Published Books
Published Poetry
∞
Agency
What does it mean to be the salt of the earth?
Salt is a preservative.
It is used for seasoning and with healing.
Salt is a helping agent.
What does it mean to be the leaven?
Leaven makes the bread rise.
It softens the bread and makes it more digestible.
Leaven is a helping agent.
What does it mean to be the light for the world?
Without the light,
we stumble around in the dark.
Light is a helping agent.
If you are the salt of the earth,
the light for the world, and the leaven,
you are a gift to the earth.
It has nothing to do with heaven.
You are a helping agent
by making the world—this world—a better place.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
Chapel of the Transfiguration
The first thing I saw was the constellation of houseflies
on the Chapel of the Transfiguration window blocking the grandeur
of the Cathedral Group with Grand Teton in the center.
The fly was the filthiest of creatures to my fastidious eye.
I was offended at first: the sacred was marred by the profane.
so I stepped outside the log church to see
the majesty of the mountains beneath the blue canopy
without the pious interference of human hands.
That was sixty-two years ago. I’ve had a rethink.
God is not captured, domesticated, and confined
to churches, but is alive in every created thing.
Without a nature-based spirituality, the word profane
means outside the temple. Are we fish looking for water?
And why do we argue about who owns the water?
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
Come Together
Come together, people of faith,
from the farthest corners of the earth,
from faith traditions round the world—
come together to honor the worth
of every person from birth to death.
Come together, come together!
For you without your daily bread
who sleeps with stars overhead,
we offer hope—be not afraid.
A better future lies ahead;
people of faith are by your side.
Come together, come together!
People of faith call for justice
in politics, law, the marketplace
where greed and malice are commonplace.
People of faith will never allow
that every person has a price.
Come together, come together!
Come together, people of faith,
from the farthest corners of the earth,
from faith traditions round the world.
Unity of faith is a force for good;
universal tenets are understood.
Come together, come together!
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
The Big Nothing
What happens to the indigenous peoples
living in someone else’s promised land?
We never know because they are slaughtered
or erased forever as a culture.
Nothing to see here—
their story is a big nothing.
Historians connect the dots of known events
across white silences of ruined chronicles
forever mute.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
The Body and Its Desires
for Matthew Arnold
The gods consume nectar and ambrosia on Olympus
and amuse themselves by looking down on us
dispassionately. Cool detachment is a sardonic business.
Hellenism insists we see things as they are.
For right thinking, the body and its desires are a barrier;
we are cautioned to keep the mind completely clear.
Hebraism counters that the body and its desires
are a barrier to right action. The Lord requires
clarity of thought chastened by strictness of conscience.
The principal rubric of the Law is studied obedience
to the will of God. The Lord has a vertical presence—
aloof except to chastise with corrective fires.
In the time it takes a Sierra redwood in the ageing
of two thousand rings, many gods have come
and gone in the public square. Further, we become
weary of our own fungible ground of being—
the dreary march of certainties by which we cling—
as we amble toward the dust from which we came.
More crucial over the years than definitions of the divine
are behavioral tendencies toward either thought
or action when it comes to the body and its desires.
The tension between Athens and Jerusalem defines
every age, and will continue, like it or not,
to shape our every outcome of action or thought.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
Love is a Twofer
Love is a twofer.
When you say you are in love
or you assert the aphorism, God is love,
you infer duality.
God is the subject
and [something] is the object.
The something is the world
and all its inhabitants.
There is no love without the lover and the loved,
without the me and the you,
without one or the other.
Have you ever experienced love?
You will then understand the Sufi maxim,
You are the mirror in which
God sees himself.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
The White Christ
Red-bearded, blood-soaked Thor faced off
against the white Christ
at the end of the first millennium.
Icelanders had to choose.
For the pagans, white stood for cowardice,
but the heavy hand of King Olaf
forced a deal the pagan holdouts
could not refuse.
The second millennium is in the past already.
The state supports the old white Christ,
but attendance is low in the state church.
Icelanders go through the cafeteria line
and select their religion.
Bureaucrats record their preferences.
It’s all very low energy.
There won’t be a saga-worthy single combat
between the white Christ
and some adversary in the future.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
The Alpha and Omega of Gratitude
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Gratitude is the sum of what you sense and say.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
Longing for things you lack is a flawed attitude.
Always be thankful for what you have today.
Feeling grateful in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Do not devalue the goods you currently hold.
What you have today was only hoped for yesterday.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
Lust for things puts you in an anxious mood.
You’ll find your happiness in the persons you most enjoy.
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
The lives of those you love will increase in magnitude
as you count your blessings and walk with them in the Way.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
The ungrateful person is one who journeys in solitude.
Appreciation is the greatest kindness, far and away.
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2023
∞
Life and Death in the Back Yard
The neighbor’s cat with the pure black fur
noticed my movement in the kitchen
and fixed his stare at me.
I eased forward to get a better view
of our small, oval-shaped lawn
through the sliding glass door.
The tan corpse of a baby rabbit
was less than a foot away
from his extended paws perfectly aligned,
and the diminutive Lion King,
head turned to the left with eyes locked on me,
was announcing to the whole world,
“Look what I did!”
Hunger had nothing to do with it.
We feed that cat when the neighbors leave town.
It was pure sport.
I opened the sliding door and yelled “Yah!”
and the cat high-tailed it over the south fence.
Maybe you’ll be a coyote biscuit someday,
I thought.
I hope you enjoy that experience.
I checked the tiny rabbit.
Yes, it was dead.
We don’t have a pet cemetery on our property,
so I chucked the corpse over the back fence
into the nine-acre greenbelt behind the house.
