The Trees Seemed to Ignore Me

 

The Trees Seemed to Ignore Me

(“God was pleased for all of himself to live in the Son.” Colossians 1:19)

I.

Don’t ask me how I am,
there is something crumbling from
within my heart today.
The foundations are cracking,
the mud walls are melting,
the roof is leaking,
and this has sent me into a panic.
full.
stop.

I used to feel chosen,
don’t ask me how I feel today.
I once felt cozy and ready to sing
for anything that came to mind.
Now my fingers cannot find the chords,
my feet stumble over the rhythm,
my heart only knows the lyrics from
love songs 50 years ago.

I used to love exploring,
don’t ask me where I’ve gone today.
I once followed the Tuolumne River,
I once climbed Sunset Crater,
twice I sat at the annual folk festival
in Manitoba, finally dancing in hippie earth
tone fashion.
Two decades behind me, the festival has
moved underground, or perhaps
disintegrated into.
thin.
air.

I’ve driven through blizzards to
deliver a teenage daughter to her father
70 miles away who was dying of cancer.
I once tried to dig to China with a
tablespoon in my backyard SoCal.

This is exactly how I’ve been,
the slow crumble of stumbling years
and the trusted signposts no longer useful.
So, hollow within, and losing my bearings,
the emptiness unleashes its harshest poetry
within a brain that already is quick to hear
the distressed and aged wood of blame, regret,
and failure.

II.

Even the trees seemed to ignore me.
The mourning doves only stared at me.
The breeze deceived me into thinking
the next day would be easier.

But, finding only a speck of golden silence,
I heard the footsteps of god in the
easy branches and blooms of the apple tree.
I heard the whisper of god in a cat
meowing from behind the brush pile.
I heard the song of god in uneven time
in the wind that changed key so often
it actually sounded like me.

Kenosis. Emptying.
Filling. Completing.
Incarnate. Proximate.
Are the earth, the moon, the sun,
the mud, the ducks, the rabbits, the planets,
the roses, the snakes, the thorns and
rivers all
the generous emptying of god into all creation?

And pain, will I find the divine there?
And suffering, from top to bottom,
god has not rationed suffering,
has not risen on a jeweled throne above it,
but entered into, nailed his very body to
the angriest pain and stayed until cruelty
was finished.

If this is the god of the universe,
then perhaps my crumbling heart is
the perfect sanctuary to meet the
enfleshed one.

Give Me the Biggest

 

Give Me the Biggest

(“The Lord replied, 'If you have faith the size of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you!’” Luke 17:6)

Give me more, give me more,
give me more faith so I
can rip the trees to shreds,
bulldoze the mountains, then send them both
to the sea, to the sea, to the sea
for eternity.

Isn’t that what you meant? It is clear enough, I think.
The syntax is explicit, the images concrete,
the only think I need is more faith to defeat
the stubborn bushes and burning mountains.
Although, come to think of it,
I have heard no reports of flying hills along the
beaches with a dying trajectory.
Nor have I seen mulberries like roman candles
fleeing the gravity that holds them in place.
I have not noticed a single neighbor
backhoeing the hole where the flowering trees escaped.

We always want more,
we always want the meter to read above redline,
we always want the single cure for everything.
Give me the biggest, let the fire spray from my fingers;
give me the fullest, let the blaze be felt from my eyes.

And so, you undo me when you decrease me, and
invite me to
want much less, so much less.
And I am distressed after having uprooted
peaks and shrubs so many times
in my dreams.

Give me, then, the grain that cannot be seen from
across the highway,
upon the pulpit,
and is nearly invisible for those with higher vision
from people-length away.

Forgiveness is more an obstacle than
Everest or the Great Sequoias.

My Trees are Old

 

My Trees are Old

(“And the seeds in the good ground are the ones who hear the word with an honest and good heart, hold on to it tightly, and produce fruit as they patiently endure.” Luke 8:15)

My trees are old, gnarled and unruly.
They toss their fruit like tennis balls on
the grass courts of Wimbledon. Cherries,
peaches, and plums. Their blossoms prepared
a pink and white carpet on the mini-forest floor.
Their life began a generation before
I stepped onto these three-quarters of an acre.
Now I own towering douglas firs
and more rhododendrons than is proper.
The roses hug the west wall and drink the sun
between raindrops. Red for passion, yellow for friendship;
they whisper that growth is slow and never inevitable.
They ache for my care lest their canes tangle. I put off
their winter pruning this year, so their arms and elbows
are thin as a grasshopper’s legs.
The wilderness begins at the end of my
back yard, a logging trail at the bottom of the hill. I have
not yet
grown weary of green.

