.
The tables are spread like a village wedding
on the sidewalks, on the boulevard,
on front lawns, on courthouse steps;
The weeping is over and repentance has
washed every debate away for another day.

We celebrate like children again, laugh as we
sing like Dylan again. The borders have opened,
the doors are unlocked, we have opened our ears
and learned the stories of immigrants and widows,
and those from african, caribbean, muslim, cynic
and pagan descent. We bowed our heads just long enough
to hear everything we thought God had never said.

We shed tears for the sheep we kept out of the pen,
for the words we called those who sang the blues over
and over
again.
We repaid the stolen generations, we honored the
broken treaties, we learned the native tongues
we once called foreign and delighted in their unfamiliar
rhythms. 

We reviewed the outcropping from peak to valley
and had never seen the imported air the same.

The music never stopped; we still learned silence.
The feasting never ended; we still fasted with grace.
The churches did not close; we still chose the way
the light played over everything.
The lion, the lamb, the prayerful and uncertain,
the oldschool, the post-modern, sat on the lawn
all day long
and woke at dawn to start the festival
over again.

A Single Honest Sentence

A Single Honest Sentence

(“And he said to me: ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, saying: Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” Zechariah 4:6)

The rooms were dusty July, places where camp-meetings echoed past the hills.
The children came, like summers do, sent for a week to seek
for God and friends and girls and boys. Children,
with minds so plastic even the heat could change their opinions.

Preteens with whirling energy that turned the forest into a cross-country race,
and the basketball court into dodge ball. Debates flared on the putt-putt course
over water hazards left there by the rain. The oldest got to hit their balls again.

Mornings were slow. Lunch was just the fuel stop for an afternoon of
crab races, water balloon bazookas with multi-colored projectiles threatening
from every direction. The lucky ones were drenched early and sent back to their
cabins to change. The grass grew best where weeks of water bombs watered the field.

Preteen boys who insisted they did not sweat were handed deodorant sticks for free.
Puberty stinks and adults cannot forget old sweat and new bacteria.

But nighttime was the purpose, the focus, the target. After supper, near 6:30,
300 children crowded into the wooden tabernacle without air conditioning,
without insulation. An ancient shell with rafters swooping to the sky the color
of dried fences on the farm.

Rock music was piped in, the children shuffled from one row to the next.
Counselors sought vainly for the one camper missing from their group.
Each night was planned for maximum effect, to bring decisions.

Decision.

And some decided; to be nicer at home, to not talk back, to do their homework
more often: all summed up in giving their life to Christ. And sincere as children
are, they bought the line (which is just fine) and many trace the joy, the grace,
to one of these times.

The final night was full of expectation. It was Holy Ghost night. If you are
pentecostal, you say it all as one word: “holyghost”.

It is true the Spirit of the Living God will dwell in us, will speak to us, will entreat us
too. But the Spirit rarely bowls us over or transforms a boy who has 15 people
shouting in his ear.

I was there and loved the sweet aroma of children discovering God’s Spirit
like butterflies finding nectar. But the perfume was mixed with the latest
spirit-will-make-you-do-it fads.

And 30 years later I have to explain to some who felt defrauded, deceived and
prodded, that I’m sorry. I was a product of the times. Today I know the Spirit
so differently. And so today I quietly listen to a child speak, and know

There is more power in a single honest sentence from a twelve-year-old
than all the shouting in temples and tabernacles around the world.

For Example

For Example

(There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. Revelation 22:5)

“Take music for an example”, he said and
played upon a flute with notes so close together in the scale
they rolled over each other; the waves breaking upon
the next wave spreading across the beach’s sand. “And,
this scale is celebrated by ears with the same structure as yours.”
(I admitted, I barely make out a melody. The notes had so little
space between them, they were like balls of Play-Doh distinctly
red, yellow and blue; but they were glued to each other. I thought
of covering my ears.)

