An Extra Pair of Angel’s Wings

An Extra Pair of Angel’s Wings

(“Nevertheless, you are doing the right thing if you obey the royal Law in keeping with the Scripture, ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’” James 2:8)

I have paid my dues for being unwise,
(that’s putting it mildly)
I have missed my deadlines, wildly looking back
at what might have been.
And I wonder where I left my heart this time.

I want to walk the mountain trail,
feel the rocky floor. I want to breathe the
snowy air. I want to drink from chattering streams,
but I cannot do it alone.

I walk, day this, day that,
alone. And yet if someone offers to walk with me,
I usually shut down, just say no.

I need a nameless soul, unformed clay,
without definitions or conditions. If
I know too much about you, I may fear to be myself.

Yet, you know more about me than most others.
Has this led us to a cliff of no return? Did someone block
the access down the mountain? Is the trail marked, “one
way
only”?

I am weary. Overworked? Perhaps overlooked.
The valley calls me, plush and green where the robins sing,
and hawks glide along the upper frame. I want
one
who has heard my song to
sing it back to me just one more time.

And here I am, writing about me. My impulses to
stretch beyond myself are muted; my heart is
either shrunken
or hardened. Is it possible that passions
that once filled my heart
have leaked out and dried in the summer drought?

For one more day the tears fill my eyes and have
nowhere to fall except upon my naked feet. And
one more day I’ll walk and listen and breathe and
search to see if anyone has left an extra pair of
angel’s wings along the path.

He Has Climbed

 

He Has Climbed

(“This royal law is found in the Scriptures: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’] If you obey this law, you are doing right.” James 2:8)

Where is the understanding, where is heaven that the kingdom rules?
Have you heard God’s questions,
have you forgotten to answer?

  

Forget not the speakers of truth,
the good words and the passion words,

the thunder words, the wonder words
that strike like lighting from the throne.

Listen. He has climbed the mountain of the Lord.
Listen. He has knelt beside the hungering.
Visit him. He now sits with movement calcified.
Visit him. He now wonders about the crucified,
the effort, the broken bones and heart he shares
with the beloved.

Don’t phone in your respects, touch his trembling hands
and sit. The silence is eloquent, your presence is rhyme and verse
that shatters the curse of age and loneliness.

Break your bread with him, spend your time with him,
pour the wine for him, and hear the stories he told just
yesterday
like you hear them for the first time today.

The knees give way, the heart grows weak,
the mind faints like a violin in the sun.
The memories spin like hummingbirds, the handwriting
recedes into notes about appointments and doctors,
food banks and offers to join the village where only
elders are allowed to play. But

the spirit never gives sway to the years. It is evergreen,
it bends in the wind and draws living water like xylem
to the trees. 

Time is never wasted when poured like ointment on the feet
of the ones who only knew to speak of good tidings
and pronouncements of peace to the weary.

Wash the feet of them who cried over your own.