A Prophecy of Mourning

On the long timeline of life 
We will someday remember: there was a time when grandpa came to live nearby, 
Moving in with his daughter, your parents, my in-laws
And this remembrance will give us pause 

As we think about his death, and how he lived and died 
We will remember that smile which said, "I’ve been beat down by life”
And the eyes that questioned, “Surely all this longing cannot be denied?"
That smile, those eyes were like Oliver, pleading, “Please, God, I’d like some more”
And surmising that there was no more sustenance and no more time 
No stairway to heaven to climb

One of us, then, will comment on how he loved going to the putting green
And traded stocks in the afternoon, and lost his money
Defrauded and left bereft by cold souls who prey on the old, both thief and victim groping for some rope to hold
And we will talk of
How he loved sand and sun and beach, beneath blue sky
How he’d talk of water and start to sigh 

These remembrances will have some gravity, the weight of something beyond which we can just begin to name,
But we won’t stay too long in them, sensing the pain
So the orbit of our thoughts will pause before we let them pass 
As we realize—not with words, but with an intuition too deep down to hold—that we have no words at all to hang on the sadder mysteries of life
Which ended in grandpa, at his close, with strife and yet, no more strength to fight 
A good life which sought some safe harbor and did not, we think, find much clear water

This we will mourn, and the world will turn
And one of us will look up at the sky and ask where we should eat
And we’ll numb our losses with wine and meat
For this will remain the way of things
And it will be pleasing, though incomplete
Like waves and like the sea

Resonant Pitch

There is a place in the church where suddenly every sound resonates,
Creating the most marvelous shell of tones,
Which echo down like edicts from a throne

I’ll be standing there, talking about God knows what—baseball or the blood of Christ—
When suddenly my being shakes as the sound strikes
And with the amplification, something within me rises
I look around, mouth agape, in the great gratitude of surprise

Sometimes the other person hears it, sometimes they think me strange, as I look up and keep talking to keep the noise from stopping
Then I stop and stand in its refrain, say nothing, as the echo becomes its own sermon and a song
To remind us all
That love is always specific, and finds us in a specific place
Like sunlight on our face
A quivering in our body
A quaking in our bones
An echo that leads us home

And that God, like reality, wants to close in on us like
A great wall of sound 
Like noise
Falling to the ground

That Green Summer

There was a poetry that summer that I had no words for
With its need to work, to earn
And the lust to do nothing but sit, as the world turned
To burn through those three months like the sun, before school began again 

We worked as lawn men, mowing grass
And between us passed a great poetry, walking on quiet feet, cat-like,
As I learned without words to speak something felt and not seen—
How the world fits together
All the parts working, in cities and towns
To make the merry-round go ‘round:
The buying of gas
The loading of trucks
The cutting of grass
For what?

For little kingdoms and dominions to survey before the day fades
Wherein sit kings and queens eager for a lucky play that falls their way
(Though, of course, it rarely does)
And in their waiting, they miss the consolation 
Because what you get instead is an orange sunset and the smell of cut lawns and constellations spinning endlessly as the day grows long 
And the far off longing to be “gone” or “there” is revealed, at the end, to be deception,
Since what we get, ever and only, is here and now

We tasted the drink of longing that grinds us down, in the end
But which first befriends you and makes of you a god, too young to touch the ground
As the fruit of the tree, still ripe, like morning rises, awakening and singing in you its song
As if the branches could only, ever rise
As if the sky could only promise and provide undying freedom

Little did I know then that we already knew the secret:
All that matters, in the end, is friendship 
And someone to enjoy sweet, hard work with 
And the quiet passing of poetry that knows you before you know it 

The Long, Endless Becoming

I always assumed that in the endless metaphor of the cocoon
I would be the butterfly, and the chrysalis the pain of life

But what emerged this bright burning morning, after the black ravens deposited their laments and mourning
on the grass
And the geese told us that all must keep moving forward and, whatever come to pass,
All would be well
Was a bright new image that I could only call God
Taking wings as it did on the orange flood of day,
After a long waiting, as in a tomb 