“Take colors for an example”, he said again
and filled the room with an animated hologram projected
around us through a daylight prism. The colors rolled over
each other; the molecules turning like fashion models with the
shades changing in the refracted light.
(I admitted, I swore, I would not be denied that I saw the green
as green
as spring’s overgrown lawn. Yet, from the same recorded moment in time,
the same vantage point as mine, half or more than all the others,
I tell the truth, reported seeing blue. I thought of
closing my eyes.)

“Take my pain”, I begged, “no longer an example of perseverance or
courage. I have looked beyond the sky-lit orb that brightens toward morning,
that warms toward summer, that sings of a greater Sun with
music unheard by human ears. I have waited for the divine frequency
where the truest hues pay homage to the Palette brighter
than open skies filling the plains of flowers from one horizon to the other."

Take my pain, for example, and, I have said every word and only repeat them

again. Let me sleep, let me hide away, let me rest a week, a month equal
to the time the vise has squeezed away. I await the music, the hues,
the new Sun, to defuse this continuous explosion in my brain.

The Used-Up Troubadour

The Used-Up Troubadour

(“They sing to the music of tambourines and harps, and the sound of the flute makes them happy. Evil people enjoy successful lives and then go peacefully to the grave.” Job 21:12, 13)

Music never disturbs me, never blurs my travel from
opening sentence to thesis to end. I never turn it off
(except when I’m writing) the soundtrack of my life;
Donovan and the Mamas and the Papas; Iron Butterfly and
the Carpenters; Dave Brubeck, Count Basie. Led Zeppelin and
Keaggy; all played the ages of my unstaged history.

But, tenting alone with cold autumn sod as my bed,
barely a single hope drops from the night dew into my head
afraid to nod off and dream. Most times, in my fright,
they woke me screaming at a time when forsaken was not
the word; a man must have friend to find himself forsaken by them.

Other times, in my singular hope, sunlight in a sliver brightens
the slowed connections between the ever-tiring synapses. Nearly
waking
my heart believes the reverie to be my reality, and
waking
my eyes are shattered like the last note sharpened far out of tune.

Those times the merry songs are taunt and mock; their
perfection bears little introspection, and their joy only as deep
as the next round of beers. Those times the rhythm, like gypsies
round wagons in the night, despite the tambourine scheme of things,
I’ll crawl behind the third or fourth layer of trees in the grove.
The crackling of fish on the camp stove is a better tempo for
my addled brain.

Too many have watched me jump the hurdles mid-chorus;
song and fun and joy and spun, I’ll still dance (less often)
without a reason. But, the days when I was left bleeding on the sidewalk, I mean bleeding,
not bruised; I mean leaking, not misused; but that time people danced and sang while I
hoped I would still breathe tomorrow and my children would know their daddy was
going to be ok
because

For a time, he never sang the songs he once danced anew.

Mercy of Music

Mercy of Music

(“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3)

The flat picking swirled carelessly once it started around the room,
just like Dylan, maybe Tom Petty, with careful lyrics, and EmmyLou harmonies,
my eyes were set free; the simple tears that release the deepest angst
just below the second layer of skin. Or maybe it is like Levon Helm’s
final whispered song, sounding like the old guitar and the gutted throat,
the kind you can cry, or dance, or touch fingertips to. The kind, if you
are alone,
you let play in a loop and lullaby your way
to sleep.

I’ve been so far from the music I made, kept it square within
the boxes I found in the attic played “Gnostic Serenade” and
partly understood. Early days I danced with laughter, dropping beats
and missing sevenths all over the floor. I was young. I was an apprentice.
And you don’t start over when the people are up and dancing/

I was foolish, Jesus, to think you preferred only monastery and
diligently metered music. Older ones who played their mandolins
like guns,
never missed a line or lyric. I did nearly break a whole in the floor,
keeping time at the piano with my left boot banging below.

