J. crashes the party

If you asked me how I knew it was you I would touch your face and say aardvarks!! Anteaters!! Warthogs!! Your humor as unmistakable as your wit, odd they all refuse to see you, you in the over-sized retro flippers, ducky float ring and wild Hawaiian print crashing the party, the holiday, the cozy churchy potluck making almost everyone supremely uncomfortable.  Everyone except the children who delight in your flamboyant honesty, your failure to adhere in any way to our sheepy ways, shorn and alone

You hand off the flowery shirt, the float, the flippers (none of which you ever needed)

seamless garment to sunblind guards

World go dark, pain and love

Set free

Brace yourself

Comfort girl myself

I rifle through the postcards from

The places you have been 

Looking for things you loved

Always people, always broken 

Then strain to hear your voice 

As you tell them about the Luke 13 people

All dead, all tragic until you

direct our eyes into the deep

Pool of Siloam, reflected the tower before it fell?

Did the blind man know it was there before he could

See you standing there

Across the street from all my loneliness

Beckon me come close

Brace yourself, Love

Dissembling Wrong

So close

to a reclusive keeper

of memories, of wrongs

Shuffling among the forgotten objects

Placeholders for the barely living:

anonymous empty

water bottles, hollow and crumpled

Become the jury

Old newspapers still swaddled in

Their plastic rain protectors

Told to be 

Witnesses or spectators

Instructed to rise 

As a one-armed nutcracker assumes the bench

Rag doll court reporter records the proceedings 

Mr. Vinegar prosecutes while

the defense attorney was appointed from among the 

A pantheon of generic

Happy Meal toys.

But the victims are living songbirds

Twittering in the disheveled

cage of my heart of course

Always re-animating  dried bones-

Off-kilter, neglected, wrongs

Will inexorably be

Radically, fundamentally transformed

When the true King

Calls them back

To life

Love Will Find You

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.

“There’s no base!”

“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

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.

Break my bones

middle page of something 

My words to you 

unnailed, unpierced, still love

Disconnect.  Disconnect 

these broken 

Bones, sinews, ligaments 

Teeth and bones become 

Rebellious things in the house

Unknit, unswept, unmade

Until…

what is left?

When I cannot walk to you, run to you 

Reach the limit of the horizon 

Lie awake old

Teeth, old bones 

Grind out hours in the dark 

wondering where was

Ezekiel’s army beneath

integumentary sand

Old bones 

No longer insanguinate

They lie down, sleep children cuddled beneath

The coverlet of 

God singing His 

Bruising love song

Lullaby in the place of the skull

Has, is, will

Sing to the dead

Broke-bone army

Spoke to life

Grip the blade,

Fit to fight

Benediction for the girl child 

I have thought of this, my little love

Rifled through the pockets of my diminished 

Powers of speech and human governance,

To find you all good things:

Enhanced night vision

Kick-ass ninja skills

The irrefutable assurance of your loveliness

Not enough.

So let us add:

Dragons rise to your command

Eagles lift you to the place where air grows thin

and may you

always see

The clear road home.

Too much, you protest

So down to this, 

voice of love

Talitha, cumi.