These Days I Rarely Understand

These Days I Rarely Understand

(“All scripture is inspired by God...so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17)

These days I never understand a word you say,
while everyone else prophesies about dead end days.
How many days on the calendar,
how many decades in the rear-view mirror,
how many centuries of waiting in caves,
how many isolated on mountain peaks with
their stashes of canned goods and guns?

These days I never understand a word you say,
while everyone else preaches about conspiracy certainty.
How many people does it take
to keep a secret from the rest of us?
You swear everything you see with your eyes
is invented by newscasters and forecasters of death.
But everything you find in your head,
or is invisibly said by unmasked hatred
you swallow like chocolate cake.

These days I never understand a word you say,
while everyone divides the garments of the poor
and casts lots for the leftovers to carpet their bedroom floors.
How many lungs without breath
until you put on your boots and join the rest
who cannot stand for one more chokehold in the name of
law.
Remove the blindfold to see what is in front of you,
and sell all you have to join the hidden,
and tell how long it took to find the forbidden words
that set the prisoners free. Don’t speak of equality
until you can imagine traffic that accelerates the moment
you become a pedestrian. Watch the crosswalk son.

These days I rarely understand a word you say;
but love. I’ll scrape my knees for love,
cross the street for love,
eat what you eat for love,
take the heat for love.

I remember every face that said Christ was a white man’s
religion,
and when I tried to convince them otherwise.
Today I would listen. I don’t know how, but he has become whiter
in this stolen land haunted by its ancestors who knew grandfather better
than we think we know his son.

Please dream with me about undivided skies,
plains that grant us bread,
rains that soften our beards and faces,
and streets that bear the names of original blessing instead
of original sin.

Listen with me and let us understand (grandfather, son and holy ghost)
if we will not love, we have not listened. And if we have not listened,
we have not understood.

We Build Again

We Build Again

 (“The breaker goes up before them…” Micah 2:13a)

Justice will wing its way through every shout,
every aggression, and take to the sky with
the hopes of the forgotten trailing behind. 

Justice is no blind counterweight; it is the perfect
vision of love when the children of trauma are forgotten.
It sees the invisible, the erased, the stolen, the refugee,
the frozen and the effigies of cousins roped to the trees.

 And we keep marching, we keep coming,
we will not be moved, we will not be undone.
And we keep shouting, we will overcome,
for one by one we’ll cross any bridge to see
the work of mercy done.

 But some backs are bent, some feet are bleeding,
some eyes are dim, some arms are reaching
for the goal set before them that is receding
with every determined step and limp. 

So we keep marching, we keep moving,
we are not yet done, we will not be erased.
And we keep singing, hard rain’s gonna fall,
for arm in arm we’ll cross any sea to find
the promised kingdom come. 

Justice is our banner, never forgotten,
the rains will not wash away the message written with blood.
Mercy is our weapon, our hands up and empty,
our faces soiled with tears for the wounded and wounding,
the rain will not wash our grubby cheeks and noses
until the floods have come to drain the streets
and leave behind
only empty lots where 

Arm in arm, we build again.

My Life Has Become Smaller

My Life Has Become Smaller

(“He must become more important, but I must become less important.” John 3:30)

My life has become slower, smaller,
creeping along the afternoon blades of grass
between morning and noon.
No longer racing from book-page to onstage,
from hammer and nails to scanning emails
for anything meaningful.
My life has become smaller, a square foot at a time,
hemmed in by the pain that wrapped a braided
steel cable around my mind.
Stuck in the driveway, walking the same ellipse,
seeing the same cracks in the sidewalk, waving at
people who pass in cars with blackened windshields
never knowing if they wave back.

My life has become smaller between the long ranches,
the southwest desert and the coastal ranges my feet
once roamed. Now I stay home. 

I try to wash my hands,
I try to wash my hair,
I try to wash my heart
and all I see is dirt
and all I’ve been told is
make sure to scrub behind your ears.

But over the years the dirt has stayed
between wrinkles, beneath fingernails;
vestiges of each moment my hands touched the
face of the earth (a planet that breathes withs
clouds and sighs with thunder). I no longer wonder
why I don’t hurry to scour the remains of stellar dust
that cling to my body. The dust I hold is the dust that,
so old ago, I am made of.

I’ve got nothing in my pocket except wadded tissues.
I used to carry business cards, credit cards, folded
phone numbers and family pictures a dozen years old.
I’ve got nothing in my pocket except lint and tissues.
I travel lighter and smaller and forget my wallet when
I go to the doctor.

I still do not see well, and will have my eyes checked
in a week.
I still do not pray well, and have practiced every
technique.
I sit on the porch now, and wait for visits from my
toddler neighbors.
I sit on the porch now, and the wind speaks for me in
whispered prayers.

My life is smaller now and somehow
I do not mind. (Although I may answer different
if you ask me a different time.) My life is
smaller,
but the earth breathes the name to my broken heart
of the one who never let me become lost,
the more microscopic
I have become.

Prayed Alone

Prayed Alone

(“He alone is immortal; he lives in the light that no one can approach. No one has ever seen him; no one can ever see him. To him be honor and eternal power! Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:16)

I dreamed I saw a man,
a small man,
a round man,
crowded on his knees
into the dark corner of
a half-pew. He prayed alone.

I dreamed he saw me,

just a guy,
a plain guy,
edging next to him
as he half arose from his
long kneeling. He prayed alone.

