The Sane Walked Away

The Sane Walked Away

(“False messiahs and false prophets will have arisen and will produce signs and omens intending to deceive, if possible, the elect.” Mark 13:22)

You had them convinced, you had them in the palm of your hand,
you had them believing you could cast out demons with
just three notes of your song.
The proof was in your words;
the demons were invisible,
you waved your feet like they were swords,
you proclaimed defeat while the crowd
watched in silent appreciation.

Your profit was enormous, your houses a dozen palaces,
you scolded the few who could not sing
the words you wrote that dug into the ears
of the unsuspecting.

You were not enormous but pretended to defeat
every malady, to browbeat the darkness as if
you had invented the sun. The day gave way to
innuendoes and deceptions. You feigned sanity
while handing out madness like candy. Where

Did you learn

To package it slightly, stuffed within your black coat
baying at the moon.

The sane walked away, went downtown,
and bought lunch for the hundred who were not
taken in.

I Belong

I Belong

(“It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. This life that I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.” Galatians 2:20)

I spent too many hours drowsy like
a wintertime bear. I waited for a knock on the door
or someone to pour me another cup of coffee.
I could have seen the hills where frozen fog had
decorated them like buttercream frosting. As the
day went on they melted like a cat licking cake.

My failures had piled up higher than I could reach;
my hallway narrowed in my sleep until I only saw
right and left directly in front of me.
I try to remember my dreams, but I fall back asleep
and they are gone.

I try to understand the words I’ve heard every day,
and they swirl past me like the mists that the haze laid
across the rolling field. I don’t ask for pity,
I never ask for money,
I only want to know I’ll make it through the
next decade older than I have become.

Haply, though, the chances were in my favor,
the changes like dusky diamonds on the road
were within the very breaths of my sighs and indignation.
I regretted more than I had forgotten
and ached more than the storms had gotten out of control.
I gave up and when I did

The mountains did not fall, the sidewalk did not trip,
the ice did not make me slip, the time took me no time at all;
I listened to your voice, and for once I knew
all I had been through
led me here. Where else could it have been.

My days begin and no longer wait for a mysterious guest.
Instead I find, more than bread, more than wine,
the wilds inside that lead me like adventure down the
wider halls of wonder. I do not mind the wandering
as much,
for I am no longer lost, though often alone. I am full though
hollow as ever. I belong, from Spring to September, to the
saints who sang uncanny music in my ears.

So The Colors Ran

So The Colors Ran

(“Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith.” 2 Corinthians 13:5

I ran out of time to paint so the
colors ran like the snow, landing between the
trim and the foundation,
while I took a break to search for my soul.
I hadn’t lost it,
it had not vanished,
I just had misplace it while
I listened to the barking jokers
who decided, with no input of my own,
exactly what design I should be applying to
the front wall of my own home.

If someone will fetch me a glass of ice water
I’ll tell you why this west-facing wall is so important.
The first thing you see from the street, this wall
needs to be (almost unconsciously) a true portrait of me.

I took everything to heart for so long that my mind
fell apart
when I repainted paisleys over yesterday’s diamonds.
I swear I used a dozen colors based on the latest
expert opinion about what would catch people’s eyes.

Every time I applied one coat to my liking and then
an overcoat
made in the likeness of others who had so much more
expertise than me. I questioned every time my brush
hit the can.

This time the voices are muted. I swear they still ring
in my mind 50 years later and a thousand miles away.
This time I will paint what I see,
I will circle the windows like springtime cocoons,
and trim the door to appear open all the time.
This time I will paint what I know,
even though it may not grow the way I intended.
This time I may meander outside the lines, I may
hide the Name beneath the sill, just small enough to
read up close,
but not from the road.

Upside-Down Echoes

Upside-Down Echoes

(“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9a)

Where are the words that paint as lovely as
midnight blue? Where are they that describe
the corner the young warrior sits in thinking
she will never get the chance to make up for the
losses she faced?

Not everyone signs up to fight. Failing is so much
quicker than winning. But once you’ve lost, the
rope clenches your brain, suspends your hopes,
and convinces you it will all happen again.

