I ask the children who would win
In a foot race
Einstein or Newton?
S. says the wearing of wigs would matter
And I picture Newton trotting gamely behind
Losing precious seconds
As he tries to keep the wig on.
Gravity is something you might believe in
Or streams of consciousness
But not Jesus, my subjective friend
Whose fury you have misjudged
Like the smallest of figures in the distance
Moving inexorably toward you
Fire in his eyes
–Revelation 19
In my grief I sit on a park bench with you, both of us just cartoon characters feeding pigeons when I turn to you and say, it’s going to get cold soon
Better find shelter.
You take the burn boat out
Should have been used to
Ferried day trippers
Or taken provisions for the larder
But not this–
Watch a man built then burn
His own funeral pyre
With the ease of a fraud or
Automaton
Feigning the act of breathing
In and
Out
Just to
fool us all.
Last time I call you darling
Birds fly across
Crane toward heaven,
still see/only shadows
As the crow flies
light flies faster
-sound far behind
But shadows, old friend
In cold pursuit
And you so sure you can
Outrun them
I have sometimes heard
The voice of God
remarkably salty
And full of fire
He is both
Placable and implacable in His anger
The first with sullen men
Then unsparing with his only Son
No siblings without the unendurable
No blind and lame set free
Without his blood for me
1 Corinthians 13:1 NIV
[1] If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I were to write a book of fiction for my children I would construct people for them, community, a family, let’s say, a big, sprawling, messy family
Maybe they would live next to some kind of river
Maybe the dogs would talk or the fish would taste like brightly colored jello confections.
Or maybe these fictional people, these purely hypothetical people, would just be back up
The silhouetted figures you might see on the crest of the hill above the sycamore tree as the sun sets
After the dam breaks
When they-you-we
Might need the vigilant ones
The most.
Years ago a man who fought fire told me that the hot center of it is black, vortex dark, a hole you could fall into and never stop
Falling
There is no fire without burning, I tell the children, each sun a metaphor for something
Something bigger than us
Something bigger than them
Than all the worlds of burning
Light reaching back to us
Saying something
Maybe in Morse code
Flashlit messages exchanged through neighboring windows by children in the night
You are…eternal
2 Samuel 5:24 KJV
[24] And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines.
I will leave you to imagine a woman who slakes her insomnia with Sarah arranging flowers around her beloved Daisy, each a sign of constancy, piety, love
While God speaks
Says such specific things
Who knew each tree before it
Was anything but
An inkling in the palm of his hand
I have recently been informed that my books (modest, personal, subdued) are buried in the cobwebby bowels of Amazon. Here are the links:
I need a mending day. I don’t know where the time will come from, or who will thread the needle, scout the house for broken pieces,
Stitch them all
Smooth and fold them
Back together
Carrying Light 