I did not know which stood first to greet me, as they all rose at once to meet me
The sun 
The fearless aspen
The humble stand of wild flower
The hummingbird so sure and certain

But through me, like a quail taking flight, though the stalks of my heart,
A great surprise of tears found me 
Overwhelming me and, like dog casting off water, shook some unnamed sorrow from my mind
As if everything—the morning and my body, too—had been carrying such heavy news and, longing to be free
Found a path upon which to bloom 

God, I say
Because that is what God is
The healing morning that shakes darkness like crumbs from a tired picnic blanket
God the long, endless becoming
The day that always blooms
The butterfly reminding
That all things are made new

Salinas, CA

Salinas is beat to hell now, like a tired cat that has lost its fat
Or a rug left out too late too many nights

I’m not sure what Steinbeck would say;
He would probably have Samuel Hamilton, that great protagonist of light, 
Opine that this is the way of all things
And in the midst of it, timshel
Thou mayest, he would sing 

But the farms still work
“Feeding America” and “feeding our nation”, the signs say
And some of the great Victorians still stand like beacons of another age
Sentries to remind us what was and what can be:
The pride of fertile land
As mortals stand against the dusty plain and let the great virtue, courage, lift them
In its strong and bracing arms 

Courage, the greatest of all—
Once discarded, it still find its way to rise again 
Reminding us that in the heart of men, 
Amid all the mud and muck and brothels and drunkenness 
There is some flower around which we must erect a fence

Not unlike the land, then, our hearts
That land, that land, 
That unrivaled land of us 
Like a dog’s bark, that will not be hushed 
Like a mule, straining against the cart 
Like eyes, searching through the dark 

Flowers Growing in the Street

There is something about Jesus telling the religious dudes that rest serves men, and not the other way around
I imagine he said it with nonchalance, as when he drew on the ground, refusing to engage the crime of judgment or hate—
The very thing religion breeds when grounded in anything but love

Rest is for me, and then,
“The world is not for me, but I am for the world"
That’s not a bad mantra for liberty 
You start trying to do something, with the right motive
And then, since you can’t do a pure anything on your own, you have to let God in,
Laughing, as with an old friend who wonders why you were so long away

Or you can just pretend you’re good enough and then take precious things, like Sabbath rest, and make of them a contest
To prove how desirable you are, and good

Meanwhile the dog lapping at your feet
And the flowers growing in the cracks of the street
And the fire that rises into the night
Give not one thought to how good they are and just want love and sun and light

Let us always remember:
Jesus was accused of being drunk and loving bread too much
And, in general, having too much fun

The West, 1850

There is the reality 
Of long, hard salt flats shimmering in heat
Desert parched and cracked, longing for the sea
And dust and smoke
With oases and forests which, even still, do not yield much rest, and only dust for gold
And the long ribcage of mountains, old and wise but miserly, tearing earth asunder
Breaking men’s hearts with beauty and the heartache of endless obstacle 
Since the Rockies and the Sierras are, perhaps, the perfect metaphor for life

But above all the dirt floats the great idea
The West and Gold 
And somewhere northwest of here or there, a gentle god, the Pacific
Cools the dirt-clod feet of weary travelers, penniless and poor 
Who finally break down and sob, but still will say, 
With an adamant start and a sincere stare into the long, blue nowhere 
"I loved the idea which broke my heart"

What the Sage Said As We All Listened with Rapt Confusion

Well, of course it’s easier to chase flitting images, illicitly
And dismiss this as natural, our true longing, than it is to truly touch flesh,
Let alone press hearts
But if there’s no spark of love, we are left in fantasy,
Which is why pornography is not so much sin
As utter waste of time and attention 
Remember, boys: Even wanting love is enough for love
As the first bud of flower, no matter the size, is always enough for the morning and the day, and never to be despised 
And who said we were made for easy things, anyway?