It was an inglorious end
to a life that never really got started.
After that, I took down the empty birdfeeder
hanging from the arch over the gate
to fill it up with songbird seeds from Ace Hardware.
Nancy had been bugging me for a week,
“You need to feed the birds,”
and I would reply,
“These creatures lived for millions of years
without our help. They can fend for themselves.”
“Yes, but I like to look at them.”
I turned the feeder upside down
and pounded on the base
to shake loose the crud on the bottom
Then I filled it to the brim with seeds
and rehung it from the arch.
Song sparrows were the first to attack the feeder
and the last to leave.
Others were the dark-eyed junco,
spotted towhee, northern flicker, house finch,
and surprise! the black-capped chickadee.
The goldfinch made a rare appearance.
Tiny birds suddenly popped out of the blackberries
at breakneck speed to the arched gate,
hop-hopping to the feeder for a snack,
then flit away into the thicket.
I was like a songbird god
summoning my peoples to a rich buffet,
from the east, the west, the north, and the south:
Bring my sons from far away,
and my daughters from the ends of the earth.
- MyEdmondsNews, September 2022
∞
Glass Half Empty
He loved to be the devil’s advocate.
If you pleaded in favor of the notion of progress
or argued for the goodness of faith-based optimism,
he would, in his quiet way,
set out to destroy your thesis point by point.
Dad was a philosophical pessimist.
He was not emotional about it,
but he felt he was doing you a favor
by exposing the flaws in your illusions.
Optimists look at the bright side.
He would gently point out
the human condition was not improving at all.
As he aged and declined in health,
he believed history was not progressing,
but actually was getting worse.
There is something to be said
for being correct about the human condition.
When he was young and full of life,
he took pleasure in setting the record straight.
Dad put himself in a logical box.
By placing himself,
the world, and all its inhabitants
on a metaphorical death row,
what was there to live for?
Where was the happiness in soft nihilism?
- MyEdmondsNews, September 2022
∞
Summer Romance
Of all my days to middle age,
you gave me less than ten.
So little time
from moon to rising moon.
A meteor flared and fell
on an August night
now thirty winters dead.
The lingering light:
for that I give you thanks.
- The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, Edited by James Crews, Storey Publishing, 2022
∞
For the Faces I Will Never See
Christmas 2020
Long stretches of handling the hooks*
with rhythmic certainty
seamlessly moving forward on a row
occasionally looking up at a movie
seen before many times
(knowing which scene is coming)
sometimes losing track
of the sequencing cadence
or noticing the row does not look right,
counting, counting, ripping out,
saying a word not safe for work,
re-reading instructions
then back on track,
finishing the main pattern
and refining the border—
the final step—until
done at last!
For the faces I will never see,
you bundled newborns in other arms,
my love goes out to you.
I imagine my yarn
chucked against your chin,
but that is where my story ends.
Wear it well
and pay it forward
for children of your own
if you can.
*Crochet
- MyEdmondsNews, September 2021
∞
Owl Love
Sometimes on my morning run,
I hear the call and response
of two owls.
They move around,
never in the same place twice,
but I know who they are
because the smaller of the two
is one white note higher
on the keyboard,
and each has a pitch
always the same.
No one owl initiates the call
every time.
They take turns.
The 2-hoot call is followed
by a two-Mississippi wait
for the 2-hoot response,
then they take 15 seconds
to think about it
before the next exchange.
I imagine both
are saying the same thing:
“I am yours.
I am here for you.”
- MyEdmondsNews, September 2021
∞
Childhood Memories
Memories of my childhood
are hopelessly corrupt.
Facts are elusive.
The core event may stay the same,
protruding like a stone
in a turquoise tidal pool,
but ancillary facts appear,
disappear, reappear,
and shape-shift over time.
Facts are fleeting,
but feelings are forever
and absolutely incorruptible.
Memories are not unlike
the garden-variety dream
where the main takeaway
is not the inscrutable plot,
but the emotion I am feeling
when I awake.
- MyEdmondsNews, September 2021
∞
Into the Winter
In a far field of broken turf and mud,
a quarter horse stands statue-still.
The sunless sky trades its feathery mist
for twisting steam from out of the pasture thaw.
A puff of breath betrays a living death.
The horse is dying; legs are stiff as stone.
Where once he raced from line to picket line
of ragged timber that rims the rolling farm,
today he labors long at standing still.
- MyEdmondsNews, February 2021
∞
We All Start at Zero
The practiced hands of the good-humored doctor
pull the infant out of the warm duskiness
of an amniotic ocean into the unfamiliar glare
of delivery room lights. It is a rough business,
coming into the world, but every person
in the room is pulling for the startled new arrival
to survive, grow, thrive, and come of age.
In this instant, we align ourselves with God
to affirm the wholesome generative forces of the world.
We all start at zero. Look at the face
of the newborn child. Where is the theological construct
of original sin? Do you see it? No?
The swaddled baby is laid on the mother’s chest
and begins to learn the ambivalent ways of humankind.
- MyEdmondsNews, February 2021
∞
The Politics of No
No, we are not bewhiskered woodsmen posing
with a fabled misery whip 12-feet long
emerging from the sepia history of real men
or frugal, gaunt survivalists riding out
the Great Depression or the khaki war machine
fighting to the death against the Axis powers
or fearless astronauts landing on the moon.
As the swaggering first citizens of a unipolar world,
we are soft from indolent years of privileged ease.
We are soft without a great enemy to fight
so we look within and fight among ourselves.
We harden into corpulence and intellectual sloth
as nimbler nations strive to take us down,
not by the savagery of war, but with whispered lies
designed to divide us into two contending camps
dueling to the death of the great American experiment
of broad-shouldered accomplishment of big things.
