I Tried to Lasso the Wind

I Tried to Lasso the Wind

(“The wind blows wherever it wants to. You hear it, but you don’t know where it is coming from or where it is going. It is the same with everyone who is born from the Spirit.” John 3:8)

Yesterday I tried to lasso the wind,
it refused my invitation, ephemerally slipping loose
and, so softly I hardly knew it,
kissed my cheek with a whisper.
Yesterday I tried to catch my breath,
it was far behind me, hiding beneath the yellow brush blossoms
and evaporating into a field where rabbits play.
Yesterday I tried to dictate the Spirit,
she refused to obey me, cooly uncoiling her
love power so quietly my voice lost its authority.
She beckoned me to a place in the middle of the river
where the mainstreams flow. I decided to go,
having decoded her intention to vivify everything mortal
with eternal notions of change.  

You cannot control what you do not understand.
You cannot understand what you refuse to hear.
You cannot hear with your ears filled with orations.
You can only follow the glimmers that are so small
they reflect the hummingbirds’ wings, and fill the neighborhood
with songs so good that old men come to listen.
We learned to stop trying to capture the tunes that
came in the afternoons and only celebrate the reprieve
they brought from working with sweat on our furrowed brows.

The River Kept Flowing

The River Kept Flowing

(“John answered, ‘Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.’” Luke 3:11)

Fascinated by the reflections of still life
in the pools around the banks of the river,
people gathered to watch who might wash themselves.
Undeterred, some were ready to wade into the deep
to their waists,
wanting the germs cleansed from their ravenous thoughts.

Are you asked to give before your feet hit the water,
are you asked to share what your last morsel of bread?
Did you consider how short the span between birth and death,
did you contemplate the thinnest slice of your life?

What prerequisite did you ask to precede your
turning point? Why would water alone be enough
to baptize your fears and intentions? Did your tears
mean anything as you heard the answer to your questions?

After you heard the answer did your courage fade?
After you left your jacket on the bank did you wish
you had an extra?
After the water flowed over your head did you find
new ways to share your daily bread?

The river kept flowing, didn’t it? Your tunic ballooned
like a parachute. The same sun shone as bright as it always
had been. The same eyes stole into your soul. You
and
everyone else
hoped the changes would last.

The View of the River

The View of the River From Here

(“For I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy upon them.” Jeremiah 33:26b)

I’ve heard the excuses that sentence a man to
eternal consequences for a single mortal life.
I’ve seen your silly dramas you
tag
as Heaven’s Gates
and
Hell’s Flames.
I am weary.

Believe me,
I have sinned with the best.
I have hidden it even better.
I have wished my follow was better than my
swallowing every temptation that insisted that
sundown was the best time for finding the one thing
that would slow down my mind.

I packed my suitcase for heaven
but
could never tell whether the vacancy sign
was designed to invite me to a dinner by the pool.
I will not be consigned to hell
no matter
how loud your fist-pounding pronouncements.
I have seen the other side of the sunset
and the day follows plain as the love that
explains it all in oil paintings on the wall.

Fashion another runway, leave your granite slates
outside the gates and
greet the canvas that was painted on a day when
everything had melted, a day when
we were all shocked about
the grace of it all.

The same day you scared the children half-mad
with your fiery hell,
the people on the periphery were starving for
breakfast. But the children gathered at the
front of the stage
nonetheless,
frightened about the heaven they might miss.

As soon as the morning peeks through the window
I will show you
the view of the river from the top of the hill.

Darkly Sparkling

Darkly Sparkling

(“Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” 1 Corinthians 3:16)

The world is darkly sparkling,
mystery and delight.
Your soul is dancing starkly,
filled with holy light.
The day breaks like crinoline,
sometimes like silk.
The day rests upon the hillside,
sometimes milky and unseen.
The world is faintly breathing,
a baby at rest.
Your soul is pleasing saintly,
royally dressed.
The day grows like reunion,
sometimes like solace.
The day rests upon the ancients,
sometimes afire and unchanged.

The Spirit finds
every breath another reason
to unveil the connection of all things.
Every morning aglow,
every evening bestowing rest
like magic strands woven from
soul to soul,
friend to friend,
this world and the next,
the context full of original blessing.

The world is riverly streaming.

I Like the Way the River Flows

 

I Like the Way the River Flows

(“He opened a rock, and water gushed out; it flowed like a stream in the desert.” Psalm 105:41)

It wasn’t really a ghost town,
it was simply that no one lived there I wanted to know.
Gravity never forgets. You may not see your halo,
but I do. You were sun and moon, but all you knew
was black sky, battleship clouds, sad eyes, and
never ending rounds of chores.

