we watched the old man
Build his doohiggy in the yard
For a hundred years
We mocked
his talk of “rain”
Unaltering our behavior
To the very end
Through the procession of paired creatures
Too quiet, too orderly, in hindsight
No longer
surprised when he shuts up his wooden spaceship
Seven day still
Then
Come rain
Rise relentless river
Through the rooms of our careless together
Drips, drops, seep, torrent, flood
words we coin
In the last moments of our lives
As the world entire
Recedes
After so long waiting
Wild hope
quietly emerges from the crowd
Some unnamed Jewish festival in Jerusalem
Near the Sheep Gate, of course
Where we
Lame, blind, and patently foolish
Lie prone, waiting for angels
Angels and the ghosts of gods
Occasionally
stir the waters
Every plural word written of
our collective loss
Reruns the ambiguity between
Our healing and our disgrace
Clouds in our eyes
We fail to
Drink such strong medicine
Poured out
For us
You want less?
Probably not
Save the sagging bits of self left
Clinging to your soft middle
You want more
More sunshine and more rain
More fame, more privacy
More love, more oxygen in the lungs
Once filled with more
Sing loud, sing more
Full-throated
This four letter word for greatness
Expanding out into
Infinite light
these ordinary words
Hewn from a tree
To the curve of the foot
Or simply endure
Itself a stone, a hard place
To be in the presence of God
As he dips the bread into wine
Supper of blood and agony
Last…
Supper
Day
Glimpse…
Of who we will be
The first and the last
The last shall be
First.
First you must know
The beautiful feat of God.
you deserve
Truth clenched in both hands
For years I have puzzled
How would she know
“The real story?”
The only “mother” she ever knew kept her locked in a tower
Named her after stolen
Salad greens
Tell your twin
Running to Canada was the
line I could not, would not
Cross for love
Unlike a man we both know
Who crossed lines of law and love
Abandoned wife and children
Hid his treasure
Said he could not pay
No fairytale love-
Story for his first wife
Little ones
there are records of these things
The faces of the abandoned are familiar to you now
Unlike your own mother’s
Who they kept from you
Fear and sin will make an ordinary
Monster out of us all.
Sadie’s foster mother told me once-
They are Christians, you know!
Christians do not steal babies
Live lies
Or put their assets in their girlfriends’ names
But how would Rapunzel know that?
She would have to borrow her sisters’
Plaited hair
A ladder to
Set all three free
Then look for the small stones
Of Truth
Scattered along
the long road
Home.
It has been almost a decade since my father died after his helicopter crashed on descent.
I still feel flashes of pain when I am reminded of that pain.
Ordinary haunting is a longterm normal for we who grieve.
The death of one man changes the world.
Evoking Jesus.
He took every crash, every act of misery and self-destruction. Drained the cup of history to the dregs of genocide, exploitation, war, famine, epidemic, deadly contagion.
Hell to pay for us. The wrath of holy Love, the grief of God poured out.
For us.
To atone for the transgressions of a single garden-variety human would be unwatchable, unlivable, unthinkable, unbearable– awful.
The ransom for all our billions is so beyond reckoning, we do not try.
But we should.
We should at least reckon the cost and the pain, fear, horror and brutality it took to redeem our ordinary wrongs-gluttony, lust, prejudice, and greed.
We should; we shall.
We will either be defined now by our debt to this Eternal Savior or we will be defined forever by the life we squandered at his great cost.
I am familiar with stolen
Children stolen names
Borrowed children stolen names
Borrowed stolen beautiful
Girl metonymy
Is when you
Become a face in a crowd
The crowd then becoming
You in every face
I have looked
You in every
Looked
Have
I
No.
Can’t do that or you will lose
Her you never truly
Had
Only a name
Crumpled broken paper fluttering down from the blown-apart skyscrapers which once defined our empire
Mushroom clouded elephantine weight falls to its knees
Compressed neutron star mother
Heart the size of a sugar cube
Weight of 300 million
Cars
On my chest
As I walk through the dark
Singing off-key these borrowed breakup songs
Fierce to the teeth
Lost until I know
You will be
Safe.
haunts me with her gray
Soul, robbed of light
Too young to ever choose this
She is a ghost
Who in all other aspects
Resembles me–
Breastplate taken in battle.
Which is why I see your face before
Me always
The iron bars invisible to all but
We two
Jailed by men with carved out hearts
I carry you, darling
Close to my own
Beg the God of air and light
To teach us how
To fly
Away from the shadows
Where ordinary humans claw and devour
All but unaware
They have bartered their own
Nearly extinguished
Eternal selves
For shreds of ashen dung
if you are
Obsessed with light
Then the darkness will stalk you
Apex predator night
Until you
Strike the first match
Chemical explosion
So small you might discount it
Unless…
I told you
This was a two-part answer
Ironically framed
By the disembodied voice
Selling cars in the next room
It’s like calling
A cathedral
A room with four walls
And a ceiling
Huh…
I think as I finish
Stuffing variegated laundry
Into the high efficiency machine
That is true
You my darling
Are no mere room
With four walls and a ceiling
You are a cathedral
And should be treated as such
Tear down this temple
And I will raise it again in three
Days
He said
Evoking all
The foundations in the womb
Baby pictures and toothy grins
Girls whose smiles light up the room
Do not be content to be
Measured the way a man will
Span an ordinary room
Know instead
It takes a lifetime and a fortune
To raise the extraordinary
Cathedral
Flying buttresses
Stained glass windows
Columns and impossible
Arches
All to the altar
Rising incense
Gaze of the Infinite
God
Carrying Light 