No, my friend, we are not that nation anymore.
- MyEdmondsNews, February 2021
∞
Rejection
The same stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.~Psalm 118
The great American poet was gravely ill.
Confined to home, he was game enough for an interview.
As I was ushered into his august presence,
I noticed letterhead papers taped to the walls
of the rooms, corner to corner from floor to ceiling.
Each was a version of, “Sorry, not for us.”
Of course, I started to laugh, which was the point.
The old man’s voice was soft but clear:
“The rejection letters keep me humble,” he said.
“I often wonder where the editors and publishers—
these gatekeepers—are today with their insights.
The uncharted path is hard to follow at first.
I get that. Sometimes it takes a while
for the world to come around to the unforeseen reality
that a loathed new idea despised by the authorities
will be the conceptual capstone of the coming age.”
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2020
∞
Mass in Times of a Pandemic
Kyrie eleison
Have mercy upon the people of faith, O Lord,
who put their trust in you, as an enemy, unseen
and silent, steals across our land and the world
abroad to tap on shoulders—as if at random
like a monstrous game of tag—of unsuspecting men
and women who strive to make it through the day.
We sing, Kyrie eléison, Christe eléison,
Kyrie eléison, with great gladness; and we pray:
Give us courage, O Lord, come what may.
Gloria
We shoulder sorrows at the end of a darkened day,
seeking shelter against the forces of the night,
and in the lengthening shadows we find our way
to the empty tomb of Christ with the perpetual light
of one hopeful candle burning bright
to celebrate the risen Lord. We look to the west:
the glow of the golden sun gives way to the light
of vespers. Secure in our safe lodging, we are blessed
to praise the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Credo
How did the Coronavirus disaster come? Two ways:
gradually, then suddenly. Science knew it was real
and lethal, but leadership dithered for many days
until a great nation was brought to heel.
Worse than war, we tumbled down into the hell
of separateness. Each of us must suffer alone,
apart from the warmth of fellowship in which we feel
a common bond. But we shall rise again!
Even in isolation, we are one unbroken chain.
Sanctus
The virus requires we find new ways to cope.
Gatherings are banned; individuals widen their space.
In isolation, we glimpse in memory, dimly, but we hope
to see each other soon face to face,
cheek by jowl, in a happier time and place.
Privately, we pray, Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of hosts. By the loving grace
of God, we plan to come together fully
as one body and sing the Hymn of Victory.
Agnes Dei
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world. We the faithful may be sheep
in need of a good shepherd or innocents in the ways
of the world, but the body of Christ is wide and deep
and the people of this church have commitments to keep
whether blown to the four winds or gathered in place.
We are set on sowing in the Spirit—in the hope of reaping
eternal life. My friends, go in grace
until we meet again face to face.
- Published in the St. John’s Episcopal Church newsletter, The Episcopaper, in January 2021.
∞
Bus Poem: Hard Times
Her long and pallid fingers
grip tight an impish pair
of toddler boys
as she climbs onto the bus.
I lift my eyes to a stretched-long face
as white as chalk—
a face evocative of the Great Depression
when hard times were black and white.
Her photo-flash whiteness indicates
the final stage of terminal fatigue.
Translucent skin,
sanded smooth from toddler work,
is the thinnest possible film
over a blue vein near the collarbone.
Thin lips are drained of color.
Fatigue’s garment is the absence of color.
Her large protective hands
caress the boys.
The three of them form
a triangle of touching and soft murmuring.
The boys are rested,
well-behaved and full of color,
but she is black and white,
a bright dust-bowl face of exhaustion.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2020
∞
As a Rose Unfolds Itself
For my daughter
Stunned to hear your marriage is falling apart,
I look to see you sad, defeated, but no!
You are energized—fired up and ready to go.
The unencumbered life gladdens your heart.
As a rose unfolds itself,
there is always an exact time
when beauty is most compelling.
For you, that time is now.
I wrote these lines when you were twenty-one.
Society believes that beauty will have its say
briefly before a long denouement of decay.
Wrong. The unfolding of beauty is never done.
Unlike the athlete whose turn on the stage is short,
beauty draws from character to counter age.
A woman’s poise and wisdom keep the page
from turning; they keep the book from snapping shut.
Character powers the engine that drives the train
along a set of tracks uniquely yours.
This time belongs to you. Enjoy the years
to come as your own master of heart and brain.
- MyEdmondsNews, July 2020
∞
The Lake
Intuitive images of truth
from out of the liquid eye
are writ in stagnant brown
when scuttling winds are shy
or lush voluptuous blue
erotic as a lover’s sigh
or red on twilight orange
where the blood syllables fly.
The poet dreams his life
as the lake dreams the sky.
- MyEdmondsNews, March 2020
∞
My Moment in Time
Curving through a basalt cut,
the slim-waisted river brings
waters from the Two Oceans Plateau
at Jackson Lake to the faraway waters
out west, all the way to Astoria.
Cache Peak is due south.
Smooth-sanded alluvial fans
are tan with flecks of sagebrush teal.
To the north, the massive Craters of the Moon
lava fields lie between the river
and the distant mountains of central Idaho.
I stand alone in this isolated spot.
Civilization is nowhere in sight.
Little has changed since the Bonneville Flood
scoured the Portneuf River Valley
at the end of the Ice Age or even
when the first people arrived more
then ten thousand years ago.
This moment by the river—my moment
in time—is a one-of-a-kind snapshot
in the millions of years that some version
of the Snake River flowed to the Pacific.
This tiny stretch of river is not
the complete river any more than lives
exists in isolation apart from all the brothers
and sisters of the past, present, and future.
