Category Archives: God

Reflections in the dark

Posted on by
Reply

ghost light

reflected in the rear view mirror

(Where, as you know, things are closer than they appear)

Come close, Light

Lie with me in the dark night

Gaze into the firmament 

where broody giants

time and atoms become

Lonely

As our eyes begin to falter

the ghost light does not

stop just because we fail

to see

No.  The light goes on 

comes on

Barrelling through the tunnel of darkness

toward us, light speed 

These three remain…

Just three?  Out of this infinite 

host of…the

whole we shall be..come

When we see Love for the first time

Face to face. 

Love Will Find You

Posted on by
Reply

Voice in your head

Kinda sounds like you but…

Kinder, wiser, more forgiving

Bright penny on the ground

In the most unlikely places

A posse of leaves long wrung from living limbs

Dance, alive in the winter wind

Sing your name

No matter 

A big impossible 

Promise unless it is Truth

Kind that sets a body free

Not unlike those ephemeral leaves

Dry bones

Bits of things found

In the unlikeliest places

Love will find you

No matter what.

Magi at the park

Posted on by
Reply

They emerged from an ordinary 

van

…wore ordinary clothes

shuffled toward me along uneven

lines

squinting, sun-struck

I realized: Magi!

come close enough for

greetings and salutations 

along the usual

Lines of dignitaries and princes-

Hands shaken; eyes met 

they said oh, it is you!

(Me?) their honored guest?

regretting I had no

Gold, frankincense, myrrh to give them

Come so far we all are 

children of the King.

“There’s no base!”

Posted on by
Reply

“there’s no base!” 

Exclaimed the girl–green shirt, tiny dog resembling a toy…

only real in the crook of her arm

And suddenly I get atheism–

Darwin shouts in the  schoolyard– 

no base!

And unhinging the game from…

well, base-

Another name for

The trunk of the branching oak

we rest beneath

breathing hard

before someone says

One, two, three, get off my father’s apple tree

Not to be confused with 

That one inimitable player who says

One, two, three, base all over me

And somehow, miraculously

Means it.

Cry Fire

Posted on by
Reply

her voice is metallic-insistent-succinct 

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Thank God she is there

10 dollar angel

suspended above us while we sleep 

…when we sleep

You know it took me years to know You did that 

And then years again to know few others did.

Vigilant love, calling us out of darkness

where angels who watch over us if we 

had eyes to see

Always resemble the Firstborn

Fill the sky with light

Ring the children with wings and eyes

And teach them how to vanquish

Implacable darkness 

with words of supplication 

to the fierce Unstoppable 

God of Light.

The Distance Between Us

Posted on by
2

Bet everybody loves a good

love story 

Boy meets girl or something…

Only that is not enough

You once asked me if there were monkey bars that went all around the world

Could you do it?

I could do the math

24,901 miles around

Oddly specific last mile the hardest

Arms tired by the miles of 

Arm-swing-leg-swing-hang repeat

131,477,280 bars

Feet

Hands and arms so tired

After an eternal day in the sun

The girl is such an ordinary thing

But the boy is one-of-a-kind

Worth looking for

The man who could, would, did and shall

Make this love story

Luminous.

To the March

Posted on by
Reply

In deep winter

she chooses to suspend 

All the ordinary chores 

Drags a heavy fishing net to the belly

of this man-made stream

Feet first into

cold deep

Swims upstream

where they wait for her

bobbing on the water

snagged by the naked

limbs of winter branches

An old oil can, adorned with red duct tape,

several empty beer bottles,

torn flotational device,

And a veritable tableau of shirts and trousers

Snagged on naked limbs

then animated by the wind

Once carefully extricated

she lines the children up by year, gender, alleged disability

Names them back to life

So they can indeed

Fly, flock of winter birds 

to inauguration.

You and me on the old back porch

Posted on by
Reply

 In an already messy old house

I try to find a place to stash my anger

The beat-up old chest?

Grandma’s dresser?

Each place I go I feel your loss

The way a tall boy once held a short girl at arm’s length

As she beat at the air with rage and sorrow

Maybe it is the air that is the problem…

Not enough oxygen?

The matrix of maternal affection somehow dislodged by 

Something?

Something missing.

It is as though the lost girls had become those things-

A trunk, a cup, a worn blanket

Trapped in closets 

…in the minds of monsters

The old childhood nightmare turned on its head-

The child in the closet 

The mother, the monster

Shaking its imaginary head

“Even I could not 

Would not

Do something so unspeakable 

To a human child.”

Real Mom

Posted on by
Reply

i wrote it deliberately 

the way it has been now to me

for over 20 years

and has been to the created

Universe

For as long as He can remember

Or rather just since that unfortunate incident in the Garden

“Biological mother” might have always been our deplorable undoing-

The willful choice

To pick death over Real Mom

Seems somewhat abstruse and vaguely epistemological 

Until I tell you about the feral 

cats of Universal City

one of whom, just a wee thing

had words with me last night

Sure, they were just 

plaintive and insistent 

Mewings in the parking lot

But we both know it was more than that

It was all of them

Hidden in the margins

Rightfully afraid of the humans who trashed the Garden

Looking for Real Mom

And yet so cold, so alone

so afraid to come home.