Pastor and Priest at Starbucks

Perhaps she did not know for certain that I, too, was a pastor, with a flock to tend that morning
But her collar spoke of her lot in some Lutheran or Episcopal church, no doubt
The black and white, a muted frock, still bold enough to speak that the world is full of opposites and absolutes, 
Of bad and right, of dark and light

God, I miss the days of such clear notions
And categories in which to place all things
Though, perhaps, back then, the tradeoff for certainty was a lack of wind
Bereft the joy of a cooling breeze
And the colors, perhaps, were not so bright or full
They shook and wheezed, straining beneath our demand for righteous clarity

She nodded at me, knowingly, like you might before jumping out a foxhole, some line to charge, and I tipped my head, respectfully, as we stepped then into the morning, the sun just swirling the sky into magnificent orange 
The world clearly in its state of longing once again, like a dog waiting for its master at the door

But we knew how patient the day would be with its mystery,
Unhurried and unfolding its secrets slowly,
Never leaving them beyond arm’s reach, and such strong arms with which to hold them, too
Content—the world is, always—to leave so much unsaid
The earth and morning at peace with our unknowing
As we sigh and face the wind

And All the Stadiums Were the Same

Outside the fence you could still hear the crowd,
Their susurration interrupted only by whistles and the country boy voice of the announcer booming like a wounded bird from the stadium speakers,
As they plowed into each other, and the bystanders rejoiced at some choice display of gallantry on field of play

But you could fade the sounds away as you walked from the bleachers, the lights also pooling more quietly behind you, spilled like water clinging desperately to the ground, with miles of endless dark around
In the countryside, 
Where teenage dreams screamed like engines down country roads, some divinity to dare,
Where lust lived and died like summer thunderstorms, chased by the grip of winter wind

In the first grasp of autumn, the Southern grass turned yellow and hard with frost
Bodies gasping at the sudden cold
In West Blocton, Wedowee, Chelsea, and Pleasant Grove
The places changed, the scene remained the same:
The gravel parking lots, the hot chocolate, the chain-linked fence,
The high school penance, as we paraded, nearly apologizing for ourselves, to make our way through the world  

There’s the courage of warriors and of poets, and each faces its dragons
And we were battle-swept, each of us, and armored
Taking the long walk past all, so full of longing as to come undone

Every age has its promenades
Its way of creating time and space for ceremony, for masquerade
And sport, to prove our worth
And we were all there to find our birth 

For a moment I would wonder what would happen if I wandered away, 
Scaled the fields and just walked, into the night 
The sound of the game would fade like unwelcome day, the harsh white light crowding out the sky would suddenly grow dark 

But then my mom would say “Let’s go, come on,” and we’d get in the car and turn the heater on
The night both merciless and kind, and endless on every side
As a thousand eyes burned from the sky, full of curse or grace
The whole earth breathing
With a thousand arenas ahead of us
A thousand journeys yet to face

God Bless and Thank Him

May I never forget the man whose name I can’t recall, 
Who called English pounds squids instead of quid
As a dollar is a buck and not a duck, I’ll never know why he did it
Nor why he never smiled, since I thought he was letting me in on a little joke
But no,
He just ordered another pint and told me of his woes
With no self-indulgence, no pity
No invitation to carry his laundry 
Just an honest man, in reality, pointing out all the things that shouldn’t be and icing them with a swig of lager, before a glass of ale
Like we were all old friends

Some sorts are out of sync with life, thank God
We need them, jesters of a mad age
The knaves who personify our frustration, and our longing 
Who refuse to run and duck but look at life with pluck and stand out, the sore thumbs, 
Shirts untucked,
Who just take a cigarette and smoke it and hope for luck
Stewing in their lust and love, 
Waiting for the bus
Crayons unable to be pushed into their place within the box

God bless them, those un-coy foxes, and may they find happiness
And may we all find, each of us, trust 
On hearts unruffled by time’s dust 
Throwing down a glass upon the table, pushing over our squids,
And saying “One more,” with hearty lust 

While Spring Opens So Softly

I have found that each human—myself and all others
Have a place inside them all dry and damp, both desert and swamp, into which they are tempted to go