Like the island in the stream parting the waters,
it isn’t you who travels forward.
The small measure of time meant for you
travels toward you and beyond you.
- MyEdmondsNews, March 2020
∞
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
I was an L.A. kid. My favorite sport
was baseball. The weather was always kind
enough for a game. My friends and I
knew the batting averages and the earned run
averages of the players in the PCL,
and all the major league stats. I followed the Angels.
It was always a treat to go to Wrigley Field
with my dad and watch the Angels play ball.
I never went without some friends from school.
One Saturday, my dad took me and two
of my friends to an Angels game. We sat near
the back of the lower section overlooking
first base. There was a section in front of us
right by the visitors’ dugout completely empty.
These seats were the most expensive in the park,
but today, those ticket holders did not show up.
Wrigley had a custom to let the local kids
into the stands after a couple of innings,
just to fill up the ballpark. It was a neighborly policy
with the surrounding community in south L.A.
and it helped to boost the noise for the home team.
When a boisterous group of black kids commandeered
the seats in the coveted section down below,
a man sitting near us began to grumble
about them in a loud voice. This same man
was telling his companion at the start of the game
how pleased he was with his seats at the ballpark.
He did have great seats, but it made him angry
when poor kids sat closer to the action.
The man complained and muttered racial slurs
for two innings before my father finally
had enough. Dad was sure the commentary
was ruining the experience for me and my friends.
After one racist rant too many, my father turned
to him and said, “Hey, knock it off.
We’re trying to watch the game.” The man was caught
off guard, “Well, it isn’t fair. I paid good money
for these seats, and those kids don’t deserve
the luxury box.” Dad said, “I heard you bragging
about your seats when you came in. You said
they were perfect. What happened? Relax,”
he said gesturing toward the buoyant fans
in the stands, “enjoy the game with the rest of us.”
It worked. We never heard another word.
Later, my dad explained it this way:
“It is a gift just to be there at Wrigley Field
where the sun is shining and the Angels are winning.
Be happy. It doesn’t matter where you sit.”
- MyEdmondsNews, March 2020
∞
clicking Send—
she is the last
of my parents’ generation
gone are the trees
I used to climb
- Atlas Poetica
∞
the river
always leaves its source
yet it never leaves
the tangled fishhooks
of loves false and true
- Atlas Poetica
∞
tonight
by the lemon tree
our first kiss
I ride home
on a horse of oxygen
- Atlas Poetica
∞
the baby is dead . . .
while he stares
into the street
she feels her breasts
filling with milk
- Atlas Poetica
∞
deep grasses choke
the broad path
we used to walk
our past is lost
in a seamless field of green
- Atlas Poetica
∞
Now That I Am Dead
On reading “Evening Land” by Pär Lagerkvist
As I stooped through the low portal of death,
I saw my human fate
emptied out into the lethe.
Life’s luggage of love and hate
was left behind the wall;
the gardener burned my once-essential freight.
I asked myself if this was all.
Intelligent souls clicked like dolphins in the wind
on either side of the wall,
discerning everything. My mind
came clean; discernment whirled ahead
as soon as I was schooled by the garrulous wind.
Now that I am dead,
I know that God did not create the soul;
the soul created God instead.
Now that I am dead, I know the soul
imagined heaven straddling earth
where God was hired to rule
irascible man and iterative death/rebirth.
I dreamed of an infinite life,
a dream encoded before my birth,
because one life was not enough.
I know that paradise was once inside my head,
now that I am dead.
- Scarlet Leaf Review, Anniversary Edition 2018
∞
Change
For a Memorial Service
The sacred sea defines
our summed collective soul.
Our infinite designs
are in the sea’s control.
We scarcely understand
our fundamental start.
We cannot comprehend
the sum of every part.
As the aeons come and go,
its silent flow and blend
is all we ever know;
but now we feel the wind.
A molecule of water
that skims the sacred sea
and breathes corporeal air
resembles you and me.
As soon as we are tossed
above the nurturing foam,
this flesh, from found to lost,
obscures our natural home
in such a pleasing way
we lose the cosmic sweep
of comely, sunborne spray
rounded by the deep.
- Scarlet Leaf Review, Anniversary Edition 2018
Celebrating Peace
1.
Today we gather in this faraway space
to celebrate what never took place.
Under this cloudless sky
the Unknown Soldier did not die.
No one was wounded on this spot.
Nary a soldier fired a shot.
No soldier sang a battle hymn
or killed or died or lost a limb.
On this our distant grassy field,
no corpse was lifted onto a shield.
The world at war is far away;
let peace begin with us today.
2.
Fog is rising from the thawing ground.
Birds are soaring without a sound.
Cedars shimmer in the morning breeze.
Snowy mountains back the trees.
For a world at war, where do we start?
Peace begins in the human heart.
By changing hearts one by one,
changed hearts lower the gun.
Today we promise to work for peace,
changing hearts in the name of peace.
The world at war is far away;
let peace begin with us today.