But me, I’m just here for the conversation.
I know you cannot hear the river lapping the shore,
do not feel the wind of seagull wings,
do not see the river flowing endlessly,
do not feel there is any river at all.

Still, I am just here for the conversation because,
I like the way the river flows
when you speak.

You were not certain of the river at all, but I was.
I have seen it flow through you.

It wasn’t really the badlands,
it was simply the angry way the hills burned red.
Sanity never forgets. You may not see your daylight,
but I do. You are the butterfly with yellow wings,
and all you knew was the black and brown
caterpillar, the autumns leaves red as blood and
the winter freeze ahead that broke the late buds of roses.

But me, I’m just here for the humanity.
I know you’ve heard the night’s gentle song,
felt the kiss of bonfires,
seen the children who laugh at the same things that
amuse you too,
and felt mortality like a night on the town we wish
would never end.

Still, I am just here for the humanity because,
I like the way the spirit flows
when you speak.

I Wish I Had a River Road

 

I Wish I Had a River Road

I wish I had a river road to walk upon,
a lazy trail behind the trees to lead me
to your home.
Our faces once glowed in moonlight like
decorated pines. No snow,
just eyes that saw everything.

I wish the days did not separate the years
from each other. Though our tracks convened
in mud and asphalt decades ago,
the world still speaks in syllables of love,
the poetry of patience that embraces everything.

I weep how the roads have degraded over miles,
over time,
and the navigation is more challenging from
your house to mine. I can see it,
I can hear the music wafting from the windows
like a country apple pie. I can hear your heartbeat,
see the frost in the air as you exhale the same
atmosphere as me. Yet we get tagged, we get named,
we get classified and remain no different than
when we both agreed.

But what if birds were no longer birds,
were verbs like stretch or pinch or slobber
or cringe? What if language meant nothing and
facts are farce; no longer simple opinions
and their interpretations? It you call it pie
while others insist it is an automobile, how do
we communicate at all?

That is why I hesitate at your door. If you ask me
to sit on the couch, I do not know if I should fly
or buy a ticket to the stockyards downtown.
And further, if you tell me you have dreamed,
I may presume it is real; the ghosts, the pale riders,
the dark forces you believe have embattled me.

That is why I say so little. The more I speak the
more brittle my words fall upon the kitchen floor
where the pet dog licks up the remains.

And yet one thing never changes: the syllabus of mercy,
the portrait of long skies that undisguises everything.

How Shall We

How Shall We

(“In everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge.” 1 Corinthians 1:5)

Hear it again, the rhythms in the river;
listen like rain, the ribbon wind through the branches;
the harmonies still hover above the rainbow shimmers that
frame Bridal Veil Falls.

See it from finish to front, the folk tales of the forest;
Survey like plains, the mature wheat like ocean’s wave;
the palette that changes in spectral degrees between
the Rockies and the River Grand.

There is more wonder to fill every mind on every continent,
more dancing questions than professors, pastor or priests can answer.
Remember that rain is made to float popsicle stick boats,
and sun is meant to dry our castles made of sand.

Even the clearest days do not always erase the marks I hide
beneath my shirt
inflicted by those who thought they had the answers.
And the sweetest rains sometimes cannot sweep the grease and grime;
the stains that time has not fully erased. Who, in the name of
the Sweetest Man of All, invokes that name to keep steal
even a single breath from another man’s body.

We, both and all, tread this astounding ball, and will and must,
return to dust; our remains perhaps mingled on the quiet plains.

Enriched and indwelt by the Son of ALL, where are the humble
words, (how could I do what I did); the sorrow (how could I
cause one more tear); the moment before sundown (how shall
we
then
live?
)

Days of Dawn

Days of Dawn

The lonely poet who sought with words to
sift truth through images waits for the ice like dust
to dissolve as the days plays on.

Some days, like Hugo described, are dawn from
beginning to end. Others, though, long past noon,
begin with the setting sun and end just the same.

He used to write profusely with pen, never scratching out a word,
never editing his thoughts for fear of discovery. He wrote to
be discovered;
he wrote to mine hopeful treasures and hold them to the light.

He wrote with broken emotion, he wrote of the night light
reflecting the silky hair of his brunette first love. He wrote
of death, “an ode to Jimi and Janis”, before he had lost even
a relative or close friend. He thought he knew, or could uncover,
what the rivers meant that ran just below the surface of reflection.

He composed unrhymed verse and rhythmic prose, twenty or so
stapled and offered to aunts and uncles Christmas and birthdays. His
critics never breathed.

