Everything You Wanted

Everything You Wanted

(“No servant can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Luke 16:13)

Have you gotten everything you wanted;
have you wasted your time wanting more?
Have you stashed it away from prying conquest;
have you labeled it for later use?
Sooner or later the accounts will be settled;
credit will be given to the poorest and debts
cancelled in a single
day.

How many days have you set aside:
how many shiny coins are stored in a tin can
in the dark?
Or did you spend it all on diamond swatches
of tomorrow’s greed?
Did the seeds of your discontent
burst like moss too heavy on your winter roof?

What tastes have you acquired:
what timing for this brief untimely stay?
Can we share coffee or give away new
slices of cake?
Can we agree that we want more than will
every satisfy our perceived needs?
Why don’t we leave our opulent windows
and doors
to move outside where the ground is level and
where the poor man sits all alone?
Why don’t we join the resistance,
pool our resources, and swim against the tide?
Why don’t we give away what we will
never entirely consume? Why don’t we
offer our silence against the selfish voices
of rage?

A Trilogy of Geese

A Trilogy of Geese

(“No servant can serve two masters. The servant will hate one master and love the other, or will follow one master and refuse to follow the other. You cannot serve both God and worldly riches.” Luke 16:13)

A trilogy of geese scratched the sky
spiraling above the hilly landscape.
They circled a field of mown alfalfa
and landed in the middle of the sheaves
left out to dry.

He walked the same path and looped the
ground on asphalt along the farmer’s boundaries.
His feet knew the way as he watched
the brittle sky wink away the morning dew.
His eyes had faded,
his arms listing to one side.
He saw them and wondered where the
rest of the flock might be.

I need more moments when sun and birds
meet overhead. I need minute miracles that
account for only seconds of my time. I need
my pockets stitched where I used to store
my coins.

The three geese didn’t answer his questions,
they only raised his intrigue about
the origin of things and what his
spindly thoughts were worth. His
pockets were empty, and I think he
finally liked it that way.

The Day Started Well Enough

The Day Started Well Enough

(“No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. You aren’t able to serve God and Mammon.” Luke 16:13)

The day started well enough; the sun rose
in the usual place. The grass was unruly around
the dog’s pen and
the garden beds where two rose bushes struggle.
I would have waited all day for your company,
even if you got a late start. With a porch swing in front
and a deck on the back,
my house is yours. No need to build another one.
There is music even before you arrive,
you send it ahead of you. There are memories
of the way your eyes dance at birds and clouds,
but mostly babies.
There are evenings with campfires
that should never be extinguished.
There are places where no words need be spoken.
The day starts the same for you and me,
and I know you desire for it to end more quietly.
We can pick up the sunshine with plastic shovels
and store it in pails we sometimes used for Easter baskets.
We can toss it toward night-sky imaginations and laugh
at our ingenuity. We have lassoed the sun.
Eden was a paradise I am told,
but so is my back yard. And no tree is forbidden;
the rabbits come for breakfast, the deer brunch on the
unprotected roses.

These are all yours. They do not belong to me.
I’ve kept a journal in the desk by the front window.
You can write in it every time you come, and no one will know.

The day started. They all do. We remembered; we knew.
We wondered when the boy would come finish mowing the lawn.
Then we would gather the sunlight, drop it like jewels into the
glowing embers of our campfire, and tell stories we only tell
each other. 

Switchbacks

Switchbacks

(“For though I am free from all men, I have made myself servant to all, that I might win even more.” 1 Corinthians 9:19)

I know you would like a passenger,
someone who does not yank the bit.
I know you would love a road trip,
I know you love silence; I know you love presence,
I know you would love a safe place to weep.

We can ride through the mountains, driving close to the edge,
taking the switchbacks and peering over the ledge.

A high school friend told me once that, on those hairpins,
you should start on the inside of the curve and finish on the outside.
He never mentioned what to do if
we met another traveler halfway.
But we winded our way up to Yosemite
in his 68 rebuilt VW bug. The air-cooled engine
labored with no breeze from behind. We played
the “guess who” on cassette and sang along to
American Woman. Gary drove, I sang shotgun and
Danny brought up the bass in back.

I will be your silence as long as you live,
I will be your presence as long as I live,
I will be your place to weep and to laugh so
inappropriately that no one understands
how tears and stupid jokes can live together so
unabashedly.

The Whispers are Fainter

 

The Whispers are Fainter

(“’I am the Lord's servant,’ said Mary; ‘may it happen to me as you have said.’ And the angel left her.” Luke 1:38)

The whispers are fainter now than they ever have been,
the attraction to divining the exact instructions for my
next move
has waned so only the mud remains to be seen,
mucking up everything I once believed.

I wanted to be the Lord’s servant too, and blew every
opportunity until
I was set adrift so far beyond the crowds
that the only voices I ever heard
were the voices I always fought with
in my head.

It is likely my ears will go numb from
disuse
and all I’ll hear are the digital hums
that dig their way past the defenses (happy
images
of palm trees and beaches as sleep washes over
me.)

Transparency is all I ever wanted you to see,
but now I am embarrassed to say I do not
perceive my own inner workings. I once had
a toy,
the visible man,
a clear plastic body assembled with everything
from skeleton to skin. Blue veins, red arteries,
white bones and all the organs including a perfectly
dormant brain. His liver and lungs sometimes smelled
of airplane glue. It’s likely he died on my dresser somewhere
between the Monkees and Iron Butterfly.

And now I am stagnant and feel as lifeless as my boyhood model;
my soul has shrunk or is shrouded by decades of ash while
onlookers applaud my survival after the crash.

And still I ask, “how has it all happened, and what was it
you said that set me on this motionless moment?”

And perhaps another time I would have signed it;
your loyal servant. And scratched my signature in
plain view.