- Scarlet Leaf Review, Anniversary Edition 2018
∞
nightfall
a cricket aria,
then the chorus
- ‘t schrijverke (the Netherlands)
∞
pan-fried trout
I learn something new
about my father
- The Heron’s Nest
Heron’s Nest Award, December 2011: Editor’s Choice - Carving Darkness, Red Moon Anthology, 2011
- Haiku Foundation Per Diem, February 2014
- Per Diem Archive on the Haiku Foundation Website
and
- Haiku App (Apple)
∞
winter
the empty space
inside the cello
- Modern Haiku
and
- ‘t schrijverke (the Netherlands)
∞
pinwheeling leaves
thirty-five years end
with the word amicable
- Frogpond
∞
August moon
children disappear
into their lives
- Modern Haiku
and
- San Marino High School class reunion memory book
∞
Sawtooth Mountains
the alpine lake is stocked
with clouds
- Modern Haiku
∞
as I cut and splice
a few salient vignettes,
the rest of my life
spools out
on the cutting room floor
- Simply Haiku
∞
walking away
from the laugh track
into the twilit park
into the noise-cone
of a brood of cicadas
- TSA Ribbons
∞
Taps…
the widow folds her life
and puts it away
- Simply Haiku
∞
waking up
to the first nudge
of pain
great unweavings begin
with one loose thread
- American Tanka
∞
summer heat
coming all this distance to find
nothing but distance
- Paper Wasp
∞
the pounding surf
why does it matter now
after 40 years?
bleached stones against
the bleached sky
- Simply Haiku
∞
redgold salmon
flap their tails…
Indian summer
- Paper Wasp
∞
the hard-breathing trout
explaining death
to a child
- Frogpond
∞
bitter snowstorm…
strangers become friends
for a day
- The Heron’s Nest
∞
I put down my pen
to watch the birds
swallows criss-cross the street
hour after hour because…
I have no idea
- TSA Ribbons
∞
dried dogwood flowers
the old couple
eats in silence
- Simply Haiku
∞
deep coral tulips—
our quiet
conversation
- The Heron’s Nest
∞
phosphorous flares
illuminate those
about to die
Huey gunships
are pissing bullets
- Simply Haiku
∞
restless ducks
fly south
fly north
- The Heron’s Nest
∞
looking ahead to the past
remembering the future
one datastream
the road from home
is a road leading home
- Simply Haiku
∞
a pinwheeling leaf
strikes the watercourse
and floats around the bend
gone forever
do you ever think of me?
- Simply Haiku
∞
repair work
on the dam
emptying out
the harmony
of water and mud
- Simply Haiku
∞
she touched my cheek
and turned away—
summer’s end
how many turns
around the sun?
- TSA Ribbons
∞
the river flowed backward
for her—friends took leave
one by one
she is all alone
at the source
- TSA Ribbons
∞
double-clicking
the Events folder
our first kiss
remembering your touch,
the tilt of your face
- TSA Ribbons
∞
Oregon fog
rumors
of mountains
- The Heron’s Nest
∞
wind over the lake
desiccate leaves
scrape indolently
at our feet
like the years
- American Tanka
∞
my glass is filled
with dusk tonight
I swirl the west and think of you
and sip the stars
down to the stem
- Simply Haiku
∞
lost mojo
on the Red Line
a sweet face
no opportunity
for me
- TSA Ribbons
∞
The Way
The way eludes the snare
of language. It is hard to catch the wheeling birds
scurrying up helixing stairs,
but harder still to catch the way with words.
The heart that hangs stretched and framed
is not the heart of hearts;
the way that can be named
and then defined is not the way.
The way conceals itself by being nameless.
Abundantly clear from far away,
the mountain up close fades to shades of white;
such vastness mirrors the way.
The patient, widening eye controls the night.
Eventually, patterns emerge,
defining themselves with immanent light,
suggesting a subtle demiurge
behind a shadowy veil
behind another veil on heaven’s edge
behind the tangible veil
of earth; for earth is the pattern for humanity,
then heaven for earth; and through the farthest veil,
the way spins out our destiny.
- Arnazella
∞
1066
Historians lust for great events,
the violent one percent,
so nothing happens nearly every year.
Stamford Bridge and Hastings stretched a month;
whatever happened years before
or since that raven glut?
For each combatant, hundreds more
were not involved, as Norseman, Norman, Celt
and Saxon plowed the green
or toiled the cold Atlantic,
gave birth in perishing huts or softly sang
for children alliterative lullabies.
- Arnazella
∞
Class of 1960
We meet again, halfway to the sea;
we touch again, halfway from the snow.
Our disentangled lives have floated free
through range and farm and city far below,
and far away from home. We floated free
within the groove of the river’s quiet flow.
Our lives are channeled—this we clearly see;
our cut of land determines where we go;
but how we go is up to you and me.
Entangled as we are again tonight,
salute the past, then say a last good-bye.
Remember me as I appear tonight
and I’ll remember you with an inward eye
until the whispering river meets the sea.
- San Marino High School class reunion memory book
(written in 1990)
∞
North San Diego County
The grass of Kearny Mesa
grew up to be
a hundred shopping malls.
The naked hills were clothed
by Mediterranean housing projects.
Some rural routes
are giant interstates.
I never gave a thought
to golden grass
or granite hills
or dusty roads
when they were there,
before the dozers carved the land.
- Thirteen
∞
Back Jackknife
for Bud Baldwin
His rigid arms are pointing down as he walks
the diver’s practiced pace toward the edge
and deftly spins around to set his feet.
The crowd grows quiet as he is on his toes,
to seek and find the pulse of limber steel.
With that assured, arms come up, palms flat
and facing down; knuckles nudge his gaze.
Silence snaps—he takes the backward leap,
exploding blind at forty-five degrees
(too high, you flop; too low and over you go),
and belly muscles pull his daggered toes
into a row of waiting fingertips
still reaching out directly from the chest.
he shuts the knife exactly at the apogee;
His body forms a tight, symmetrical V.
and just a blink beyond, he pops the knife.
The head flies back and arms in tandem follow
violently; so head, arms, and back design
a deadly blade to cut the water clean.
He nails the perfect dive. And slicing through
the bottom of the sky, he suns in blithe applause.