If I haven’t learned this by now, that music is Your sweetest gift,
so full of mercy, so fragrant like lilacs in spring. Someday I shall
breath the Asian spice deeply and understand the scales, sometimes
more than 12 tone and between the beats (maybe in 9) the scuttle of
feet on gravel is the bridge that brings all of it home.

I don’t know.

But I’ll never waste another hour or minute, tossing away a world’s good song,
because time, because boredom, because fables built fences to keep our
senses pure and unaffected
by the mercy of music misunderstood.

Honest Song

Honest Song

(“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13)

Now the day played upon their porches like
southern homes and sprawling lawns. Each morning
was the same,
the songs all remained in collective memory; planets
circling the comet tail of unwritten history. Lyrics barely
changed, (a word, a name, he and she), and we always recognized
the melody. Thousands of players and heard it around
the same porches on days as long as these. Some tapped time
to the trains clacking by; others to the crickets hidden from sight.

The children were shy once someone caught their eye, yet,
unobserved, they cartwheeled and caterwauled, ringing the
aging apple tree and whirled like Jupiter’s moons; holding hands,
a human carousel, the laughter lifting above the music until
everyone fell with the dizzying ease of equal parts child and
invisibility.

The old phrases take us home, the unwritten melodies, better
live
than recorded,
are the ones that have courted our hearts to love meadows
more than avenues,
and
maypoles more than
altitude.

With less knowledge than the perfected players,
the sheer truth of honest song presses kisses on the forehead
and grass stains on the knees.

Outdoor Venues

Outdoor Venues

(“And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in all that you undertake.” Deuteronomy 12:18b)

Well beyond the place where the vibrations fade,
having exerted all their energy from quivering guitar strings,
having placed each note prettily along the sunny concert day;
far beyond the posters and placards that announced the next
Concert in the Park
the melody had found the range of its existence and settled like
the last mist; a carpet rolled out for afternoon.

There, beyond, like old AM radios in the midnight desert,
the primary movement was children’s laughter forte,
mothers’ chatting mezzo piano with a staccato blue jay
taking the stage away with its percussion.

But, between changes on  slide, or lines for the swing,
the faraway concert, behind time, fell out of breath upon
the little park just long enough to catch the phrase,
while the title elusive flutters and fades into oblivion at the next
“Push me higher” from baby sister to
favorite auntie. Both would return home with
one of three measure of a pop tune stuck like

Sonoral super glue, only magnified by sleep. 

About Time

About Time

(“The Lord is good to all, and has compassion on all he has made.” Psalm 145:9)

It was about time the rain stopped, about time the sun held sway
against yesterday’s angry skies. Nearly everyone noticed:
walking dogs, barking seals, daffodils budging above the clods;
a sweet dulcimer with soft hammered songs,
mowers buzz-cutting their shaggy lawns,
children squeal, sunlight heals, dancing blooms bestowed applause.

It was about time, we had waited to see the signs of relief,
each blistering gale that grabbed branches like swords,
ripped roof tiles and aimed them like discs toward the hills
decorated with debris. It was about time the lights came on

Where one could see burrows beneath fallen limbs,
bell-flowers awake and yawning misty investiture of Spring.

What if we are Hand-made? What if we are hard copy original,
a single-run print of a Grand idea that could never be repeated?
What if, just like sculptor’s work in wood, we are perfect and marred;
would we, unalarmed, love the art that left signature cuts rugged
and against the grain?

When the sun and breeze meet together where the seal couple
arrive each year about this time, listen to the miniature waves
hit the stones and lose some time wondering about music’s rhythm,
watercolor’s suspense, creation’s timing and the sheer nonsense of

Poetry’s thin attempts of anything concrete at all.

When I Listen to James Alley Blues

When I Listen to James Alley Blues

(“Let Bezalel, Oholiab, and every other skilled worker whom the Lord has given skill, ability, and knowledge for the work of building the sanctuary do all that the Lord has commanded.” Exodus 36:1)

Play the music within, the rhythm, the one step, two step;
run your fingers, slide them from fret to fret, hammer down,
bend the strings, the portamento of meadow birds seeking a mate.

