How Old is the Sky?

 How Old is the Sky?

(“He is always striving in his prayers on your behalf, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in everything that God wills.” Philippians 4:12b)

How old is the sky in your world?
Have you measured the path from the slight frost
on early spring grass?
How old is the sky in your world?
Did it start its infancy before you were born,
or come into being the first time its light hit
your eyes?
Our lives are slender. We are taken in by
every sleight-of-hand
that tells us
the universe has always been young or round,
with pyramid tops like geodesic domes. How
old is the sky?

In case you didn’t know
there are more creatures unseen alive
than watched by you or me. There are more colors
that tie us together like birthday gifts. There are
more books to read than there is time. There
are
fewer aromas more suited for contemplation
than mildewed pages and brewing coffee.

We are merely pennies in a universal economy,
we are the bent pitches of native flutes,
we are rain where we hope for sun,
we are bored before we’ve ever begun
to examine a single leaf and the tree of
diversity
from which it springs.

Everything is a straight line,
everything is concentric,
everything has acute angles,
everything has circumference.

The waves crash like cymbals,
the waves wriggle like earthworms,
the waves bend like rainbows,
the waves flash like popcorn.

And all that matters is,
how you, my neighbor,
are doing on this variegated day.

Skip the Explanations for Now

 Skip the Explanations for Now

(“Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart (for you were in fact called as one body to this peace) and be thankful.” Colossians 3:15)

Skip the explanations for now,
the commentary can wait.
Tell us the story, front to back,
inside out. Don’t leave out a detail.
Give us every quote.
Tell us how the budding leaves
narrated the next call to prayer.
Remind us how the grass underfoot
was the grace sowed into the tiny universe
we see from our fields.

Did you meet someone on the way?
Did she smile, did she dance?
Did the old man stop and ask you
to take a chance at smiling again?
(I believe I have met him before.)
Tell us about the dogs, one a baby Labrador,
the other a vanilla and chocolate mix;
tell us how they ran at you, how they
startled you,
and how they pranced and played as if
you were the happiest part of their day.

Tell us about the children in the back row
talking
while the teacher wrote on the board.
Tell us about the muzzle flashes, the screams
that pierced their half-grown bodies. Tell us
why, if you know,
a boy, a legal man, needed weapons of war;
why anyone would want one, why anyone would
conclude the rights to own it outweigh the
right to keep on breathing.

Tell it, and skip the excuses for now,
the legislation cannot wait.
Can you feel the full mass of every
massive wound effect as each round
tore into flesh? Tell us what you heard,
tell us what you think, tell us why weapons
are called
Peacemakers

While the children of God wait for the
Prince of peace to rewrite the story.

Tell us, from start to end, why we do not
begin just now.

Think What You Want to Think

 

Think What You Want to Think

(“Therefore, if you have been raised with the Messiah, keep focusing on the things that are above, where the Messiah is seated at the right hand of God.” Colossians 3:1)

I hope you don’t mind that I
write
between my tears again.
Maybe my questions are too personal,
maybe my heart is not hard enough.
Today I think I’ll hold it inside.
Today I think I’ll let you guess what is
happening inside me.

Think what you want to think,
sing what you want to sing.

But I can think of nothing to sing when
I recognize the path I’ve been down
time and again, still the gates are closed,
the doors are jammed, the windows barred, yet
there is still a welcome mat on the front porch.

I hope you don’t mind that I
wait
and do not knock this time.
My answers are too personal,
maybe my heart is leaking too much.
Today I think I’ll stand outside.
Today I think I’ll find the address of someone
who cares to share
what is happening inside of them.

Breathe what you want to breathe,
cry what you want to cry.

But my chest is tight, my tears sucked back
into my eyes.
I liked your house for too long, I guess. I
was comfortable there
until I was not.
Today I’ll wait because the weather might change.
Today I’ll shake in the cold because I don’t have
enough clothes
to invest in another friendship
fraught with impossibilities and silence. People
still frighten me.

