A Short Bending on a Long Path

A Short Bending on a Long Path

(“Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not. Do you not fear me? says the Lord; Do you not tremble before me?” Jeremiah 5:21,22a)

Her life, now, and final, and at last,
is sadly, after all the trying, completely half-mast.
At first she sang out loud, memorized the words,
went with the crowd. She raised the roof and danced
barefoot while new bands sang ancients psalms. She was
first, and primarily, free.

But the songs passed her by, the beaches dried up while
all her barefoot friends went inside. The earned title and
wore silk ties; they were careful not to traipse around the pew
and carpets
with the sand from previous sandals. She settled in,
learned the new songs, and learned to fall at the touch of
the anointed ones who never struck the multitudes as, well,

Odd.

She tried, she did. She squeezed visions from her head, and
forced meaning to the dreams she sometimes remembered wrestling
with tangled sheets on her bed. She upped the ante, she gave more than most.
She spent her mighty mind internal; and locked her lips as she had
learned was her best beauty and wisdom.

She cried, but hid. She bought the newest music, chose the latest flavors,
and lit candles for every relative still residing outside the chosen
neighborhood. If only the world would stop careening (we know
it is time for judgment and wrath). If only they would come inside
and join the unblemished who stopped sinning ages ago.

She refused to lie, any longer. Their songs were sweet, but the singers
vied for the front seats and first class passes. Their dance was unique,
but the steps were judged and scrutinized; freedom died. Their words
were true, and deeds mostly good, but what so many misunderstood when

She pried upon her heart. Some fled in fear. Some stayed to clean up the mess.
Some could not turn away, but refused to hear. Some fainted and insisted the
Holy Ghost
had fallen right then and there.

She relied, finally, only, a little sadly, upon the Only Love she had ever known.
Let her life flutter low on the pole, let others consider her a mistake, semi-whole,
let the tongues like blades continue to touch the fading scars. Never mind every
stark star stripped of its shining.

She relied, finally, fully and surrendered to Love renewed.

Disaffected Days

Disaffected Days

(“I, even I, am the One Who takes away your sins because of Who I am. And I will not remember your sins.” Isaiah 43:25)

The water sounded sweet as black earth,
the sand was sun-warmed and loose between our toes
when we ran to meet the waves head-on;
the hair on our arms and legs standing on end
when the Pacific grabbed our breath the first day
of each summer.

A blond-haired beach-boy played the flute solo
from “California Dreamin’”, where the sand and
asphalt met.
He sat on a driftwood hunk of an old tree trunk,
maybe from the islands, probably from Newport,
and every pretty girl watched him while I wished
I had a tan like his.

Some days it didn’t matter at all, like when Paco, his
brothers and my young white legs took one of the next
Saturdays that summer; probably Huntington Beach.
His dad drove the old pickup, faded green with tires
in the bed. Five boys in trunks and towels had the
best view of the freeway all the way to our day in the sun.
We held our burritos between our feet. The stayed warm,
wrapped in wax paper, aluminum foil and hidden in
brown paper bags. Paco’s mom was a magician;
last night’s supper of potatoes and pork were our
midmorning breakfast in the back of the rattling
Ford.

My best friend was my worst enemy; I do not lie.
One moment we were ranking girls in our junior-high classroom,
the next he pinned me in a telephone booth, blackened me eye,
all because he was bigger than me.

Perhaps our final touchdown after half a dozen orbits,
or, if we’re truly ambitious, a trip to the moon,
perhaps our final splashdown has more to do
with pick-up trucks, tanned flautists, and friends
(or enemies) we never forget. Like the taste of

Those roast potatoes, stringy pork, tangy sauce,
all wrapped up by Paco’s mom in the sweetest
flour taco a young man ever tasted.

If I could find her today, nearly a half-century later,
I ask if she had just one more burrito, the kind with
pork and potatoes.

Playing Nice

Playing Nice

^“Now, brothers and sisters, be filled with joy. Try to make everything right, and do what I have asked you to do. Agree with each other, and live in peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.” 2 Corinthians 13:11

“If you kids can’t play together nicely, you can’t play together at all!” Most of us recognize Mom’s voice behind those words, don’t we? My brother is two and half years younger than me, and I’m afraid I took advantage of that age difference as we grew up. One sunny west Texas day, Joel and I were playing outside. He was about three and I was five or six. We had little metal cars and were creating streets in the dust for them. Eventually, growing tired of that, I started just throwing my car up in the air and watching it fall. One time, quite by accident, it fell right on top of his skull. The blood scared me to death. I don’t remember how many, but the little guy required stitches.

DisCovered

DisCovered

(“[The Lord’s] intention in giving me this authority is to build you up, not tear you down.” 2 Corinthians 13:10b)

Buried beneath truckloads of shame,
beneath the heavy loam where breath is lost and
light barely breaks between the clods; he was still,
no, he was stiffened as the fright consumed the nerve endings
from finger tips to toes; clamping fists and eyelids clenched,
he would have held his breath forever, if forever was possible
to keep it from escaping.

