One Honest Foot

 

One Honest Foot

(“For he knew that the chief priests had handed Him over out of envy.” Mark 15:10)

If you would put one honest foot inside my door
I would talk to you all afternoon.
If you would take one open gaze upon my face
We could break bread together; commune.

But your questions are traps, your inquiries snares
for the innocent. You shout for God and Country
and steal grain from the worker ants building the
gardens you claim as your own.

If you would see the crucified three sown on the hill
I would ask you why you washed your hands.
If you could confess the longest darkness at noon
we could find a way to sit in the shade and fill our rooms

With stories he told that you never understood,
with tattered lives walking the floors ankle and barefoot,
with flax now mended, candles now sending
their light after the smoke was nearly extinguished.

How long will your jealousy last, how long your disguises?
How many lives have you changed, what is your legacy?
The Crucified One dies while you despise his glory
(the seeds that fail do not make it into your top 10 list
of opulence or piety.)
Prepare your next podcast, get your presentation ready,
refute the truth that dying lives and humility make the
tulips rise. Call for contributions; we don’t want to see you
without a bird’s nest or fox’s den. We don’t want to see you
without a pillow for your head.

But, if with honest feet you come to seek
a quiet way to become the humanity
you were born to be,
then let’s embrace, and by the grace of sun and
moon and darkness and light
remind each other of the terrible day when
the greatest king laid down his life
for every jealous and envious judge who swore
he knew the difference between royalty and a
friend of whores.

But royalty he is, and was, and ever shall be,
though we still, locked within this chamber of echoes,
expect the nuclear option when
He chose the mud to grow His kingdom whole.

This World and That World

 

This World and That World

(“Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! For in our union with Christ he has blessed us by giving us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world.” Ephesians 1:3)

I wandered through dreaming and waking,
a visitation of images, stories and places
with characters combined and double cast.
It seems I had won the lottery but lost it
within moments of the next scene my mind conjured.
This world and that world all contained within the
neural impulses
that fired without my command.
My head was leaden, my will forbidden from acting,
and my pain binding me to my bed.
Yet, an hour after waking, far into the long afternoon
I saw the reflection of the pink and clearing sky
in my neighbor’s window.

While I slept unwillingly, I heard phone conversations
and my daughter’s voice coming in the front door.
Yet none of this could move me from the
isolated paralysis that bound me to my bed.
Still, moments after rising, (the same hour as
the pinking clouds)
I saw the neighbor’s Siberian Husky watching
the same sky
from the same window

And the sun and raindrops fell
as evening approached.

I was glad I
never draw my shades.

My Japanese Camellia

My Japanese Camellia

(“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23a)

The rain kept me from my outdoor chores,
there was more to burn in my pile of brush loaded
with slowing sap and winter dampness.
My roses overgrew their place during the shortened days
and looked like aliens waving to their home ship.

Just a few months before we gathered apples from our
mini forest floor and from
the highest limbs of the trees planted generations ago.
They are proud and are hurt by the pruning.
We will have a smaller harvest this year
but sweeter. Light can whistle between each limb again.

Even though the rains dominate the hours week after week,
somehow the sun has pulled the life from the roots to the stems.
My Japanese camellia, green and lonesome from the winter till now
offers me the first dusty flower of these early days of Spring;
hung like a forgotten Christmas ornament, pastel pink
against leaves of forest green.

I take a breath and begin the day again.

Between the Paintbrush Clouds

 

Between the Paintbrush Clouds

(“But the king commanded…saying, ‘Deal gently with the young man Absalom for my sake.’” 2 Samuel 18:5)

Between the paintbrush clouds and peeks at the sky
we all move beneath the same sunshine.
Move lightly, for the sake of another;
step softly, for the songs of numbers of
countless birds remain unheard if we
wear nothing but our combat boots.

Between the hot-tipped arrows and the neighbor’s porch
we all wait beneath the no-mans land unplanned.
Bring coffee for the comfort,
and a chair just for conversation.
Bring children who laugh away the wounds
with their soap bubbles and endless questions.