I dreamed, we did not speak,
two humans,
too precious
to despair alone;
I joined him in the shadow
cast by earth. We prayed alone.

I did not know him,
maybe me,
or a son.
Maybe a mixture
of everyone I’ve known who,
swathed in light, had prayed alone.

I Had to Apologize Today

I Had to Apologize Today

(“We trust in the living God who came to save all people. He makes a way for those who believe in him.” 1 Timothy 4:10b)

I had to apologize again today.
Sorry, more than once today.
I don’t mind making amends,
don’t mind much admitting I’m wrong.
What tires me is taking the barbs,
tiny snippets of arrowhead offense
and, backed into the corner again,
I admit I could have rephrased my comment.

But like storm clouds that crash without warning,
they want me to change my opinion too. Few are
triggered by the sunshine that warms their own garden plot.

But, I did have to apologize today. And then the silence.
Some who have never met me face to face,
or had an hour of music together,
or have forgotten the gentle frame that
borders our lifetime,
walk away burning and may leave the planet,
escape the gravity we both obey, and further from earth,
slung into outer space,
they are unreachable by phone, text or
a simple embrace.

Don’t we all have the same birthplace? Not the same
town or country, but the soil on which generations stirred
to drink the air from trees, breathe the one sun that bundles us all,
nurse from the fruit of earth, and sleep in the cradle of footprints
left by offspring who grew up before us.

So I offered another apology. And my chest is lead.
My fingers are shivering in the summer wind. My feet are chilled.
We kill each other, then kill back. And our hearts still beat,
but retreat more quickly the next time someone sends
a message in the mail. We used to like to open envelopes,
sneak the stationery slowly from its womb. But too soon
Some letters are just more darts spit toward the one
The author thought had broken him. And now no
safe place
exists between send and receive.

But I apologized again (I am a master of penance)
and I enter the space as I decelerate my engagements
with those I’ve offended, and hope their aim is off
just enough
to let quilt and rapture stitched by God
wrap us both inside.

The Music Never Stopped

The Music Never Stopped

(“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly.” Joel 2:15)

The loudspeakers are not selective,
their frequency soars across the plaza,
echoes off the stone hills,
pushes the river further downstream,
ricochets off the banks and restaurants downtown.

The banjos announce the time to assemble,
the mandolins sing the same again,
the brass hold back until the crows settle on
the asphalt paths and parking lots.
Congas call the drum circles’ song,
while whirling banners and shawls dance down
the back streets; the streams overflow as feet
skip and hurry to the call.

Even steeples seem higher, enemies shyer,
and confreres delight in the deepening day.
The tables are spread like a village wedding
on the sidewalks, on the boulevard,
on front lawns, on courthouse steps;
The weeping is over and repentance has
washed every debate away for another day.

We celebrate like children again, laugh as we
sing like Dylan again. The borders have opened,
the doors are unlocked, we have opened our ears
and learned the stories of immigrants and widows,
and those from african, caribbean, muslim, cynic
and pagan descent. We bowed our heads just long enough
to hear everything we thought God had never said.

We shed tears for the sheep we kept out of the pen,
for the words we called those who sang the blues over
and over
again.
We repaid the stolen generations, we honored the
broken treaties, we learned the native tongues
we once called foreign and delighted in their unfamiliar
rhythms. 

We reviewed the outcropping from peak to valley
and had never seen the imported air the same.

The music never stopped; we still learned silence.
The feasting never ended; we still fasted with grace.
The churches did not close; we still chose the way
the light played over everything.
The lion, the lamb, the prayerful and uncertain,
the oldschool, the post-modern, sat on the lawn
all day long
and woke at dawn to start the festival
over again.

After the Kneading

After the Kneading

(“However, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first, Jesus Christ might display all his patience…” 1 Timothy 1:16a)

How long does it take for darkness to unfurl,
for the taste of violent cuisine to roll off our tongues
into loaves from the earth baked in the noonday sun?

We used to let the elders take the front of the line
in our potlucks and banquets,
with unaccompanied minors right behind.
In that thin place between age and innocence we
hoped
prophetic purity might arise.

Time (that place unmeasured except by planetary motion)
outpaces our lusts and unmade faces until
we are dissatisfied again by the meager fare
of private meals where with little love and less challenge
we eat by ourselves.

But bread is meant to be prepared with muscled hours,
rising after the kneading like a carnival balloon.
Bread is meant to be shared with all who detected
the aroma of the afternoon, arriving to a circle of
friends for a repast near evening.

Some bring guitars, some bring songs,
some read poetry, some play along,
some limp in slowly, others tumble like clowns,
some take off their shoes, some make the rounds
and hug every neck, high and low, telling
the same jokes they’ve told one hundred times before.
Still everyone laughs; maybe everyone snickers.

We’ve been around the block a few times,
some have even met each other in the ring;
some have had words with each other more times
than you would believe,
but that is why they share the bread which redefines
argument and apologetic from winning and sinning
to singing and ringing the dinner bell with the
screen door wide open and the wine already poured.

There is a banquet, there is a picnic,
and if you get confused, just watch the dragonflies play
and hear the echoes of the frogs in the damp grass

And sit with us a spell, sing with us a prayer (even
with your mouth full). Stuffed and sleepy we’ll end
the day, but will wait for the very last vagabond
who always arrives much too late.