When My Day Will Come

(“The Lord is not slow concerning His promise, as some count slowness. But He is patient with us, because He does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9)

 

anger and wrath of a warrior god will swipe away the remainder of the
uninitiated from the gravity of earth. They will be judged most righteously;
you expect them to be taken silently in the middle of the night.
You try to scare people into faith, but faith that warns of all-consuming
heat
simply will not last past the end of summer.

in the end times. Every storm is not judgement from an angry god.
Every traffic accident you survive but leaves someone else dead
is not worth your words telling everyone how God saved you.

eons to God.
We do not control time, we barley know how to respond to it.
If we clean our house faster, we have more time by the end of the day,
but what do we do next? And here I am, 71, and I can remember
a girlfriend from 50 years ago, and most of her phone number. I can
remember baptizing a friend in a duck pond and 5 am and can circle
back to that memory almost any time I want. But the future comes
more slowly and with less options as I age. Fondness and regret are
the twins of the past. The future moves me to weariness and anxiety.
But God, our patient God, dwells in every microsecond, all at the same time.
Even the dreams I have take me to a short workable future or to a past
where shit was given in place of truth.

and another one, looking out the window and wondering when my day will come.

Love So Slow

Love So Slow

(“Christ himself was like God in everything. He was equal with God. But he did not think that being equal with God was something to be held on to.” Philippians 2:6)

You’re not my type (my mind knifes as I fall asleep)
You’re not enough (my past strikes as I awaken)
The slightest silence and I am gone on another hike
around the edges of sanity. I would not have fashioned
my brain this way.

My mind is on constant rewind
back to the entitled days. The hidden greys
that belonged to men with unbridled consciences,
with untamed storms that leaked out every pore.
I shivered at the worst, ignored most at first,
and hoped my fears would never happen. I
wished away summer days with my feet in the streams.

Proving the curse a mistake was the dream
of my bedtime stories. Fantasies of
magic wands to clear my head of all the wrongs
I committed and all the damage I inflicted
and all the pain from songs I wish I had written.

Worse yet I fancied the light, rose in the ranks,
laid my hands on the sick, spoke like a prophet,
and wasted my best on hiding the rest which
dwelt in darkness too deep to define.

(Crying after midnight, sobbing insomnia,
and prayers that only groaned without relief.)

I would have beat myself into submission to
gain admission into the holiest place.

But well down the road I read the words again,
the sigh and gasps of embrace. Sand beaches,
baby children, dogs with ironic names became
the hymns I misheard from the beginning. And

You were my type after all (my soul kites and
my heart steeps in the love so slow it clings
to everything)

It Has Been a Slow Death

 
It Has Been a Slow Death

(“…as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” 2 Corinthians 6:10)

It has been a slow death I know,

From

Circles on a carpeted floor,
sharing cups of 7up and
crumbs of sourdough in makeshift
remembrance

To

The names I have heard you call
good men and women
who were once the all
you proclaimed to love.

And now I feel the death all around me,
the demons of power arcing above the towers
that once called us to joy (the soul’s sorrow,
the spirit’s release),
that once called us to mercy (the word’s story,
the gospel’s free speech),
that once called us to believe (the child’s trust,
the riches unleashed).

And now I see the black figures swinging swords
and aiming nooses, surrendering the peace for
a withered podium of power. And now I hear
the funeral song and I cannot endure

The divorce

Of the ancient faith from its ineffable source,
the crucified one, the suffering Son,
the one acquainted with grief.

I have died today as well
and do not know which world to enter.
The worst abuse, like stripes on a weary body and mind
has found its endgame in the final clod of dirt
tossed upon the casket of my once
vibrant faith.

From the ground up, from deep within the earth,
poor again, having nothing but the me, the seed,
the pleading for life beneath it all,
something still breathes that was smothered.
Something still reaches that was buried.
Something still sees that was blinded
by the shuttered standstill of sight trained
in only one direction.

Something breathes…

But today is one gasp away from
diving beneath the mud and blankets
and never venturing out again.

Grief is Slow

Grief is Slow

(“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’” John 11:23)

Grief is slow like the summer sludge in desert spring-beds,
grief is fast like yesterday’s clouds,
grief is heavy like muggy midnights,
grief is light like Christmas memories.

But death feels permanent, stiff and dry.
Death smells of the end of a long season
rather than a grand finale.

Death sneaks up on us though we’ve known its name
from the first last breath that did not return.
Death is sudden, a phone call after lunch or
crumbling on a tennis court.

And we look at the dirt, we stare at the sky,
we turn to every compass point, we cross our fingers
and hope that dying is not a forgone conclusion.