There are notes written on each snowflake
lightly falling like white autumn leaves.
It is cold there in the corner, it is lonesome and
unavoidable.

If you’ll allow, I’ll climb in the corner with you,
we can count to three while we rehearse our losses,
our bottomless ability to flee from nothing.
Did you bring your ammunition? Let’s disarm
ourselves
from the echo that reverbs, wall to wall,
and turns us upside down.

I know you have a voice, you have a word,
you have a sentence, you have a book.
Are you afraid you’ve betrayed your oath?
Are you sitting here while we both rehearse
our failures?

I’ll see in you if you’ll see in me
just one more win than we have losses.

We Kept the Soup Warm

We Kept the Soup Warm

(“As the Lord had promised through Elijah, the bowl did not run out of flour nor did the jar run out of oil.” 1 Kings 17:16)

It took us so much longer than we planned.
We were ready to feed anyone who showed up
but our shoes were slow in the dusky ground.
Our resources were few,
our words even less,
we counted the heads, and we counted the eagles
that flew above the trees. They could see everything.
They said there could be snow in the morning,
they said it might turn to rain. They did not
push their narrative,
they only mentioned it as a percentage of
weather we saw yesterday.

It was no accident, and we kept the soup warm,
it was no frivolous expense of funds.
We trusted the bread into the hands
of children, we placed bowls and
slices in front of the elders who sang
old songs like echoes in a canyon.

We walked some of them home
along the river where the sun sets like
a bird diving in the water. The rainbows
slept for the night and our noses were cold
by the time we came back inside.

We washed the dishes, emptied the coffee,
wiped the tables, and mopped the floors.
We tried to sing the song we had heard,
the words were scattered across the room.

My Words Like Armor

My Words Like Armor

(“But Jesus told them, ‘He wrote this command for you because of the hardness of your hearts.’” Mark 10:5)

I wear my words like armor,
I look for loopholes in yours.
Starting from the middle I can
slide down the slopes from north or south;
I can believe I am above it all.

Or, if someone talks out loud, I can
nod occasionally, I can mumble famously,
and leave them thinking I have heard
every word.
They may even think, though I would not admit it,
that I agree.
I do not.

How many years does it take to lay down my shield,
how many decades to reshape the form that held all
I believed.
I sealed up all the cracks and the darkness stayed inside;
the light could not find me. And you thought,
like all the rest,
that I was at my best when talking about God.

I disagree. My metaphors are misanthropes,
hindered hopes that sit at the base of my spine.
Every opinion I’ve ever heard has been mine
until
I heard a love that was more solid than
the poetry I created. I cannot define it,
I can barely describe it, but there is a WE
that exists in the midst of everything. My
theories only keep you at arm’s length anyway.

My fingers are calloused but my thoughts are mindless,
my progress is timeless and the cure I was offered
only tied me in knots. But I’ll sit with you here
as long as it takes to untie the kindness we had
at the start.

Flocks of Geese

Flocks of Geese

(“During a severe ordeal of suffering, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in the wealth of their generosity.” 2 Corinthians 8:2)

It was the time of year when flocks of geese
gleaned the fields. The cattle a fence away
fed on grass and drank out of tubs halfway between.
A calf chewed away just an arm-length from the fence and
turned back toward the herd as a man stopped to look him in the face.

There were footprints on the path the man had walked and
he carried the world like a backpack on his shoulders. He had
started with everything he needed but had nothing for the
weight that pushed his feet into the mud. He was not
destitute,
but he could feel the pressure of the day robbing him of hope.
But he would continue walking, he would carry on.

While the cattle grazed, while the geese fed,
he met the day the way a grandad baby-talks
the toddler who crosses his path.

Sighting down the fence-line he saw the cattle
to his left
and the geese
to his right
and remembered something like waking up
on a Saturday with the sun already in the sky.
He had room in his pack for one burden more

And he walked on to bring the easel, paint, and
brushes to the child
he had met just the day before.