Daffodils

Daffodils

(“Those on the rocky soil are the ones who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and yet these do not have a firm root; they believe for a while, and in a time of temptation they fall away.” Luke 8:13)

It smelled like mud where the excavator was working
building a new road into the new subdivision. Five
houses in all have been built, or are nearly ready.
The trusses pointed to the morning star until they
closed it all in.

The smell of mud is bracing, the smell of mud
invites the promise of spring. The road being built
will hopefully last as long and as well as every measurement
and lined with daffodil quilts, their bulbs warm below the
the winter sod. They wait there, under the surface,
for months at a time until there is more light than dark,
more day than night,
And slowly poke their way through the grass with
buds closed and delicately protected.

I like the ones that stay, that grace my walks with bright yellow
imitating the sun. I like the fences where they flaunt their full display
along a 12-foot section. They are butter and their stalks are made
of mud enriched by the neighbor who owns the fence. Facing west,
his daffodils get the sun for the warmest part of the day. There
are no stones in his flower bed. That is apparent from the joy that the
colors bring and how long they keep their mouths wide open
to the rain.

Soil Preserves

Soil Preserves

(“The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural…” 1 Corinthians 15:44a [The Message])

Soil preserves everything old in a blanket,
cools everything inches below the reach of sunlight,
provides everything to nourish early and new arrivals,
warms everything miles and miles above the core of the earth.

Children dig corners in their yards and sometimes
find
black buttons,
plastic wrap,
spoons and bones left by pet dogs and previous owners.

Potsherds preserved centuries below the floors of
yesterday’s living rooms in tells,
mounds of generation follow generation
never knowing what had come before.

Someday I will castaway my body to the graveyard,
a site slightly mounded with slab marking the spot.
It will become an architect’s hollow room
after I sign another
long-term lease for a studio overlooking
a river bounded by medicine-trees.

Soil may preserve my bones, digits and stones;
and cool my slacking skin. But heaven is more suited
for my soul’s final movement, at home at last,
no sorrow no sin, all is completed,
death is defeated,
life flows boundless and green
through the dreams planted before
the beginning of time.

Good Soil

(“But what was sown in good ground means one who listens and understands the message; he bears fruit and yields, one a hundred, one sixty and one thirty-fold.” Matthew 13:23

The Christian life is to be wildly productive, not mildly passive. Jesus tells a parable describing what happens when the truth about Jesus (the Word of God) is spoken to different people. Some are like a pathway where the seed falls and barely begins to grow. Some are like stony ground who hear the message and quickly get exuberant about it. But they quickly fall away when it appears this life is more difficult to live that they first thought. Then there is the thorny ground. They do well for a while, but soon the distractions of life keep them from really living at all. Like weeds, the distractions choke out the very life they could possess.