And when they do, they low the song of how they cannot be loved
Some crying it, growing addicted to their tears
Some pushing it down, to avoid facing that awful lion they fear

In that place of dark woe, where every atom of existence shudders before the light of knowing
The soul becomes a mouse, over whom the hawk shadow passes and the coiling snake sings
And all this while the pink spring opens up so softly, as a dancer who does not have to think,

And the earth, heedless of its own grave beauty or the thought that there might be no sky to rain on it,
Gives not a glance at its own tender self,
Instead feeding all things with dirt, and soil, and green
And so gives us spring

Miracles

Even if the world were full of talking bears or beasts 
And no one stared or thought it strange in the least
And even if by thinking we could fly
And with our wishing touch the sky
We would find other fantasies that render incomplete
This world of dirt beneath our feet
Our hearts still longing for the next thing
The absence of which would smart and sting
Which is why
We miss the many miracles, endless, and all around
Begging, longing to be found

Somewhere there may be creatures dreaming of a blue sky 
And machines that pierce it, taking people from here to there, over oceans, deep and blue
To great cities encircled by forests blooming green in endless hues, in springtime,
And full of things called flowers, called forth by mist and rain and showers, so chock full of scent it’s shocking
And nights rising on endless plumes of orange and pink, as evening falls
And stars begin to blink 
While the miracle of a hard rock, with dirt and sea, sails around a sun 
Their heads shaking at the wonder of it all

Black Jesus

The first time I encountered Black Jesus was above the Mass Avenue Baptist Church soup kitchen
I was sent to do some errand and passed through the sanctuary, where I met him on a huge canvas, above the pulpit, baptizing souls lost and found, his dark skin so different from the white Jesuses I grew up with

Of course, Jesus was a Jew, and I realized we all want a Jesus to look like me and less like you
But Black Jesus met me in some other part of my soul, where I had been long in waiting, as in a room, tapping my feet, knowing there was someone yet to meet

His eyes, piercing, invited me
And I sat in the cavernous sanctuary for an hour that winter afternoon
On long blue pews worn down by so many souls sighing in the longing to find something beyond a vague
sense of love:
A scent specific as fire 
A look as knowing as a lovers' desire
Something we’d not only live but die for

Love, always specific, in flesh and bone, is why I believe, after all:
Love cannot be other than eyes and skin
Not an idea but a hand, to open a door and let you in, and say your name

A mouth, too, denying difference, saying “All is the same”
But revealing, too, that all is resolutely different 
To humble you, to help you fall 
Which is the only way you gain your sight
And just enough light 
To see anything at all 

The Labor of Language's Long Wander

I.

The murder of ravens on the green hill got me thinking what other groups should be called
An awkwardness of teenagers, perhaps, or
A wilderness of stars, or
A gossiping of trees
A murmuring of breezes 

As the great, gray highway lifted me beneath the conspiracy of mountains
I had a moment of marvel as the absurdity hit me, 
Of language—
That we should make sounds to name a spoon or the moon, or loneliness, or emptiness 
And they’re all so different the world around, so many sounds, 
Which is proof: many approaches to a mountain, but the mountain remains aloof 

II.

The endlessness of mapping starts, perhaps, with a false promise: that we can put words to everything 
First, objects concrete and sure, as if the work will be a cinch 
Until the gradient increases, inch by inch

We name finer things, then, like forgiveness,
Labeling the ability to move our souls into release, into letting go, into peace
That this is so human a thing we need a name for it—
What strange reality

But soon, language evaporates before our eyes, into ideas and abstractions which can feel like lies 
Until all our longing becomes too fine to put any point on it, 
A mist always eluding the mind, leaving us only hearts, beguiled, betrayed 
As we grasp, in fits and starts—blind hands grasping through a maze—
To name things too pure for us to talk about
As sailors wrestling with a wave cannot comprehend the depth on every side, the vast sea and sky  

III.