There is no audience, there is no band,
the chairs are silent, the club stands at the bus stop in
the middle of another white choking blizzard. All the snow
has been shoveled, one corner to the next, and piled high in front
of every venue’s door.

No one can make it in tonight, no one is leaving home;
only those trapped within tonight, will sing and man the phones
that will not ring; midnight until gray dawn.

Play the music again, the ivory as yellow as granddad’s dentures,
the keys full of sidewalk cracks. The blues is invented on nights like these,
the grace notes on granite uprights are more good-natured with the oil
of a thousand fingers anointing them from smoky goodnights until
unexpected hellos.

Honestly, I would rather sneak up and play with those who stay behind
and find the songs that mother taught mother once her aunt and uncle
passed down the tempo that history insisted upon. I had heard it all speed
and trap; they played it lazy and snapped just behind beat number three.

And I sat there, relearning the songs I thought I discovered back between
Berkeley and Haight-Ashbury. Instead it was Carolina and the Virginias
where the skilled workers passed the simplest movements down through
vinyl and time.

Please Play

Please Play

(“Let us look for someone who can play the harp. When the black mood from God moves in, he’ll play his music and you’ll feel better.” 1 Samuel 16:16)

Please won’t you play another song from your memory,
a song that grew from candle rooms to coffee houses,
the lilt that learned the notes (by note) without rote repetition,
the decoration like the fragrance at the highest tip of nouveau perfume.

Please slide the bow across the strings, let them sing like homesickness,
please begin with the melodies we both know from childhood,
the words that stir within us, the comfortable stew we always knew
we would remember.

Mouth the words as you play the tune, a cadence for kings with
faraway eyes.

Please sing the passion that drove us to smile,
please renew the reels, jigs and blues,
pick a shanty of ships at sea,
improvise it handily, help my heart repeat with you
the stories from work and companions who never penned
a word or note.

I will not play this time, nor attempt to follow the designs,
the rhymes fool me, the changes escape me,
but your virtuosity schools me, your phrases reshape me,
and I would lie upon my wooden floor, back and head
unpillowed,

and stare at nothing but the memory that a single afternoon
may still my stormy imaginations. I would travel a day
and another, and return just the same,
to hear you play only for me once again.

Blonde-Wood Hi Fi

Blonde-Wood Hi Fi

(“The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, says, ‘If you come back to me you will be saved. Only by remaining calm and trusting in me can you be strong.’” …but you don’t want to do that.” Isaiah 30:15)

It is rarely the loud that drowns the good,
nor the quiet that overcomes the whispers.
Arpeggios can fence us in as quickly as power chords
cranked to eleven.
The silence of solitary can stir the uncertain

in mirrors of our own expectations.

It is the quiet lights of home we long for,
the way Papa’s music played on the blonde-wood hi-fi.
It is the front porch speaker with Peter, Paul and Mary
and The Kinston Trio. It is the comedy lp of the
Smothers Brothers and Bill Cosby. They always
sounded the same at home.

It was the 45s I borrowed from my best friend’s sister,
“Hello Goodbye” with “I am The Walrus” on the other side.

It became the Celtic flutes and bluegrass I loved,
and then Count Basie with Dave Brubeck expanding
the cuisine first birthed orbiting a spindle with the
magical needle reproducing the air’s vibration to
a circle of spinning vinyl.

It is my Father’s house where music took my hand,
falling asleep with the earplug from the handmade crystal radio
and I first heard,
“Stop in the Name of Love.” The hooks hooked me, the
mystery fascinated me and the music found nicks and crannies
within I never knew existed.

It is my Father’s love that keeps me coming home,
though the record collection is gone forever. When I stop

And let the music in, like a afternoon swim in the river,
within me, without me, the love of melody and rhythm
settle my anxious questions, and sometimes I still laugh
at which brother mother loved best.

