The Old Paths

 The Old Paths

(“Yet my people have forgotten me and offered sacrifices to worthless idols. This makes them stumble along in the way they live and leave the old reliable path of their fathers. They have left them to walk in bypaths, in roads that are not smooth and level.” Jeremiah 18:15)

What made us choose a road so unknown?
What made us turn away from the beloved highway?
Did we think we would find
something to soothe our minds
and unfold our wandering hearts?

Our parents were our navigators, for
better or worse,
but we chose our own way with views of the
valley and the desert beyond.

We gave up our perch on the mountain,
we abandoned the well-worn paths.
We found the old ways tired with tradition;
we needed a change, to our ambition.

But we hear a word coming from all the
points of the compass,
we see full spectrum what we thought we
had seen before.
It dawned on us as another sun set,
that the light and dark, the moon and sun,
the stars and galaxies, the sand and the dirt
were here long before we thought we were experts
of navigation.

We had shredded our maps and set out on our own,
only to be lost once the first tree of forest was
behind us.

But we heard a word saying, “Here is the way,
walk in it.” We were alerted this time, rested from
our funk and frivolity. We chose the way we
barley saw and followed the voice that
transcended it all.

How Well Do You Hear?

 How Well Do You Hear?

(“For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise his own who are in bonds.” Psalm 69:33)

Stand on the hills that rise steeply
above the river.
Listen to the silence of its wide and winding traverse.
There is a universe you cannot see when you
stand so high above everybody.
Descend, take your time, end at sea level where

The bridge

Shelters a dozen and a half humans shivering
under its girders and steel.

Now choose what you view.

Do you breathe the mildewed air,
do you leave your boots strung from a tree limb
and hope they will dry by morning?
Do you hide when the flashlights intrude on
your children without warning?
Do you eat slowly to make it last,
or quickly before it is gone?

Sometimes the sirens sound for one who wandered
too close to the edge. Sometimes we want to exchange them
like batteries on their last legs. Sometimes they live forgotten
just beyond the reach of our consciousness.

And yet

They huddle closer on the slippery rocks under

The bridge.

While we tear down their tents and cities and hope they will
vagabond elsewhere.

How well do you hear, o follower of the One
who had no place to lay his head? How well
do you sleep while they smoke nervous cigarettes
because the night, the rain, the hunger, the pain
keep them up dreamless. One of them

Found a discarded couch, yellow and old,
and claimed it for a day.

How Old is the Sky?

 How Old is the Sky?

(“He is always striving in his prayers on your behalf, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in everything that God wills.” Philippians 4:12b)

How old is the sky in your world?
Have you measured the path from the slight frost
on early spring grass?
How old is the sky in your world?
Did it start its infancy before you were born,
or come into being the first time its light hit
your eyes?
Our lives are slender. We are taken in by
every sleight-of-hand
that tells us
the universe has always been young or round,
with pyramid tops like geodesic domes. How
old is the sky?

In case you didn’t know
there are more creatures unseen alive
than watched by you or me. There are more colors
that tie us together like birthday gifts. There are
more books to read than there is time. There
are
fewer aromas more suited for contemplation
than mildewed pages and brewing coffee.

We are merely pennies in a universal economy,
we are the bent pitches of native flutes,
we are rain where we hope for sun,
we are bored before we’ve ever begun
to examine a single leaf and the tree of
diversity
from which it springs.

Everything is a straight line,
everything is concentric,
everything has acute angles,
everything has circumference.

The waves crash like cymbals,
the waves wriggle like earthworms,
the waves bend like rainbows,
the waves flash like popcorn.

And all that matters is,
how you, my neighbor,
are doing on this variegated day.