The brood of desire, untamed, we fine at last will not be named
As damned language, dearest friend, fails us,
Inviting only our love and pity as its shrugs and almost smiles, straining, as we all might when we find at last our limits, and knowing it’s just pretending to keep on trying
Unable to lift any more the avalanche of rock under which we know, somehow, our salvation lies, if we could but name things rightly 

To name is to wander and wonder no longer, but, since it is our lot:
May we come to love the void, and not to curse the unfound shore 
And embrace instead the endless exploring
As in a great labyrinth 
Through which our wild, long-bearded souls shamble
Under a great wilderness of stars
A conspiracy of mountains
A longing of hearts 

The Ordination of All Things

After my ordination, with ritual and ceremony, enough pomp to feel we accomplished something
And after the party, 
I walked down to the corner, for to parlay my own self
For to introvert and breathe, sigh and smile, my mouth finding grace in the surprise taste of a last bit of pound cake, in dried sugar on my face

Then light fell in the holy hour, when things bow before the shower of coming night 
Everything lifted its head, then set it down again, like a dog welcoming its master, with wagging tail
The trees, the flowers, the blades of grass in the park just across from me
But also the wood and concrete and the city street, all flush with longing
As orange and pink cascaded across the sky
Like warm incense, a languid mist
The incandescence of holiness

So light fell in the daily reminder that all will be well 
The celebration of the ordination of all things
And a reminder that God, too, vulnerably dreams
And feels the sting of human being
And the loss that evening brings  

San Pedro, Mexico

We would walk to the bandstand at the plaza on Friday nights—
to behold the great cacophony of life, drenched in neon, as Mariachi music drifted across the parking lots and lawns, the speakers wailing the dirge of a desert town, to synchronize each human heart—
And after buying tacos and a coke, we’d sit on the curb as the wind stirred the dirt 
While novios walked hand in hand, in promenade, in Sunday best, above the fray

Those evenings seemed to speak:
Work hard all day and once a week, you can have your say, and a little drink
And lean in to love or lust, on tired grass 
If that’s your lot, then chin up:
A kiss beneath a tree with no business blooming in the desert redounds with miracle, and maybe you can
make it last
And hold it long within your grasp 

All the while, the great sun would burn down as if too sad to stay
But we hardly noticed the holy shades of orange nor the shape of the world’s temple nor its crown of thorns
And certainly not all the things we couldn’t name or say 
Ghostly within us, just kept at bay
Like how human longing is all the same
And we know its shape but not its name 

We felt, too, there is nothing new under the sun or moon 
Culture, too—once you get past the music and the food—is all a dirge
A sweeping of the soul so we can order our long lament
And our brave facing of the dark
With food, music, and miraculous hearts 

The Presbyterian Reflects on Communion

It would be wonderful if we all took the blood of Christ seriously 
If we let it demand something of our souls
If we let it in 
Rather than setting it as a serum on the shelf, to cancel sin
As if the goal were to begin, endlessly again, rather than to break free into some God-stoked revelry 

But 

That is hard work and would require true goodness and getting past religion 
Which we have shaped as the thing to numb the sting
And let us wear our Sunday best
As if God looks down with a puffed out chest at how we dressed
At our knotted our ties, and how we rise and genuflect

I wonder if we have not become religious and right, 
The shield against God himself,
The thing that God despises

But, then again, 

Why would we become good when we can just skate by on the great conveyer belt of life, Picking from it, like custards off a lazy Susan, whatever strikes our eyes?
All while we hold the promise, like a promissory note
Of a great piece of heavenly pie, waiting for us above, handed out by a Jesus of our own skin tone and color, who will say “You got your catechism right, so come on in!"