Words Like Honey

Words Like Honey

(“When he had spent some time there, he went off again and travelled from one place to another…encouraging all the disciples.” Acts 18:23)

Do you have to words like honey,
the golden ambrosia,
the delicacies prepared with care?

Do the eyes smile when they see you coming,
or do the neck muscles tense like a dining room table?
Do the minds open like butterfly wings each time someone
sings the lyrics you’re known for,
or do the toes of the feet dig into the deep asphalt inside
their shoes?

Let your signature be bold, bold as love.
Let the crossroad where you meet be an axis, an axis of peace.
Aloud or alone,
Crowded or nearly gone,
toss the confetti in the air, the tie-dye tissue flung
over trees while the breeze waves them like aerobic arms
hailing the next season of hope.

Do you have views like chocolate,
the silky burnt umber,
the confections prepared just now?

Truth is hard, but not unlovely.
Love is sweet, but not sickly.
Come, see the forest for the trees,
Come, feel the zephyr that sees
another season than the rusty winter
others insist is coming like midnight.

Come, forecast the brand-new morning,
Come, fancy a sunrise or two
on the river, above the hills
loosely the same as resurrections and
breakfasts on the beach.

Leave the raucous spew; renew the hues of azure,
the sway of wheat upon the sea, the ways of God upon the
coral reefs in all transparency. Fill the table with
bounty (hunted, gathered, shared, donated and piled
higher than the ocean cliffs). Invite the vagrant, the homebound,
the footloose, the shoeless, the spent, the pent-up,
the rested, the divested, the distorted, the contorted,
the last, the first, and best and all the rest

Who simply wait one good word from you,
one taste of honey where they sleep, where they play,
where the mass of air has deflated their best dreams.

Let them hear the beat they can dance to until the
end of the day.

Smallgrove

Smallgrove

(“I will plant it, and it will send out branches and bear fruit. It will grow into a mighty cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it and find shelter in the shade of its boughs.” Ezekiel 17:23b)

We wished the ground would be more forgiving,
having planted eight fruit trees 4 years ago or five;
the peaches are stretching and dropped their fuzzy
orbs juicy on the sparsely seafoam hill. The apples
are slower, the plums more miserly with a handful
of purple sugar the sun and leaves conspired to create.
Two trees of unknown fruit point grey and tan branches
like upraised hands admitting they wish they had been
ready this spring. The deer are hoping,
and the pie and crumble the kitchen dispenses,
while we wait the next turning of Giant Blue
and listen to the blue jays announce

They have possessed a few branches
as their own.

Taking Down the Tree

Taking Down the Tree

(…each one wanders off in his own direction; not one will save you. Isaiah 47:15b)

Taking down the trees for summer’s insulation removes the shade,
the shadow, the vantage point under the bough to see the
belly of the mountain jay puffing before the dewy ringlets
rise from the sand and dirt below.

Children play in the sand like bathtubs, while parents play
in the clearing, sucking their bottles before noon.

Taking down the tree for a month’s thermal warming
removes the snow ledges over the forest floor. One stove sputters,
another blasts careening smoke from the hillock to the
background mountains.

Children play in the snow like beaches, while parents play
in the new year, drowning their sorrows near till dawn.

I’ve waited a lifetime for someone from my past
to write me the letter that spells it out clearly.
I’ve watched from my window for someone from a dream
to drive up the gravel to my door
and hand me my happiness just once more.

I would replace the trees if it made a difference,
bounce the children on my knees,
interrupt the adult playgrounds,

Except I’m weary and, this late, this long shadow wait,
I find no place to start, no finish line beside fate.

I lay me down underneath the remaining trees and
admit the same disease begs the therapy it has from the beginning.
I lay me down to rest, my soul,
and listen for the closing sounds,

the hymn’s Amen.