Category Archives: Poetry

My poetry. Mostly Collects

Lengthen – A Short Lenten Meditation

The shadows of trees lengthen on the church lawn
as the sun settles behind the horizon.
Did Jesus know how his short time on the cross
would lengthen into the days and nights of history?
The nails hammered into His hands need to be lengthened
to allow Christ's arms to embrace the whole world.
Lengthening the time spent in prayer in the hope
of galvanizing God's will to your own is not required.
God the Creator already lengthened creation
and does not need to be invoked to do more work.
My daughters asked, "How much longer?" as if the asking
would lengthen their desire for a shorter trip.
I replied, "Not much longer," knowing our time 
together would lengthen into eternity.

“Thank you for being a valued member of…”

I, like everyone else, like to belong;
to be valued and to add value to a community
of similarly-minded individuals who gather
in groups for purposes mundane and spiritual.
The stars come together across the sky;
visible at night, always present during the day.
Look how the geese travel as one "V,"
heading to destinations for food 
and noisome conversation as they dine.
A pair breaks off from the flight of the whole
and lands in the open lawn next door.
I sip coffee as they sip things found in the dewed grass.
Would they let me join in their endeavors?
Would I allow them on my back porch?
Do we value each other across the lines of species?
The geese call out, answering with a "honk"
that I fail to understand in my place as a human.
If we share stories now which we cannot comprehend,
what hope will there be when the Big Bang
turns upon itself and becomes the big Crunch,
one "honk" to another?

Social Security Statement

Every year I receive a statement 
beginning with the ominous words
"Important Information that May Affect Your Benefits."
Have I not benefited from life already?
Friendships have sustained me.
Relationships have nurtured me.
Love, in all its forms, has carried me.
Yes, I have been wounded,
known sorrow, become frustrated and angry
at the ways of life and how some who live
and go about their day get in my way.
To see one's life-earnings reflected
in a monthly figure of benefits
reduces existence to the almighty dollar 
with very little sense of how I have lived.
Perhaps I should visit the online help center
to share about the time I passed
holding my daughter as she died.
Or share the joy of another daughter's wedding.
Or the time when I camped with all three daughters
in the midst of a grove of poplar trees
and we listened to the raucous laughter
of coyotes down by the river in the night.
Those times, along with the countless times
where I made eye contact with strangers,
should be on my Statement of Benefits.

Growing Wings

I asked, "Why is it that we
are now in a place where
we place party over policy?"

She answered, "Because
it is easier to go 'moo'
while leaping off a cliff."

I also asked, "But doesn't
anyone ever look down
as they make that final leap?"

She looked down for an answer,
"Perhaps the people hope they will
grow wings as they fall."

I said, "But only the angels have wings
so as to hurriedly carry messages
back and forth between us and the divine."

She said, "Such archaic forms
of communication only serve
those who make the policies."

A Widening Circle

Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? - Rilke

Finding freedom is an odd dance.
Look how the black squirrel hops along the lawn
or how the turkey vulture floats in the air
or how a dog pants after chasing its tail.
Is my freedom of a greater or lesser variety?
The very power to choose is a given
yet always in freedom there is the refusal
of a choice presented on life's plate.
I could circle around God and the towers of old
for thousands of years as if I inhabited a Rilke poem
but my days are numbered differently
and sometimes the circles in which I move
and have my very being narrow to a point.
I give myself to reaching out across the world
with a promise to return to where I began.
Rilke gave himself willingly to it all.
I still don't know.

(Thank you to Joanna Macy's translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Widening Circles.")

Awake

Piety is different from superstition." - Blaise Pascal

We structure and live our lives
with beliefs that make
our world go around.
We order rhythms of rituals
to accomplish the mundane
and to experience the rising
of the ineffable mystery
for which we have no understanding.
Old beliefs pass into new superstitions
derided in the marketplace
by those in-the-know.
Today, means become ends.
Tomorrow, the end of means arrives.
What we worship changes again
as we seek to placate the gods
who stir the twin demons
of fear and despair in our souls.
The sun rises ever so slowly again
creating bands of color in the east.
I awake and piously place my feet on the floor.

Maranatha! (Come, Lord!)

Not the lord that creates chaos and distraction
wherever they go as they please.
Not the lord of pleasing either.  One can
get lost in the soft allure of those promises.
And not the lord of promises who fails
to appear at the appointed meeting place
time and time again with no explanation.
Not the lord of explanation.  Look at all
that science has rationally explained
and how close we are to self-destruction.
Certainly not the lord of destruction.
How many more deaths must be added
to the roll of those who once lived joyfully?
Dare I turn down the lord of joy?
With no dance and no song and no smiles
we would wither and pass like unceasing time.
Not the lord of time.  The clock hands turn
always around never seeking a simple pause.
Not the lord of the pause.  There are too many 
buttons pushed at the oddest of moments.
And not the lord of the moment.  Although, the moment
when I first saw you, I rejoiced, checked my watch,
and smiled knowing the years that would surround us
as we loved what we pleased and promised never
to leave the other standing alone with no explanation.

Daily Adventure

My daughters would ask at the start of each summer day,
"What adventure are we having today, Daddy?"
Now, I begin each of my days slowly getting out of bed,
turning on a hall light or two so as not to stub a toe
in the early darkness that inhabits the house.
I go downstairs into the basement to write
these morning words in my office where the only sounds
are the running of the water softener and the clicking on
of a furnace that whirs slowly in its old age.
One daughter went east.  
One daughter went beyond the veil.
And the youngest daughter, boldly and unafraid, went west.
Each is on an adventure of their own making.

Last Breath

I said, "So many phobias
have permission now
to be expressed."

She said, "Agreed. Try
holding a conversation
with someone who fears you."

I also agreed, "It is awfully 
hard to talk while being 
condemned for who you are."

She said, "Live and let live
is a dangerous policy without 
any affirmation or acceptance."

I said, "Sometimes opening
our arms wide means an embrace
with death which may be coming."

She said, "Imagine the thoughts
of the loving martyrs before 
they took their last breath."