We Were Saplings

 

We Were Saplings

(“Some Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, came to {Jesus}.” Mark 12:18)

Have you seen the burn pile behind my house,
sheared limbs and deadened trunks tangled like
frozen snakes in the sun? We plan to burn each one
before the summer is over, but the rains have come with
mid-March clouds to the Pacific Northwest.

It is slow work and painful, bending to find the smallest kindling
to fan the steam and smoke into flame. The mini forest in
our front yard
is better for the deep cuts the chain saw left,
but my past pruning has left marks I am quick to hide.
I would rather they were burned and the coals dumped
over the side of the hill.

You cannot see me a year ago, a day ago, a second ago.
I no longer exist there.
But those ghosts that appear in the voices that remember,
and in my mind full of distemper have painted the past
in clearer ink than the buds that are the beginning of spring.

Music plays every day while I write. Most are the soundtrack
of high school love: Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, Carole King and
James Taylor. And Don Irwin always sang “Build Me Up, Buttercup”
when we walked home from middle school. We were saplings
and moved easily through the southern California seasons.

But now my trunk is harsher, the gray limbs stiffer, while the remnants
of trees older than me are seasoned next to the shed. Today the sun
shines
while my mind rehearses talks that lasted forever when
we thought we had forever to live. And I have not talked to
many of them for two-thirds of my life now. So where do I
live? I am not afraid to die; I am sure that I exist here and
will and do exist just beyond the crystal veil. What occupies
my mind
today
is the way friends, lovers, sisters, brothers, all seemed effortless.

I am not deceived by the rosiness of time. But today as I view
the years so far ago
I miss the simplicity of firelight, dancing on living room rugs,
unabashed hugs, and playing the same LP over and over again
because Tapestry was just
that
good.

Pay to Enter

Pay to Enter

(“And he ordered those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take them out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!’” John 2:16)

Pay to enter; the school, the church.
Pay to play; the immigrant, the poor.
How much money can you make,
What are your assets to insure your entrance?

Who retouched the photos of God with their own portraits?
Who erected the fence around the altar?
Who sold access to the highest bidder?
Who bartered the sun and the rain?

When did you ever receive a bill for your breath,
a charge for the breeze? When deposit did you pay
to see the dawn, what fee to enjoy the grass between your toes?

And now you auction the Painter’s works that you enjoy for free?
You save your glitter for the best of these and
ration your mud to the least.
You do as you please while the Artist opens the studio windows wide,
the cross-breeze brushing each cheek extravagantly.

Play upon the good earth; the rose, the dandelion.
Enter without pay; the festival, the fire.
How much money would it take
to buy the love that covers the world with
its own resemblance.

Paint on my eyeballs Your perfect image;
deeper than the canvas, higher than the circle of this earth,
broader than borders. Script upon my ears
the song that banishes walls, that is purer
and more fearsome than repeated phrases
shouted at rallies to keep the rabble away.

I will not raffle the Handiwork of the Beloved.

His Own Family

His Own Family

(“But if someone does not provide for his own, especially his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” 1 Timothy 5:6)

My own are now gone, victims of genetics and illness.
My own are the ones who called me “their own”,
the ones who tied the first laces of our shoes;
my brother and my sisters, younger than I;
the ones who taught us to water trees at the roots
not at the trunk,
and who lived through us a degree too much and
too often; but less than most.

I read an article that angered me, that makes me wince
at being a Christian,
a writer who insisted this verse, so brimming with family
love,
and family provision,
made every parent suspect whose
children gleefully waited for the public school bus
every day.

Oh the comments that overflowed, the agreement from
Bible readers who do not read their Bibles.

They:

            Push your kids through. Hold them back a year. Give them 

            more opportunities than the next child. Make sure they memorize

            the words, excel at sports, take first chair flute, never a bit part

            in the musicals. “ Spend your time, climb faster so their

            lives are not the disaster that the children up the road have become.

Paul, to Timothy, paraphrased:

            Don’t let widows spend a day without your care. Honor the parents

            before you; save the sweetest moments for the parents before them.

            While some widows, silly and superstitious; the real widow is

            a source, a comforter and affectionate blanket of hope. Don’t

            let darkness darken her windows any day at all without

            the laughter of children at her learning and stories filling

            her moments and increasing God’s glory. Never let her

            slumber be preceded by alone. Care for your own!

My own are gone now; Mom decades before Dad, and, if they had
lived longer, they might be in our home; alongside our youngest one
learning Christ-like affection, and family, before hopping on the
school bus for the day.