Between the pale failures and occasional wins
we all regret what might have been.
See deeper, for the love of breath and light.
Hear weeping, the same as your own. The
circle where we dwell unwraps our faces,
deciphers our songs,
and reminds us we belong to each other.
Let it fly like dandelions away.

I Saw a Child Lead Them

 

I Saw a Child Lead Them

(“No one receives God’s approval by obeying the laws in Moses’ Teachings since, ‘The person who has God’s approval will live by faith.’” Galatians 3:11)

I saw a sister coming down the path towards me,
her pack shouldered mightily but her knees were faint.
She had authored stories,
and curated before many of us began.
She was mainly midstream
and now she was tinder dry
but still walked steadily toward the
life risen like the sun for everyone
to see.

She wept privately.

I saw a brother lying on the side of the road,
his life savings splintered and gravel piercing his knees.
He had locked away the stories
of the helpless who deposited them with trust
into his heart.
He was partly periphery
and now was flung further away.
But still he hoped mightily for the
Samaritan, the outcast to kneel beside him
and weep.

He bled internally.

I saw the myriads, the unchosen, the torn coats
and the ice floes of winter diminishing. Some
were gathered to drink the rain, others repeated
the same uniform codes again and again.
Some jumped at the chance to be embraced by
the elite clubs of separation.
Others kept traveling without navigation
but knew the destination would one day
come into view.
I saw some discarded, others ignored;
I heard that some were disbarred and others
abhorred. Some turned to greet the company
of friends they had loved all along
to see many with their backs turned
and silence alone filling the space between them.

I saw a child lead them all.

These Silent Days

 

These Silent Days

These silent days can be interrupted
by
a woodpecker rehearsing for the Spring.
And then, more often,
they are punctuated with sobs from the
hollow of distant grief and aches.
Life can turn cruel without our knowing,
a decade passes and chop block houses line
the field where mustard and poppies once grew.
Life can be sweetened for an hour,
a meal, a hug, a dog nuzzling at your elbow.
The air is heavier
the fewer people in the room.
Half a day later and the dishes are cleared,
loneliness creeps in uninvited
but is so familiar you put out a chair for him.
And though the buzz of life once flew like geese,
like bees,
the silence now hangs over the hours.
Before, now, and after, it is the way it always
has been.

We Were Saplings

 

We Were Saplings

(“Some Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, came to {Jesus}.” Mark 12:18)

Have you seen the burn pile behind my house,
sheared limbs and deadened trunks tangled like
frozen snakes in the sun? We plan to burn each one
before the summer is over, but the rains have come with
mid-March clouds to the Pacific Northwest.

It is slow work and painful, bending to find the smallest kindling
to fan the steam and smoke into flame. The mini forest in
our front yard
is better for the deep cuts the chain saw left,
but my past pruning has left marks I am quick to hide.
I would rather they were burned and the coals dumped
over the side of the hill.

You cannot see me a year ago, a day ago, a second ago.
I no longer exist there.
But those ghosts that appear in the voices that remember,
and in my mind full of distemper have painted the past
in clearer ink than the buds that are the beginning of spring.

Music plays every day while I write. Most are the soundtrack
of high school love: Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, Carole King and
James Taylor. And Don Irwin always sang “Build Me Up, Buttercup”
when we walked home from middle school. We were saplings
and moved easily through the southern California seasons.

But now my trunk is harsher, the gray limbs stiffer, while the remnants
of trees older than me are seasoned next to the shed. Today the sun
shines
while my mind rehearses talks that lasted forever when
we thought we had forever to live. And I have not talked to
many of them for two-thirds of my life now. So where do I
live? I am not afraid to die; I am sure that I exist here and
will and do exist just beyond the crystal veil. What occupies
my mind
today
is the way friends, lovers, sisters, brothers, all seemed effortless.

I am not deceived by the rosiness of time. But today as I view
the years so far ago
I miss the simplicity of firelight, dancing on living room rugs,
unabashed hugs, and playing the same LP over and over again
because Tapestry was just
that
good.