- Aethlon
∞
High Jumper
The changing years extend, but still I shine
above the crossbar straddling six foot three
at the quarter finals in May of ’59.
My father’s grainy photo caught the victory;
I share with him the moment’s immutability.
Time cannot erase the singular joy
of jumping—the illusory release from gravity.
I keep the gold and the aura of a perfect day,
but changing years took the boy away.
- Hobo Stew Review
Wordtreasure Diary
Titles
Put On the Armor of Light
Our Corporate Wholeness
Our Responsibility
Turning the Blank Pages
[tanka] in the rib cage
We All Start at Zero
Open My Mind
Life and Death in the Back Yard
Ontological Argument
[haiku] empty
For the Faces I Will Never See
The Growth of St. John’s Church
Lifting the Veil
Wind Over the Lake
The Power of Myth and Metaphor
On the Liberty of Women
The Politics of No
[tanka] vanishing leaves…
The Swans of Skagit Valley
Camp Loowit Alumni
Low Sunday
Metanoia
Women’s Work
The Living Stone
Paul at the Areopagus
The Theology of Suffering
Class of 1960
We Have Questions
The Thing Itself
The Birth of Laughter
Ishmael
Dad Critiques the Sermon
[haiku] August moon
Joy at Daybreak
Chaff
Glass Half Empty
[tanka] the blacktop road
Praise for the Black Church
Inclusion
Why Caesarea Philippi?
[haiku] replaying an argument…
Adorning the Poor With Victory
The Smartest Guy in the Room
As a Rose Unfolds Itself
[tanka] my glass is filled
Memory
Arguing Over the Kids
Macedonia and Achaia
Pilgrim
The Big Nothing
The Parable of the Rich Fool
Wars in My Lifetime
Mass in Times of a Pandemic
Blessings
Holy Communion
Agency
The Yoke
Love is a Twofer
The White Christ
[tanka] brainstorming
Micah
The Way
Circle of Love
At the Dinner Table
[tanka] deep grasses choke
Bus Poem: My Iranian Gentleman
[haiku] winter
The Hills of the Central Coast
[haiku] the hard-breathing trout
Summer Romance
Sacralized Violence
1066
Clicking Hyperlinks
Wheel of Water
[tanka] a pinwheeling leaf
The Alpha and Omega of Gratitude
[tanka] the boy who came
Back Jackknife
She Loves You
Friday Night Fights Every Night
Lao Tzu Advises the Board of Directors
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
The Plumb Line
[haiku] pan-fried trout
Owl Love
The Drifters
On Mount Wilson
You Do Not Always Have Me
Residents Only
[haiku] nightfall
Evening Land
Cigars
On the Bridge
[tanka] lost mojo
Excuses
Perfume
[tanka] a bee swarm of ducks
The Ballad of the Sheaf of Corn
My Moment in Time
What Kind of God
Son of Man
I Was the Messenger
The Talk
[tanka] a pinwheeling leaf
The High Achievers
Now
Herod the Great
The Body and Its Desires
White Privilege High School
What Does Jesus Say?
[haiku] rain
The Ark of the Covenant
[tanka] my glass is filled
Change
The God Guy
Dad Tips the Waitress
Dialog Between Athlete and Coach
[tanka] repair work
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
When Jesus Saw the Crowds
Evening, Midnight, Cockcrow, Dawn
Rejection
Our Love
[haiku] taps…
∞
November 23, 2022
Put On the Armor of Light
My nettlesome dream snaps shut.
Instead of rolling over
for more slugabed minutes,
I get up and put on the armor of light—
ready to praise the image of God
on this day
in each face I greet.
∞
November 30, 2022
Our Corporate Wholeness
Two things.
I have a connection
with every other person in the world.
My belief in that connection
is constantly tested and severed.
Perfectionism is a lie.
What if the quarterback has a perfect passer rating,
but his team loses?
How does he feel?
What if the gymnast scores a 10.0
in every event,
but her team loses?
How does she feel?
As for me,
I participate in the wholeness of the human family,
and that is holiness!
It is not my private holiness.
It is our connection together.
All of us as one seek
an active corporate and communal image
of what is happening.
I cannot carry
such glory and greatness
by myself.
And neither can I bear
such universal suffering and sadness.
∞
December 8, 2022
Our Responsibility
The Lord created the heaven and earth.
He created the seas, and all that is in them.
Man had nothing to do with this.
The Lord gives justice to the oppressed,
sets the prisoners free,
opens the eyes of the blind,
lifts up those who are bowed down,
cares for the stranger,
sustains the widow and orphan,
and frustrates the ways of the wicked.
How are these things done?
They are done by those who love the Lord,
by those who follow his commands.
∞
December 14, 2022
Turning the Blank Pages
It was all good for the first three and a half minutes.
He led the orchestral intro from the bench,
waving his arms and bobbing his head
while I turned the pages.
No one was paying attention to me.
Then the orchestra fell silent.
Hr. v. B. launched into his solo part
and I swung open the next page…to nothing.
It was page after blank page
with just the occasional hieroglyphic note
that meant something to him
but nothing to me.
I panicked.
How was I to know
when one blank page ended
and another blank page began?
He took delight in my troubles,
but was kind enough to give me
a surreptitious nod
whenever we came to the end of emptiness.
The concert was a success.
No man was a better friend than Beethoven
when he was in a jolly mood.
I cherish the memory of his howls of laughter
at our convivial dinner after the concert!
Time brings an end to all living things.
Beethoven is gone now.
My own health is fragile.
That night in Vienna when I turned pages
for a generational genius—
unsure of what was coming next,
but surrounded by music most sublime
and encouraged by his bemused glance
at just the right moments—
was a key life lesson.