My Trees are Old

 

My Trees are Old

(“And the seeds in the good ground are the ones who hear the word with an honest and good heart, hold on to it tightly, and produce fruit as they patiently endure.” Luke 8:15)

My trees are old, gnarled and unruly.
They toss their fruit like tennis balls on
the grass courts of Wimbledon. Cherries,
peaches, and plums. Their blossoms prepared
a pink and white carpet on the mini-forest floor.
Their life began a generation before
I stepped onto these three-quarters of an acre.
Now I own towering douglas firs
and more rhododendrons than is proper.
The roses hug the west wall and drink the sun
between raindrops. Red for passion, yellow for friendship;
they whisper that growth is slow and never inevitable.
They ache for my care lest their canes tangle. I put off
their winter pruning this year, so their arms and elbows
are thin as a grasshopper’s legs.
The wilderness begins at the end of my
back yard, a logging trail at the bottom of the hill. I have
not yet
grown weary of green.

Old Paint and Pale

Old Paint and Pale

Have you ever felt stained? I don’t mean with sin,
but with paint. Old paint. Paint stored in the garage.
Paint in rusty gallon buckets with drips down the side like
old-fashioned earring loops. Paint with scum on top
and dumplings on the bottom.

Have you ever felt stained by old paint?

Have you ever felt electrified? I don’t mean by joy,
but fences. Wire fences. Fences that hum high voltage.
Fences in muddy quicksand with muck giving birth
to mosquitos and disasters. Fences that whine with direct current
and pulses to prevent your escape.

Have you ever been electrified by fences?

Have you ever felt stranded? I don’t mean on purpose,
but houses. Old houses. Houses left to pasture.
Houses with rusty hinges and broken windows, the shards their
only decor. Houses everyone declares are haunted
with rats the only renters.

Have you ever felt stranded on old dirt floors?

Have you ever felt old? I don’t mean by measure,
but thrift store. Used jeans on a rack. Flannel shirts
that still smell of field and smoke. 8 track tapes and
players. They all bear the stains of usage, the strain
of shrinkage. 

Have you ever felt old like someone else’s clothes?

Have you ever felt godless? I don’t mean immoral,
but pallid. Opinions, like fog, faded. Belief, like fairies,
barely seen past legal age. Prayers, like babbling,
meaningful as a wordless book. The chasm is just as yawning,
In or around, air or solid ground.

Have you ever felt godless like gasps of supplication?

Upon Their Brightest Days

Upon Their Brightest Days

(“All Jerusalem should praise you, our Lord, when people from every nation meet to worship you.” Psalm 102:21)

I should be strong, less old, less likely to ache my way downstairs;
but it seems, I know not why, You, O Lord have made me old much
before my time.

My father slouched like an octogenarian before he reached 60,
and shuffled so much that sparks of static electricity constantly
tingled from his fingernails.

You, Lord, live forever, never a doubt in my mind. You are ageless,
from predawn to afterglow, over and under the bridges and tunnels
we use to connect yesterdays to today. You invented time before
time existed at all. You will never die, never having been born,
and will wrap time in a ribbon, intersecting every moment in
a beautiful bow at the end of days.

Please don’t cut my life in half, do not make me walk with a cane
or hold my head in agony over pain that will not escape. I do not
know
how to talk to you, though I
know
you will allow my cries, my fist in the air, the resounding of it
from skyhigh to pounding on my table. I do not know how to
make demands
on the Judge of All, the Writer of every Ordinance from sky
to canyon, desert to delta. Alpha to Omega, You include all
that there is, and my pain, my limp, my lately ailments must
be a portion of all You include.

You, Lord laid the foundation of the earth,
painted the vaulted ceiling of the sky.
In the beginning You started it all; Love laying brick like
a king building a castle for his princess.

But I still remain the same, with these ailments that nail me to my bed
until midafternoon,
the pangs that shoot through my head like a sniper laying the crosshairs
across my temples.
I only feel the hot lead and never hear the bang.

You, Lord, investigate this tragedy,
report back to me, if it is likely to
yield an answer that gives me back the half
that has been stolen from me.

Yet I know You can never change,
Yes I know you are always the same,
Each friend, each relative, every voice that cries
for You
whether pain or praise
finds You closer (at the end of the length You have measure)

Than they thought upon their brightest days.