And then he was silent for two decades or more, busy, it seemed,
with speaking the lines others suggested would pay better than poetry.
He liked Berkeley, college and town, but spent his life on prairies and
rivers learning rural winds. Buildings and pavement were the wind-rows
of his youth and air like asphalt.

He took the pen again midlife, excuse the metaphor; for he clicked the
letters processed into words, leaving the pen behind. Lines were neater,
and words more legible this time.

He writes alone, and wishes his topics were more bouquets and wine;
but this is his cheap therapy, the unedited motions of hurts over time.
He writes alone, and yet is loved more than he knows…and he knows
he is loved; but that river still flows under the sound of words he
was taught were proper. He still wants to discover

Who the writer is within, and why the river is so quiet this time of life.

River Response

River Response

(“Help us, O God of our salvation! Help us for the glory of your name. Save us and forgive our sins for the honor of your name.” Psalm 79:9)

Traction holds me tighter to this road than I
think
I ever intended.
The slips to sideways always sweat me
back to the middle, the safe lane furthest away
from the, oh, soft shoulder. I like the asphalt better
than ridges or gravel that make me spin,
grabbing me again at just the point I had
regained control.

The valleys call me, the river that percolates
green into froth and white below my sight,
beneath my hearing. I yearn for its banks of quiet
where choices won’t drag me ditching in overturned steel.

The river answers, the valley that circulates
lush into brown loam harmonizing the response
I wished for every tear-filled walk after failing to
control the steering, and losing my voce once again.

So now I do not waver, nor wander, nor explore;
all in the name of safety, all to reclaim my hasty name
I bragged about on Thursday and choked upon by Sunday.

You would think the river with her roar,
the valley with her pre-green pasture,
would remind me, even after more
chapters erased than written,
that the air is still perfume,
the floor soft as the footprints of a fawn,
and the ceiling still singing the song,
the variations on a theme composed eternities ago;

You would think that creation’s Glory
would call me still, though I slip upon the
rocks more often, when I tire of (no, I hate)
another 100 miles at the wheel.

The river and the road, sigh, may my soul remember the rumor
that there is One who receives honor from simple excursions
and impromptu picnics after all the forgiving
is done.

Unfinished Conversations

Unfinished Conversations

Perhaps we can walk to the river and
finish our conversation there.
I would speak with you, sitting next to you,
on a craggy overlook with the sun behind us,
the river ambling past us,
and the fog nearly lifted above our heads.

Perhaps we can put a period to end
this unfinished paragraph without
rewriting the letter over again.

Walk with me to the river,
we will find the shade that makes the afternoon
nearly as contented as morning.

I will hope, (I have no indication for my hope’s veracity), but
I still hope the water past us, different as it is from the river
we knew a year before,
might also carry our words full distance to the
ocean where all things mingle without competition.

Perhaps we can sit by the riverbank
like we did only once before
and finish the sentence we started,
the ellipsis that translated everything without saying,
so your implications only left me wondering what lingered
between the dots.

Walk with me to the river,
there is more below the surface tension,
the quiet ripples that reflect the winks of the sun,
there is life beneath the mirror stream
beyond sight of our myopic vision.

I will slow my listen, and hope (still, evidence unseen)
the same life lies beneath the questions you left
the last time I thought I took the bait.
This time I’ll ask the questions out loud that
only bubbled below my fear, and trust, not you,
nor me

But the river to take the best sentences we have
out to sea and beyond reclamation.

Will Soon Be Complete

"Will Soon Be Complete"
Tranquil sits the afternoon while the showers
drop less like rain, reminders of the autumn and
soon coming December.

I cannot decide whether my heart is the same,
alone and quiet, presently, with wishes to speak to no one,
or laugh at my billiard inabilities with a few who
know it doesn’t matter.

Lightly looks the river’s surface while seabirds
call, watch and scavenge without noticing anyone’s
regard while gathering their meal.

I cannot decide whether I want the attention,
fine accolades for another performance,
music or oration, staged or spontaneous.
Whether I want the attention,
suppressed laughter when I miss a note or
stub my toe.
I could not gather the courage to ask
a stranger to take a photo of us on our
honeymoon.

I want to go to Hawaii, I want to find my home town,
I want to play on the stage day after day,
I want to be silent and read without residue.
I want to know all about you, I want to hide my journals,
I want to see why you function, I want to cover my blemishes.

Coolly the afternoon crawls toward evening
while the traffic flows, compact to semi trailer,
behind my house like the a 24-hour Walmart where
workers never sleep. The day, without my permission,
will soon be complete.