When we wake up in the morning
or start a new year,
we don’t have a score to follow.
We put our trust in the Master at the keyboard
giving us celestial music and surreptitious nods
as we turn the blank pages of our lives.
Hr. v. B. = Herr van Beethoven
NOTE: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was first performed
on April 5, 1803. Beethoven’s pupil Ignaz von Seyfried
was the page turner.
∞
December 21, 2022
[tanka]
in the rib cage
of bare branches,
the setting sun
hovers
like a heart
∞
December 28, 2022
We All Start at Zero
The practiced hands of the good-humored doctor
pull the infant out of the warm duskiness
of an amniotic ocean into the unfamiliar glare
of delivery room lights. It is a rough business,
coming into the world, but every person
in the room is pulling for the startled new arrival
to survive, grow, thrive, and come of age.
In this instant, we align ourselves with God
to affirm the wholesome generative forces of the world.
We all start at zero. Look at the face
of the newborn child. Where is the theological construct
of original sin? Do you see it? No?
The swaddled baby is laid on the mother’s chest
and begins to learn the ambivalent ways of humankind.
∞
January 4, 2023
Open My Mind
Open my mind to the stranger who differs from me.
Empty my mind, O Lord, of ignorance and fear.
Allow me to live in a world where knowledge is free.
Give me a mind, O Lord, that is always clear.
Open my mind to the stranger of another race.
Let me see him as a friend and not the other.
Allow him to be the gracious guest in my space.
As host, I am pleased to do my best for a brother.
Empty my mind, O Lord, of conventional bias.
Open my mind to unconventional love.
Give me the courage to resist the spitefully pious.
Allow me to assert that love is simply love.
Open my mind to the stranger from a foreign land.
Let me share the warmth of our country’s sun.
If he wants to be my neighbor, I’ll lend a hand.
Our nation’s motto is “Out of many, one.”
Give me the strength, O Lord, not to wait
for a thousand tomorrows to live in brotherly love.
Empty my mind, O Lord, of the ruin of hate.
Open my mind, O Lord, to the rule of love.
∞
January 11, 2023
Life and Death in the Back Yard
Isaiah 49:1-7
The neighbor’s cat with the pure black fur
noticed my movement in the kitchen
and fixed his stare at me.
I eased forward to get a better view
of our small, oval-shaped lawn
through the sliding glass door.
The tan corpse of a baby rabbit
was less than a foot away
from his extended paws perfectly aligned,
and the diminutive Lion King,
head turned to the left with eyes locked on me,
was announcing to the whole world,
“Look what I did!”
Hunger had nothing to do with it.
We feed that cat when the neighbors leave town.
It was pure sport.
I opened the sliding door and yelled “Yah!”
and the cat high-tailed it over the south fence.
Maybe you’ll be a coyote biscuit someday,
I thought.
I hope you enjoy that experience.
I checked the tiny rabbit.
Yes, it was dead.
We don’t have a pet cemetery on our property,
so I chucked the corpse over the back fence
into the nine-acre greenbelt behind the house.
It was an inglorious end
to a life that never really got started.
After that, I took down the empty birdfeeder
hanging from the arch over the gate
to fill it up with songbird seeds from Ace Hardware.
Nancy had been bugging me for a week,
“You need to feed the birds,”
and I would reply,
“These creatures lived for millions of years
without our help. They can fend for themselves.”
“Yes, but I like to look at them.”
I turned the feeder upside down
and pounded on the base
to shake loose the crud on the bottom.
Then I filled it to the brim with seeds
and rehung it from the arch.
Song sparrows were the first to attack the feeder
and the last to leave.
Others were the dark-eyed junco,
spotted towhee, northern flicker, house finch,
and surprise! the black-capped chickadee.
The goldfinch made a rare appearance.
Tiny birds suddenly popped out of the blackberries
at breakneck speed to the arched gate,
hop-hopping to the feeder for a snack,
then flit away into the thicket.
I was like a songbird god
summoning my peoples to a rich buffet,
from the east, the west, the north, and the south—
Bring my sons from far away,
and my daughters from the ends of the earth.
∞
January 18, 2023
Ontological Argument
Assuming that God’s existence
might be proved through logic,
would you and I believe
in such an elegant God?
∞
January 24, 2023
[haiku]
empty
and quiet
putting away Christmas
∞
February 1, 2023
For the Faces I Will Never See
for Nancy at Christmas
Long stretches of handling the hooks*
with rhythmic certainty
seamlessly moving forward on a row
occasionally looking up at a movie
seen before many times
(knowing which scene is coming)
sometimes losing track
of the sequencing cadence
or noticing the row does not look right,
counting, counting, ripping out,
saying a word not safe for work,
re-reading instructions
then back on track,
finishing the main pattern
and refining the border—
the final step—until
done at last!
For the faces I will never see,
you bundled newborns in other arms,
my love goes out to you.
I imagine my yarn
chucked against your chin,
but that is where my story ends.
Wear it well
and pay it forward
for children of your own
if you can.
*Crochet
∞
February 8, 2023
The Growth of St. John’s Church
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
The first to speak is the garden soil.
Our hopes depend on fertile land.
Without the soil, we cannot grow.
Land alone is bereft of life.
What we need is healthy seed.
Without the seed, we cannot grow.
Soil and seed are well and good,
but absent rain what’s our gain?
Without the rain, we cannot grow.
The genial sun laughs out loud.
Garden delight depends on light.
Without the sun, we cannot grow.
Surrender your ego for the common good.
Work as one to get it done.
The Holy Spirit gives the growth.
