Keeping Them on the Road

“He taught the truth and did not lie. He walked with me in peace and uprightness. He kept many out of the ditch, kept them on the road.” Malachi 2:6

Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, deals with, among other things, the corruption of the priesthood. They had forgotten their divine responsibilities, and used their position as a method for personal gain. This made the susceptible to bribes from the rich, leaving the poor neglected.

King Over all the Earth

“The Lord will become King over all the earth in that day; the Lord shall be One and His name One.” Zechariah 14:9

There is no greater dream than the prospect of God’s final rule over all the earth. The kingdom of God will finally be completely fulfilled, and all will be summed up in the singular goodness and holiness of God. In other words, all evil, all destruction, hatred and violence will come to an end and God’s kingdom, with Christ as King, will reign with all peace, righteousness and justice.

Where the Joy has Gone

Where the Joy has Gone

You’ve asked where the joy has gone while
life lingers, a sliver, a thread, and leaves so slowly
you barely see it depart. You want her home, your love,
your friend, your life, your heart.

You pray with tears, and say with words; anxiety’s
hope has exposed each nerve while you wait,
wait only, while other lonelies walk down the linoleum halls.

She is fragile, a stick-figure filled with decades together;
her bony hand still reaches for your face, your knee,
your hands to keep company her shallow breathing.
There are still stars in her eyes.

You eat less, (the nurses microwave your
frozen foods supper), and drive half a hundred to her
and back home each day.
Her remedy and your love hold sway over
your own health or hunger. How can you
contemplate
better care when she whose life you share
is shrinking beyond human aid.

You’ve asked where the joy has gone
while your friends wait with you,
and nothing we say can pull you away
from grief none of us-smile or frown-
imagine and only close our eyes and look away
at the question about joy today.

Prayer is sloppy, holy comfort puddled crusty,
answers senseless and God is untamable even

By the countless buckets our tears may fill.
Exotic, not domestic, we sit together while
God-in-heaven roars; God-with-us so close
we do not comprehend Him at all.

You’ve asked where the joy has gone
on a day of cloud curtained pain, while
sorrow remains sharp; joy hides and also waits
a more appropriate day.

A Suite

A Suite

(“Say to all the people of the land and to the priests: When you have fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months even these seventy years, did you really fast for Me—for Me?” Zechariah 7:5)

Like a guitar trying to pluck its own strings, we sing to prove,
we dance to earn, and spurn the free embrace love created
when it invented our shape, our tone; space our scales and
semi-tones to pleasure’s hearing.

While You freewheel good, we invent exact,
we bow, surrender, keep the balance black;
while You give prizes, first to last.

Had we missed a note in our songs
(over and over, like dolphins being trained
we push it to the edges, synchronizing our best efforts
with our best ideas of what You want)
we slop our cry and drag our imperfection around
like we think it is the cross You asked us to bear.

Had we hit each note in our solo
(only and only, like daredevils flaming
we push it to the edges, being sure the blaze and
thunder are big and best enough for Your approval)
we straighten our spines and never look back
like we think it is the position You now owe us.

Like a guitar created by a lover of wood and sound,
skill set against skill, passion for the painting ignoring the frame,
we wait for You to play (not better than we have attempted)
the music that shifts there to here and then to now
in one laced movement; a suite that tells the story
we had been trying to hear.

Humble and Meek

“But I will leave among you a humbled and poor people, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord.” Zephaniah 3:12

Humility and meekness (the intent behind the word “poor” in this passage) have rarely been seen as desirable character qualities, and understandably so. If a person’s world-view includes getting the most out of life, making the most money, advancing yourself to the highest possible pinnacle, humility simply isn’t the way to get there. Qualities that appear much more active are required; such as perseverance, courage or confidence. But meekness? No, that is for monks and nuns. Humility? Forget marrying it with a career in big business.

