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.

The Spelling is Correct

The Spelling is Correct

(“For from him, through him and to him are all things. Glory to him forever! Amen.” Romans 11:36)

What to say to someone who has
never known green,
or to describe the invisible spectrum that
makes the grape leaves grow?

I’ve seen less than I know,
I know less than it seems,
I walk slower when dreams
slip through the curtain between
perception and the beginnings of things.

Waiting for the day to speak out loud so
I can send a message. Words have left me
at such a loss
and my dreams disturb and
entice me. They play around the edges.
They resurrect the error of judgement.
They offer make-believe lovers.
The leave the day smelling of vinegar.
They are my only connection

To

A few of you.

If I would not spend the day inside my head
I might get around to sending a letter.
But then I think of all the things I’ve said that
--in their context--
should have been invisible. Instead

I place my fingers on the black keys,
count the alphabet out loud and make sure
the spelling is correct.

At least that is something I can rearrange if
it is pointed out to me.

What to say when
your heart feels larger than the world.
What to say when it feels constricted
at the end of the day.

These thin membranes that separate
thought from thought
still feel connected in wireless wonder
to something I am not.

Remember when we sat on the hills,
looked at the sun
and wondered why we were here?
Remember when every conversation was
epic until

Your brother or my sister,
or camp counselor or a dad
cracked a joke that...

Remember how
we forgot what we were
talking about?

Half Done

Half Done

(Love each other in a way that makes you feel close like brothers and sisters. And give each other more honor than you give yourself.” Romans 12:10)

Our house was home-made décor, half done projects
on the walls, a green bean bag and dentist’s chair
on the living room floor.

It was mostly home, though the horticulture lacked
for purpose or design; the landscaper sneezed too readily
once hay fever season began and the weeds had a heyday
from fence to falling fence.

Sun tea was always brewing atop the flat verandah roof,
mom sunbathed will past afternoon and 45,
the black lab found the shade only after nuzzling each
visitor to their knees.

We liked the summer East Bay and found new ways to
play the same games, old ways to ask the same girls
for dates we were certain would turn us down. We lived
in town
and drove an hour to spend the day at Briones. (I’ve
written about it before. See my anthology, published after
my demise, and filed somewhere between Berkeley skies
and Jesus’ people meeting at Jacob’s Well for burgers and fries.)

Our house was occasional Goodwill influenced, though
we shopped mostly for clothing at St. Vincent de Paul.
I found platform shoes and denim blues, along with
paisley flannel shirts and macramé beads that looked mostly
like watermelon seeds.

I share all of this to say that, of all the ones I’ve known and met,
I miss you the most; the one who sat with me when the world
had ended. I miss old VWs and pool parties, talking about nothing
as if we were solving the world. I miss you, (never let me
regret
having felt it this well without telling you about it.) I miss
so many conversations that still have commas, and never
ended until

The words left unspoken fell upon the backyard pasture,
mixed with the lawn gone to seed and settled somewhere close to
or north of Petaluma.