July 2025 – A Thread You Follow

Communication

Don't quote to me words of scripture
From the book I already know
Tell me instead about the after
Which was written long ago

Share with me the story
Of your fall through times gone by
Unfold your map of history
which leads us to the why

I don't pretend to know it all
I've raised my hand enough
In answer to the question's call
Do you like it rough?

Someone always sings
The sad notes of love's last refrain
To what altars do we bring 
Our tears that fall like rain?

Yes, count your lonely steps
That lead from here to there
Dare to say, Except,
When others talk unaware

Let Us

Let us be a little merciful this morning
Let us give up the tried and true
Let us watch the sun rise together
Let us memorize how the sky turns blue

Let us be a little merciful this morning
Let us listen as the soft breeze blows
Let us release the night's last firefly
Let us remember, God only knows

Let us remember, God only knows
Let us be a little merciful this morning

Gathering God

I stand dazed
within my middle self
caught in the midst
of ordinary ambiguities
while G-d 
the center of all circles
gathers
the outcasts of the world
into surrounding embraces

Traveling Water

A few weeks ago
while visiting a daughter in Montana,
I stood at the headwaters of the Missouri River
tucked away in a wide mountain valley.

We had hiked for an hour or so
through scrubland with the smell of sage in the air
to view the gathering of rivers
where Lewis & Clarke had camped
some two hundred years earlier.

A few weeks later 
I find myself downstream in Memphis,
wondering if the brown waters 
that I view from my hotel window
are the same that I saw 
flowing clear over river rocks out west.

I think about being taken up into the sky,
coming back down as rain on the plains,
again being caught up in the great river basin.

Or maybe I flow and wind my way
along thousand mile stretches of river banks,
sightseeing, careless with no mind of my own,
moving with all that is around me 
under the great big sky.

Possibility

Stand underneath a cottonwood tree in mid-summer,
or under a sycamore, to get the same view of the light,
as the breeze-blown leaves move and flutter
allowing some sun to come directly upon your face,
already having passed through the blue sky overhead.

Knowledge of self and of all-that-is comes to you 
in that same way: sometimes clear and bright,
at other times briefly hidden, at all times present,
surrounding you with possibility for the remainder of the day.

Loving What We Love

A few 
still 
persist 
in loving what they love
while 
one or two 
turn 
in upon 
themselves
forever fixing sorrow 
in a 
permanent 
place.