Today Tumbled In

Today Tumbled In

(Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. 4:10)

Today tumbled in, a set of dice determined my mood.
The sun is out late afternoon
dissolving the marine layer in its
yellow embrace.
But the roll of the dice told me
the pain was beyond bearable,
I put it all on the table
and wept the day away.

There are fault-lines you cannot see,
cracks that do not show
and I am tired of being strong when
I’m only leftover rain and a hurricane
quickly running out of courage.
Maybe I am blind.

Life is full of philosophy
until an unlucky family
deals with sudden death
and fatal illnesses.
Maybe I am shaken.

It baffles me,
maybe I mean only half of what I say,
and maybe I see less of what surrounds me.
Why do I wave friendly at neighbors
when the tears flowed just a moment before?

Today tumbled in; night will steal the mood,
replacing it with dreamscapes of fear or pleasure.
These are the days that I give up believing;
my opinions never changed the time of a single sunset.

I am old and life frightens me but occasionally
amuses me. Most often I let another well-constructed
syllogism fall on its face and other bodily unfunctions.

I am not strong. I am not certain.
I am only one late in life person
who hopes these days that seem so remote
from human connection
will not be the gamble they seem to be.

Tomorrow will tumble again. Know me, please,
God of numbers and ABCs, of
wisdom and idiosyncrasies
better than the crumpled pages
I have written upon.

Get Over It

 

Get Over It

(“So Lot chose the region around the Jordan for himself. Lot headed out toward the east, and they separated from each other.” Genesis 13:11)

They tell me to get over it,
they tell me to repent. The voices die
at night and
live again the
next day. They tell me there is a price
to pay. Get over it, like downshifting in the
passing lane. Get over it, though the embers are still
fanned into flame.

They tell me I have lost my way,
they tell me I’ve gone off the deep end.
They point out I chose the left
when I should have veered right all along.
I never minded where I lived,
I just needed the voices to cease that
ad-libbed their sermons on the back of broken hearts.

I searched for the invisible, sought and knocked
time and time again. I looked for the unseen soul
who knew pain as deeply as I; pain that rarely
is over.
I ached for ancient friends and sighed for enlightenment.
I cried alone under wooden pews,
I needed more than one visitor who would refuse
to accuse the location of my pain.

Get over it, the perfidy of imperfect lenses
could have been truer with more pauses and
less past-tense.

I was bloated with small talk, so I doted on
children’s chalk drawings. (They never left me
baffled by their silence.) For all the grinding of time
my head aches and
my heart breaks
over causes yet to be determined.

But today there were daisies,
today there were jonquils,
today there were poppies and
the sweetest nicknames for friends.

But today I’m washing in the ocean of love divine;
I’m bathing in the motion of earth and sky.
I hear the bells ringing the angels’ song
and miss a few who used to listen to the waterfalls
without defining their time or place.

Where Was the Scent of Kings?

 

Where Was the Scent of Kings?

(“The holy writings say, ‘He was counted as one of the bad people.’ And I tell you, that means me. And the things that are written about me must happen to me.” Luke 22:37)

Where was the scent of kings,
the incense and the musk of triumph?
There was no uprising,
there was no parade with the captured in chains.
There were no guns or drones,
tanks and soldiers in a row.
There were no fighters or bombers
in formation overhead,
there was no parade on this independence day.

The back-alleys knew, though;
they recognized his face from the galley of rouges.
While power showed off its pageantry
with chariots and swords,
he eschewed concealed carry and
entered conflict a prisoner of war.

We still ignore you because we expect a display,
something to celebrate with fireworks,
a reason to wake up the neighbors,
a magistrate to enforce our suspicions,
a fire-thrower to engulf every sedition
and make it bow so loudly the universe can see
we anointed the king of our own choosing.

But you can be found at the back of the crowd,
initialing the wet concrete.
You never catch our eye with gold,
never wear the trappings of battle.
You refuse to ride the warhorse down
our streets,
and enter in a borrowed jalopy.
We were happy with that for a while.

And now the scent of myrrh, the fragrance
of death-and-life meets us in our doldrums
(Had we been awake, we would have read the
servant poem that describes a prince
who never gave a proper salute.)

And now all our paper mâché mannequins
stand in abandoned palaces. You wait to meet us
outside our hidden prejudice.