Still,

When we drove away from church I think I saw God, if I saw him right:
He was washing a window with tatted arms, strong and sinewy,
And I remembered some verse: if you can’t love the seen, don’t think you love the unseen

Well, now…shit

Such thoughts would be a grenade among us—
Who trust that our right thinking is the key to St. Peter’s gate
Even if , lately, I’ve grown afraid:
It might be an anchor’s weight, pulling us into a long and lonely sea  
And a sunless morning, long and dull and gray 

The Unchanging Smell of Fire

I take great comfort in the universal smell of fire and flame
Which met my senses, an old friend I could call by name,
As I rode my bike beneath the bridge
Where someone near me must have stood, in their backyard, burning wood

I suppose Genghis Khan also stood in the same holy pause before a campfire
And wondered, perhaps, about his life and its constant strife 
Before brushing away his doubts, like wisps of smoke and spark 
And Caesar and Charlemagne, just like the Christ, they smelled the same scent 
And so it graced their cooks and maids, too, like perfume
The poor and rich alike to smell the flame 

We humans walk out variations in power—given us by chance and place—but our humanity, equally graced, has the same sense to comprehend the mystery, without end,
The same blood and brain to entertain 
That refrain of smoke and flame finds us, whatever our station or our frame 
No wonder the prophets said that all the dread earth (and all of us), would be burned in fire, and born again, then called by God, by name

I have stood in the smoke of fires in Nova Scotia, worlds away
And the yellow-clad forests of Maine
And the canals just west of Oxford, near the shires where fleet foxes 
Reminded me of Beatrix Potter and my childhood

Young years come to me as I smell the scent, 
Days filled with books bound in orange with yellow leaves inside, inviting us to walk, side-by-side, by forest brook 
Or, to sail the world, 
This earth of water and barges and the holy space amidst the darknesses  
All touched, on holy mornings and dark night, by the holy smell of fire
As if the world is its own priest ever sending up incantations for the dead
Always spreading incense, at its feet, that we should stop and say a prayer
Before lifting holy heads

The First Day of Autumn

The first day is not the equinox, when the earth tilts past its glorious prime, but rather,
The first day we smell fire and leaves on the wind, intermixed with pine 
Then we know it’s here and sit back and smile
In the promise that, though we’ll die, there’s life again on the other side

And in my private thoughts what stirs, always, is the third grade,
(How closely scent connects the mind to memory, closer than a kiss)
As I see a field trip to the farmer’s market, when Janet Clark's batteries dropped from her camera and I was there to pick them up, all the pumpkins around us applauding for me, for grabbing the stroke of luck, 
Right place, right time, aspiring to be a gentleman and kind,
Though such things go out of style, they seem to be hard-wired as the desire
I already knew then—for the whisper of soft skin
And her bright brown eyes
My heart already so lonely with longing

And I remember, in ’85, standing next to the parade that filed all the high school heroes by us, their pious worshippers— 
We could not know their hearts stirred with any anxiety, how bright their smiles and their homecoming dresses, their hair pressed to impress us
And they did
And again,
The burning beauty of lonely longing was on the wind
Deep as any autumn orange
Smoldering the hole within every human heart, so desperate to be satisfied
We grow up, we remain lovesick children, writing the song of our hearts with dust and chalk 

I am strengthened in my climb by these memories,
Pictures in my mind which are ever mine and my greatest treasures
Gold which goes with me, consigned to some place beneath the daily pace of life, but always rising to remind me that, My God
The world is fair and bright
And that it is no small miracle to harbor such worlds inside us

So now, fire-on-the-wind, my old friend, ask me your question, once again: 
Can I enter in? 
Into the lonely, 
To make of it some poetry in verse or in how I spend my longing and my time 
And can I bless now the young hearts and minds being kissed of fire for their first time?

Perhaps at a table tonight, with wine, I will tell you, my love, of those places behind and hear of yours
Though none now shine for me with stars as bright as the light echoing in your eyes
As we incline the conversation back through time, tilting it like the earth’s axis
We, too, become turned until, at that perfect angle, all becomes still
And the firelight shines revealing the world that spins inside us

Our good glad work now is handing on some world, like wheat, to the children at our feet
To feed the lonely of their precious hearts
And eyes that are meant to burn like funeral pyres, the phoenix to give flight 
And minds that will carry memories, I hope, 
Always kissed by smoke and fire

For more poetry, click here.