They stood him up. Yes, someone discovered the burial mound.
The brushed him off. Yes, the mud stuck to his sight, to his bones.
They whispered long. Yes, the words were mixed, like blizzards in Spring.

He found his legs while the world spun against him.

He delayed his reply; would his past-tense stories be held against him?
He heard one hope; perhaps the night had stretched far enough that
morning was required.

They stood him up and brushed him off. He found his legs and turned around.

And 100 people stared at the emaciated corpse before them;
his rescuers spoke in uncertain terms (parsing their words, though)
while the little blood left drained from his face and the room spun while
the rest of them whispered their own stories (confidences trusted, lives
broken by the telling).

The promise, the restoration, the power, the indoctrination all
spilled like blood before him. Sick and nearly dead from wearied
cringing,
he hoped the syringe was a dream he could wake from. It was a
handgun he had to wait for, brandished by the promisers and
primed by the best pharisees and new-charisma followers who
could not tell the difference between their night-dreams and
a man’s daylight weeping.

He limps still. The wound is open still. The grave they found him in
was filled in long ago; it’s a hotel for conventions and he was
never invited to its groundbreaking or Grand Open-

ing.

Whispers Home

Whispers Home

(pour une amie)

Never trust a mirror distorted by blood words;
by one-vowel epithets like sword-thrusts to the brain.
Your image is befogged by the hot breath
of boiling sentences cracking upon the lava dome
sealed over and over, (a blind eye’s slap on the hand,
a fuming heat, molten sand) so that scar and wound
explode too closely. The eyes

Once soft with love, the man you found to
take you (a piece here, a piece there), a man
you hoped would astound you; he saw the
finished work while you were still shattered;
shards on concrete and lawn.

But he churned instead; his eyes
crimson red and not staring. His gaze looked ahead,
behind, through and over, but never
at the beauty he could behold if only
he had not boiled over, scalding the love
that could have made his own debris a
creation of love, degree after degree.

You are love, and listen; you are loved.
You are beauty, and behold; you are pretty,
appealing; worth gold fired twice,
worth translucent jewels; a renewal that hears
the better Word, the truer Names that
princesses carry; that have taken everything the
hateful sounds could muster, and waited,

And prayed

And waited, and wore her beauty
like Spring’s first clear morning; the fog
dispersed overnight, the roses bedewed
at first light, and her eyes shining the way new
mothers do, at the first sight and sound of
the tiny life she will love with embraces and
protective glances;

The richest and deepest brown, her eyes were
beauty too, for each happy acquaintance who,
with lost bearings finds her the welcome that
whispers “home” over the ocean’s explosions.

She is beauty; and she will still be from day,
to year, to decade and again. Call her daughter,
sister, mate or friend; she is beauty, then and now
and to the end.

You Know the Grace

You Know the Grace

(“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9)

Clothed in gold, washed in spring rain,
the grass is thick, the streams parade life
and young men’s dreams from foothills
to the pregnant river of long poetry;
creation’s own form of praise.

Surrounded by breeze, underneath these old
feet each day is cool with dew that never
dropped upon the soft green blades
of this playful morning before.

We wore our castoff clothing like
princes;
Our half-scales and jazz chords like
incense.
The music we hear, though
assembled before a not ever was played,
is beyond our talents; the gift is
in the singing;
what we never dreamed of before.

And yet, the key can sour with time,
the odes and dirges overtake our jubilant hymns.
And yet, the day can bristle with age,
the plush rose petals brittle and late.

Rich with melody, yet faded with age
we may forget the sun on our faces,
the soft earth’s carpet on our back,
and the words that sent us leaping may
fashion weeping instead.

What, day of joy and night so old,
how may I find, discover, define,
and hold forever
the single afternoon memory of a
meadow spring—unvisited for decades.

How old is Your gift; the music, the rain,
the warm, the same thoughts that
once coaxed love from uncertainty?
But ageless is not old; but ever.
And the song; redemption’s dialogue of
God and man

Will remain the tune I whistle
half-forgetting its title.

To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

(“Our temporary minor problems are producing an eternal stockpile of glory for us that is beyond all comparison.” 2 Corinthians 4:17)

It rained like the notes of a dusty upright piano played
in the parlor corner behind a dozen conversations.
The massive maple frame vibrated and rang,
and thunder background awoke the lazy gathering
like fire.

What is this dissonance, where the lost chords,
the freezing droplets at my back door? Who first
struck the white and black, the lightning aimed
like a late attack upon our senses?

What hands hewed the wood and studied each joint
to take the strain of 236 strings and 17 tons of tension?
What hand threw the flood and fire that started in the wall
and climbed while no one watched it smolder overnight,
after each guest from young to older left for home?

Whose frost wet the embers? Whose mind chewed through time
and swallowed the old piano whole which hands
on which mother and child suffered etudes and
dreamed the Beatles best tunes?

The home was empty when the fire attacked,
lives were saved, but memories and melancholy
still litter the battlefield where the uncompromise began.

Would you walk alone, now, with the sound alone, now;
would you settle for less once the music is silence and
the wedding photos are sloppy burnt? Will the

Stockpile of grace
consume all that was taken
and replace the hand-me-down piano
in a new parlor in the Father’s house?