Cannot Help

Cannot Help

We cannot help missing the whispers; morning’s hand nudging us awake.
We cannot help listening to inherited tunes within our four walls,
a splat of wood and mud manufactured for one generation or two.

Faint chirps reach us, dim beams speak but everyday incandescence
masks the call of the sun awake; the day has offered the next chance

To hear the lyrics correctly again, to begin from measure one, verse one,
without thinking at all.

I can tap my feet, clap my hands, nod my head, sway and play the way
memory fades from organic paints to steel gray. In wooden repetition
my rhythm mimics perfection yet betrays my affection for the tempo
I’ve played. I hit the notes and lost the nuance.

We are too much adults with our baskets filled with facts, coached to
promote the thin sliver of opinion. We are too much children removed
too soonfrom muddy banks rain-slick that tug us beyond the safe range of hearing.

We are concrete mud, dried and rigid from drought,
We are flood and mud, overfilled and deposited, truth or doubt.

We are players, by the rules; we are singers, pitched safely;
we are writer, word-perfect; we are speakers, rote certain.

And I? I have not played in the river in years; have not dived between
half-notes in far too long. All my fantasies are clearly labeled, the characters
a perfect one-to-one correspondence lest there be any question of my
orthodoxy.

What if, just one day, I spun a tale, knowing not where it would take me,
and became lost in the woods of another land where planets are sentient,
people non-existent and
popcorn is perfectly paired with chocolate wine?

Music and Joy

“Praise the Lord, because he is good. Praise his name, because it brings such joy!” Psalm 135:3

I think music is one of the great equalizers in the human experience. Certainly we all have our favorite styles, but the underlying appreciation for music transcends age, experience and culture. It is one of the primary ways of expressing our individual and cultural identities.

Metronome of Grace

Metronome of Grace

(“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.” Psalm 95:1)

We had wrung every dream we could from the clouds,
we had sung every voice we knew from the sea,
we had searched every star we could and rejoiced,
we had splurged every dime we had near and far

To find the music gushed out of rocks like
the fountains within our hearts.

We were quiet mostly; we listened closely.
We shouted impromptu; we stumbled onto
unwary melodies fit for melancholies and
and stories that twined the sad and joy combined

To heaven’s river that flows without time;
a sweet whirlpool, dance and dirge; outside life
and within each pod of creation.

We sang when darkness fled, and re-sang when
daylight departed; midnight kept time to
the metronome of grace notes divine;
we whispered, we shouted the theme fit
for our King.

One Side to the Other

One Side to the Other

(“But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:4)

Moving, I am told, one side of the head to the other,
the sounds of sea, a step into the river
can rip the loops apart that repeat the hurting tracks
over and over, D.C al without Fine; and find the chord
which resolves the pain.

The child still cries (he is nearly 60) at the angry hands
that red imprints that faded quicker than the picture stuck
in his brain. The soldier shakes (he is home now) at the shells
and mortar that nearly ripped his barracks and comrades; it
was just the neighbor shutting his car door.

For those who remember vinyl long-play with scratches
that sounded like wax paper crumpled beneath the hi-fi,
the needle sticks in a groove deeper than the rest
and won’t let the two bars finish, won’t let the 3 ½ words
complete, the over and the over and the over and the ove

er and

We are brains and we are minds, we are spirit and we are muscle,
we are wired hard and scratched by misuse; we are puzzles not yet
assembled, we are garage sale jigsaw puzzles bought on faith that
all the pieces are present.

I am told there is music in the spheres, truer than the rewinds
our past lives have struck into our casting; and moving, one
side of hearing to the other,
we may find the lines rewritten, circuits rewired,
memories of smitten hopes soothed by the chords and words
written before the hands that brought affliction.

Endure to the end, the story which sings its death and sting
rises to release us from the refrain we’ve repeated to the verses
of life Christ created for each ditch, scratch and vein we
thought each blow had depleted.