Category Archives: Poetry

My poetry. Mostly Collects

Cram

     "But smaller bundles - Cram" - Emily Dickinson

I said, "On the way to loosening up,
stumbling blocks appear at random 
encountering my understanding."

She asked, "Do you want your days 
to be as easy as a bird of prey riding
the air, upheld by nothing?"

I answered, "I am looking for a way
to share my joy of living so others
may recognize what makes me smile."

She said, "In this time, the difference 
between recognition and figuring out 
what matters lasts only as long as the time 
it takes for a tear to slide down a cheek."

I asked, "Tell me, did yesterday's peculiar
ending shape the melancholic words
you speak today?"

She answered, "Halfway endings and 
unfinished finales and hazy outcomes
always, in the words of the poet, 'Cram.'"

A Magic Beanstalk

Imagine a magic beyond the beanstalk,
God bouncing between a burning bush 

     - Can God bounce let alone burn in a bush? -
     at the periphery of vision and to a place,

a place of vision ending at the edge
surrounding a fire shut up in the bones.

    Throw me a bone fired from the hip
    and I will show you a hole the size of...

Well, a hole the size of Rhode Island
where you can drive an elephant through,

     through and throw confetti while driving,
     falling into open hands grasping, failing.

All hands fall at the end failing to grasp
the magic beanstalk beyond imagination.

“When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you…” – Deuteronomy 18:9

Giver of Life and Land,
Who demands our obedience
Against the evil ways of destruction
Of the prior inhabitants, we wonder
If the land and what we own 
Is really ours, or perhaps our very
Thinking that it is becomes the
Path to our own destruction
And folly which you warned us
Against.  Make us mindful and
Aware so as to give.
Amen.

Deliver Us

We live with the mediocre in our lives, afraid
of being killed or of being left behind, unable
to define the far off poles between which
the conventional stands in the middle.  

We ask for no great shakes, determined to seek
the easiness we believe was promised to us
long ago by those who walked long distances
with a practiced pace and on calloused feet.

Salvation should, the story begins, be easy, with
no hindrance in our seeking for definitions 
of the God who seeks and waits as we actively
search for the desire that will deliver us.

Starting Point

The place where I started can be found
among chewed pencil stubs marking the moment

     between moments marked by pencil scribbles
     noting the time when boring entered my lexicon.

I first said boring the time when I was born,
apologetically to my mother as she screamed.

     I have since apologized to my mother
     for all the times when I made her cry.

Secular folks are not the only ones to cry,
begging for a sign that reads, Smile, Sinner.

     There are signs smiling all across this Land
     around which we circle seeking our home.

Sometimes going around in circles
I never find the place where I started.

Readings

I said, "The one hundred pages 
due yesterday are now, finally, done."

She said, "And here I was enjoying
a quiet morning with no numbers."

I said, "You quip while I try to enter
the deep satisfaction of being
caught up."

She replied, "Looking upon the bronze
serpent lifted up for all to see always
saves the least of these."

I said, "Don't be getting all biblical
on me in my moment of small
satisfaction."

She said, "I just finished my reading
of Simone Weil who wrote, 'the solution
to a balance between the individual
and the collective is precisely what
people are thirsting for today.'"

Sacred Salt

     "Sacred salt sparkles on our bodies." - Denise Levertov

Not the salt found in blood, semen, tears or mucus,
dried from wounds or sickness or deprivation
but the salt that Jesus asks us to be, Be the salt of the earth.
To be sprinkled and spread, lightly, ocean spray settling
on barren and untouched skin, to sparkle on bodies
who cry out to be flavored with delights and to be tasted
while shouting joy to the heavens acclaiming, I am alive!