Though the seasons spiral around us, they are not the same.
The leaves that fall do not rise but turn to dust while
the branches sleep until spring awakens the sap again.

Traveling sailors return to port, children come home from school,
dogs sniff their way to owners who moved a hundred miles away.
Memories stay like tent pegs, the canvas ballooned by wind.

And yet, though this world is built upon clay--
monuments, palaces, armaments and warriors all decay--

There is more to say than someday. There is more to hear than
questions unanswered. There is more to see than lets the light in,
there is more to hold than our heart’s capacity.

So rise, love and grief, meet together at the moment of hope,
when, in the midnight of despair, behind the backs of everyone there,
life spoke to life like
deep speaks to deep
and gave death its expiration date.
More is here than skin can touch,
but in its touch knows the air is full of
living even after the breath has gone.

Come and Go

Come and Go

Some days come and go,
and others are slow like the
local swimming hole after all the children
have gone home.

There is no drifting, splashing or
tick-tocking to mark the ions of time.
Some days they all stand still, hovered just above
the memories after

All the children have gone home.

These are the places in my dreams,
the spaces between the buzzing summer when
thoughts were younger
and the approaching winter when
only the silence has much to say.

Some days drag and push,
and others rehearse memory
in slow motion like the schoolroom clock before
all the children have gone

Home.

Those With Time

Those With Time

(“The Lord will do what he thinks is right.” 2 Samuel 10:12b)

We erect the fences, dividing lines, cutting the earth like a giant pie.
But we do not carve pieces to share, but to make each neighbor fully aware
what is not theirs. We would split a tree right down the middle
to include just a jot, just a little more land to call our own.

We build barriers, at least seven feet or more, to keep me from seeing
they eyes across the board. We know all too well that if we gazed in silence,
without words breaking the sky, without fashion clues or hairstyle whys,
and stopped.

So time took one slow beat at a time,
one tick, the next, one more, and then four,
five slow strikes of the chimes, six the next pulse,
round the straight face of time so slow
you lose count, you do not move, your eyes
head high, his eyes hear the same stroke and

Finally time is one long hallelujah chanted ahead and behind.

Fixed upon that moment, glued to the gaze of two sets of eyes
seeing,
first time, graceful, aligned without interruption by cross-examinations
and proper explanations.

Your fences have served their purposes and now, the only thing you know,
all you can smell plus all you have chosen well, is in this exchange of
pulses and particles and rays; you both have thrown away everything you
learned about the person behind the eyes.

And as time, which has not stood still, but like a river, has made you feel
one with its current and all it carries to the sea; the eyes give way to the same

Slow beat one at a time, one tick, the next, and all you know,
it is not clockwork that has measured so well, but two heartbeats that
surrounded by grace
beat in time; sans orientation, religion, status and sans race.

Grace is the upbeat that tore down the walls and left the world
whole and warm, for those with time to see.

The Air Changes

The Air Changes

There before you, right out in your front yard,
do you see it, do you take it in? Just beyond the
first step past your porch

The air changes.

You breathe slower, your pace is measured,
you notice the difference between soft moss
or the crack of a latent branch underfoot.

I need to send you a letter because I think you’ve missed it,
trying so hard to prove your intelligence
you breathe the same air

Everywhere you go.

Layers, Decades and Slow Curves

Layers, Decades and Slow Curves

The wardrobe I rode in and out of town
I changed for the eyes that would see me
entering from dinner and a movie or
exiting to the hospital 70 miles east.

I could switch so fast then, wake when asked then,
that the wrinkles hardly had time to mark the angle
of my sitting.

Widows at home; white hair, doilies and tea;
the table set for her son’s birthday impromptu with
cake and Down’s Syndrome grins.
A drunk friend alone; doorbell, phone calls and pleas;
the table riddled with half-empty cans, flies and cats
and I sit with my the gentle again.

Day was early, sometimes fog and frost painted the trees
until noon at least.
But still mid-September the sun could manage a feast near
late afternoon; hours before the first full moon asked
us all to watch north past midnight; crashing breakers
in the air,
green and ghost-hued dances while men talked outside
the North Segment Hall
about the approach of deer season; sighting rifles
and walking razorbacks.

I kept up with committees and new friends,
uninvited popups with questions, phone calls with impressions
(maybe I quivered a bit back then)
and smile and wish they might call me again.

Waking now is a slow refrain, long chords held a full measure,
vamped and waiting the lifting of my head. And, there is a place
I hide

Every single tear

That I am no longer the same man,
no longer ready and aimed,
no longer brain-bursting with another idea to try.

I beg an answer while I dream, and all that seems to answer
is a white screen with soundtrack synched like bad jazz.