And yet, even a shard of each star we gazed at
lies buried somewhere in my heart.

Eat what you want to eat,
drink what you want to drink.

And I will knock on your door once more,
a bottle of wine and two chairs on the front porch.
Perhaps after a glass or two
we can turn the first few pages of
the next chapter.

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.

I Believe in Your Eyes

I Believe in Your Eyes

(“But it was very good of you to help me in my troubles.” Philippians 4:14)

I don’t believe in pedestals,
I don’t believe in princess crowns.
But I believe in beauty,
I believe in the way your name sounds
every time my heart hears it.
I believe in your smile that melts glaciers.
I believe in your eyes unafraid to see all of me,
I look for your lips to form the words you hold
close as a treasure.

Hearing the embrace transfixes
wandering moods.
Warming fingers touch another’s arm and,
we dare once more to trust,
to breathe,
to hear the heartbeat the same as another.

What if faces meet, cheek to cheek,
lingering a moment longer than expected?
Touch heals the
untouched
places where only scars once were found.

Would someone touch my face this once?
Would someone hold it in their hands?
And then, as the moon rises upon our shadows,
may there be the whispered hint of
midnight breeze, someone’s hands upon my own.

There are words I fear to say.
And I fear, there are words still locked within.
But if I do not speak them, they grow tired and adolescent.

Let my words, the mature words of friendship and love,
swirl between us, never-ending, in the universe we
inhabit, in the spaces between us, in the moments
heart knows heart.

Some I trust with my words, fewer with my hurts;
I’ve been too careless with my secrets, too vocal about my pain.
Be my safe place, hear my confessions, and,
like the air that carries words between us
I will carry yours in trust, in confidence,
in love that honors stories without villains
or heroes.
We both can name
the pain and let it sit in the atmosphere
between us.

Cottonwood Fences

 

Cottonwood Fences

(“…they rounded up entire communities, to hand them over…” Amos 1:6b)

And now, with everything compressed on the back of the
weekly
garbage trucks,
there is more space for storage.
But why do we lasso entire circles who could have
played in the fields on their own
and put them between stainless steel and
wood slat fences alone?

I would prefer a carousel,
I would prefer a serenade,
a glass of lemonade made by the
brother and sister around the corner.
I would prefer the tales they tell.

And now, with every border crossing open season for
daily
bounty hunters,
there is less space for the high bridge.
So why do we herd them and burn our naked brands
into their sun-thatched ribs
and prod them between cornstalks and
scarecrows back again?

I would prefer a round-dance,
I would prefer a folk ballad,
a cup of corn soup made by the
sweaty brows of mothers and sons in from the fields.
I would prefer their invitation to dinner.

I’ve stopped shouting in the canyons that
no longer echo. It’s time to wake up everyone,
let everyone breathe. Or are you paying admission
now
to hand out just a
few days of freedom?

Once you colonize the land,
what will you do with the firsts who
walked it before
you ever erected your cabins with
cottonwood fences.

Deviations of Joy

 Deviations of Joy

(“Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.” Joel 2:13b)

There is no roar like the roar
of those who think they have found
the very same ground
underscored by prophets before.
They will press the heads of dissenters
beneath the topsoil to the clay
and have them confess away every
stray inch of declination from the mean.
The averages were thought out long in advance
and the guardrails attached, the blinders worn like
eye-patches, and the wailing over sins of those not yet
in the arc of the square.
They prophesy hardpan while the
Spirit is breath and wind.

There is no sigh like the sigh
of those who, true and unloud,
sing the very same song
scored by the son of god alone.
They will peek their heads behind the clouds,
above the forested hillsides
and heave their panic away, their pain
inches from coordinates left by men.
The welling and weeping were released in sand
and sky, the sails swollen with wind, eye to eye,
turning by starlit notions, navigating through the slight
deviations of joy.
They prophesy feasting while the
lines form, spiral and more.