Memory the Book

Memory the Book

(“Meanwhile the earth fills up with awareness of God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.” Habakkuk 2:14 [The Message])

To walk alone, the woods, the foothills,
and see the nodding leaves left on the barefoot floor
is less inspired than to be tethered to another soul
who sees the beams between the trees while you
feel the cold shade of winter’s shadow underneath them.

Though full of lessons around every bend, solitary
bests my attempts to take it all in.

So I wrote a good initial stanza, the words are lazily out of reach
for the rest. I think I gave my heart to more than one friend who
took it with them and moved out of town.

Pieces scattered, old cinder block ash, across the map,
an x and y axis of time and place. I spend too many days alone
to write well anymore.

I make up forests from my memory, old trees waking
I once tried to photograph trunk to canopy before my father told me
it would never work, taking pictures that way. I never tried again.

I’ve made too many mistakes to trust myself
to write from my heart anymore. Laughter forsook me
with the last piece of trust placed in the hands of a man
who cried with me at lunch. His wife of youth gone
too soon cancer. Owing to my weaknesses shared
(too soon as well) the friend couldn’t help but
clumsy my soul. It wasn’t his fault, we mostly
trample like fall our opportunities.

To walk alone in the woods, the foothills
unshared with another, soul to soul, is an
ingrown blindness; though swimming in
a Sea of Glory, we depart and dry.
Divide the ramble, eyes doubled four,
is a holy panorama; sloshing in the
Sea of Glory, more wet and head to toe,

Whether smile or cry, the day is meaning
and memory the book to read happiness by.

A Chatty Meander

A Chatty Meander

(“Look to the mountains—the feet of one bringing good news and proclaiming peace!” Nahum 1:15a)

Why we pick up kaleidoscopes to distill our images
and write them down to tell the truth in words that agree,
sentence and syntax,
is a bother of childish nations. Bits of glass cut from
broken art
fall, sounding like sand poured onto hardwood floors,
and refract away the terms of armistice. We would
rather play with bent sunlight than face reports that
reflect poorly upon our character.

I was never a ruffian, not quite a scientist either;
gangs would not have me…short and lightweight,
labs always puzzled me…mix these and those and
hope for explosion.

I had hoped to be a mystic, fighting angels who saw me clear,
or mocking demons for my career. But my fingers never tingled
just so, and dreamwork was shoddy leftover fears and lunch.

I had hoped to be a digger, finding potsherds in the strata,
or explaining remains and copying data into contexts of finds
not yet considered. But I only dug with tablespoons and
found worms to hook a crawdad or two.

I hoped to be a singer, a writer, a voice commanded attention
even when I whispered. But I only wrote in secret, afraid to
step outside the well-scored boundaries set by rules I
had not written…no, not the rules, but my fear of them.

And what I heard at each junction was I did not sing three notes well,
could not afford the room, the board, the academic unrewarded premiums.
My words were too skeletal, my repentant handwriting still illegible,
despite every attempt to clean up the erasures I should have burned instead.

At the end of the road now, too late to restart, cornered by time and excuses,
there has to be someone behind me to do what I should have done.
Speak to the ones who treat the unalike like simpletons. Declare peace is
better than shallow pandemonium (where demons rule the world we thought
we finally had understood.)

Go to the name-callers who use their high-chairs as babel towers
pretending a better view. Brave you instead of weeping me. Face you
unlike hidden me. Love you lest breaking me. Go second now that
I’m too far and far too foolish to think

My

Words

Have

Meaning this late in the day.

Only let the piecework, the quiltwork shout what I
meant to shout from the beginning.
Only let the workshop, the worksheet manufacture
the focus I knew I knew from the calling.
Only let the mountains where the giant telescopes
point to the sky
proclaim to the blind (I, and we, big and bits, whole and
holy, destined and undefined)
peace, Peace, PEACE

In the valley (unless you’d like to pay another dime
for the kaleidoscope’s rhyme-plastered lie.)

Peace, Peace, PEACE

In the valley (for you and me I pray).