Weather Remains

Weather Remains

(“While the earth lasts, planting time and gathering time, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not end.” Genesis 8:22)

Sometimes I race with the setting sun
so laden with weight and pain that
it smothers me overnight
while God is busy composing the morning.

Weather remains.

The aroma of clover sneaks up on me
from its bed of dewy sweetgrass, the icing
on the breaking day.

The sun skips ahead of me most days
when I am restrained by the heated irons
in my brain. The weeks inch along waiting
for my wearied footsteps, the months loop
around each other.

The evening folds in on itself
like a puppy’s eyes who is desperate
to stay awake.
God composes the next morning like
a dolphin’s skin
breaking the surface of the water.

The Reckoning Blew In

 

The Reckoning Blew In

(“But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke 21:28)

It all happened before we had a minute
to change our shoes;
the reckoning blew in on the northwest wind
and asked what time zone we thought we were living in.
We did not answer, we were alright,
we had been gazing upward most of the night.

We’re comfy here, we’ve made our living,
we empty our pockets every time they preach
about giving. But we still have enough to spare;
our boats are bobbing in the river,
our trucks are parked with guns in the rear.

Ask us about the south and the past,
about the north and the handicrafted biases
baked in to the system,
and we might explode because we are righteous,
we have voted so piously we have to defend it with
mediocrity.
We will never admit our chosen president
could be the one impediment to freedom for
anyone but us.

It all happened while we were tuned in to the latest
hand-clapping hymns for the children and beginners
on the radios that now searched the heavens;
the calculation fell like fire from the sky
and asked us why we hated books that told the truth,
took our shifts at the poll booths harassing everyone who
caught the fish in the river before our feet touched the shore.
We love statues of Columbus and tributes to Dixie
and worry our fingers to the bone whether we have committed
the unpardonable sin. (We hope not; who could begin to express
how many times we have averted our eyes from pornography,
or apologized for missing a month of Sundays? We YouTube
the truth these days.)

And from far away the die is cast while we are standing front to last;
we could have been one heart with the sins of our past that
silenced original voices and
kidnapped chattel
like destiny and the bible
told us so.

It is their redemption that is drawing near!

The Lonely Leaks In

 

The Lonely Leaks In

(“Be careful that none of you fails to respond to the grace which God gives....” Hebrews 12:15a [J. B. Phillips])

Maybe there’s a job at home that will keep me there this time.
Maybe there’s a lover or a friend,
an upended cup of water that
was filled again.
The lonely leaks in like august heat waves through
the blinds.

I’ve been standing on your porch hoping you still live
in the same house where I once knew you.
We were kids, we were naïve, we were insanity,
we were cotton candy and backyard picnics. We were
young love and agony.
Then it got cold,
and we got old
and I moved to the north country.
But I still feel you living in my chest.
Nothing lasts forever, some of my schoolyard crushes have died.
Some timeless friends have hidden themselves,
and some live just up the road.
But the lonely leaks like a diesel engine on fire.

I had a friend so smart he could have been a
chemical engineer.
But he bought a bowling alley instead and had a hundred
friends visit him in a day.
And still the lonely leaks like the grease
from drive-in fries.

Maybe there’s a house where laughter still lives
despite the brute force of age. Maybe
there’s a museum where one friend finds another
staring at the same painting for far too long.
Maybe there’s a child not grown
that simply wants to play on the swings again.
And still the lonely leaks in like delivering
newspapers before the sun rises on the weekend.

There is a Hush That is Sacred

 

There is a Hush That is Sacred

(“So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Genesis 2:3)

We sat on benches only inches apart,
the work was finished, the words inscribed.
The ducks roamed the pond idlily,

and the dogs napped in the sun.
The rains had filled the stream on the hill and
the water fell, softening the air.

We found a silence that
bound us only closer,
a triune conversation, a dialogue of zero,
a soliloquy floating on the breeze.

Butterflies like linen tugged our gaze along their
crepe paper flight. They were not giants nor
marked like monarchs;
simple, small, singular. They owned our hearts
stilled by the moment at rest.

There is a hush that is sacred,
trees have always known it.
There is a language of angels,
we work too long to hear it.
There are doves who have learned to
call the world to themselves,
in pairs in the branches of the new elms
beyond the field.

I remember there were sailboats on the river,
do you?
In the momentary stillness they moved past
our consciousness too fast.
There was just the rest we shared,
a memory lasting longer than forging words
in the fire. There was no misinterpreting the
questions our quiet had asked.