∞
February 15, 2023
Lifting the Veil
To the east, news-crawler clouds scrape the mountains,
hiding the higher elevations. A kaleidoscope of rain,
wind, and fog turns and turns again
its swirl of gunmetal gray over the lowlands.
A friend of mine comes from the Great Plains
to the Kent Valley at the beginning of the forty days
of gloom. He wonders: is the air like this always
with these speed-of-a-slug cloud-rags, and the rains?
Today, on day forty-one, the veil is lifted
when cold north winds chase the gray
and set the Cascade Range in clear relief
against the blue, and he is blown away
when Mt. Rainier brandishes its swaggering pride
four thousand meters above the countryside.
∞
February 22, 2023
Wind Over the Lake
Wind over the lake—desiccate leaves
scrape indolently at our feet, like the years.
We feel the chill of the restless wind.
Fall’s maelstrom of reds and golds
is all around. The cool, invisible hand
lifts silvering hair.
We are entering autumn of our time together.
Some leaves have fallen, but many remain,
waiting to be plucked by wind over the lake.
∞
March 1, 2023
The Power of Myth and Metaphor
Romans 5:12-19
Death does not hinge on human sin.
Literally.
Paul knows this.
Death and extinction long preceded
the arrival of humans and their sins.
Paul’s audience in the Roman church knows this.
Evolutionary biology is beside the point.
Paul creates a poetic paradigm
to make a point about faith.
His model has an elegant design—
a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
The “first man” Adam has life,
but disobedience leads to death
for himself, for Eve,
for all humankind.
God counters this
with an equal but opposite solution.
The powerful obedience of Jesus
(his faithful death on the cross)
enables the faithful to cancel out
the deadly destiny of sin
and have a new identity and destiny
of righteousness and life
through Jesus Christ.
∞
March 8, 2023
On the Liberty of Women
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference..
~ Reinhold Niebuhr ~
Who makes the rules for things we cannot change?
We’ll decide which rules to ignore or keep.
We won’t accept the things we cannot change.
It’s time to change the things we cannot accept.
God, grant to us the wisdom to know the course
you set for us—and not the course by others.
God, grant to us the courage to be the force
to overturn the rules prescribed by brothers.
We won’t accept the things we cannot change.
It’s time to change the things we cannot accept.
∞
March 14, 2023
The Politics of No
No, we are not bewhiskered woodsmen posing
with a fabled misery whip 12-feet long
emerging from the sepia history of real men
or frugal, gaunt survivalists riding out
the Great Depression or the khaki war machine
fighting to the death against the Axis powers
or fearless astronauts landing on the moon.
As the swaggering first citizens of a unipolar world,
we are soft from indolent years of privileged ease.
We are soft without a great enemy to fight
so we look within and fight among ourselves.
We harden into corpulence and intellectual sloth
as nimbler nations strive to take us down,
not by the savagery of war, but with whispered lies
designed to divide us into two contending camps
dueling to the death of the great American experiment
of broad-shouldered accomplishment of big things.
No, my friend, we are not that nation anymore.
∞
March 21, 2023
[tanka]
vanishing leaves…
skeletal woods are rising
from the dead
to clothe the black
with flesh again
∞
March 29, 2023
The Swans of Skagit Valley
Philippians 2:8
To the human eye,
the cornfield empties itself of value
for the rest of the year.
Ragged rows of stubble
stretch to the fog-bleared tree line.
Large puddles of freezing rainwater
and patches of old snow
punctuate the dun-horse devastation.
The autumn crop is obedient
to the point of death.
Tranquility is shattered
by a rising crescendo of trumpeter swans
haggling over their landing spots.
Gleaners from the far north fill their bellies
with the final treasures of the field,
then rise in unison to the heavens,
each as heavy as a small suitcase at Sea-Tac,
necks fully extended,
bleating furiously,
as they bolt for the breeding grounds.
∞
April 5, 2023
Camp Loowit Alumni
Jeremiah 31:1-6
The loveliest things are incredibly brief.
The loveliest things happen only once.
Years compress to minutes.
Nature does not care about your feelings.
Eight months after the 50-year reunion
of Y campers at Spirit Lake,
Mount St. Helens blew apart
and ruined the pristine lake forever.
It buried the YMCA camp
under hundreds of feet of timber and tephra.
Because of debris, the bottom of the new lake
is higher than the surface of the old lake.
The breathtaking symmetry of the iconic mountain,
proudly emblazoned on thousands of postcards,
is reduced to a pile of charcoal gray.
The Camp Loowit alumni
don’t meet in person any more.
They gather on Facebook.
Most discuss the loveliest hours of youth.
But there are some who celebrate
via the sideways scrolling of photographs
the green transformation of the blast site
and the return of animal life,
and though the site is different,
much different, from what it was before,
a new kind of beauty awaits those
who embrace the words of the prophet,
Again I will build you,
and you shall be built,
O virgin Israel!
∞
April 12, 2023
Low Sunday
Low Sunday is the Sunday after Easter
when we cheered the Lord’s ascendance.
The low is not for “low church.”
It’s about the small attendance.
∞
April 19, 2023
Metanoia
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Don’t look back in sorrow
at the wrongs you did to others
or the wrong beliefs you held.
Sorrow is not the ask
of Jesus or John the Baptist.
Nothing you say or do
will change what you said or did,
don’t you see? Peter paused
to let that sink in.
Instead, he said, reorient yourself
to a new way of life, starting today,
with baptism in the name of Jesus
and acceptance of the Holy Spirit.
Some in the crowd turned away
from Peter’s altar call,
but three thousand came forward
and took on their new identities
as the People of the Way
∞
April 26, 2023
Women’s Work
Acts 2:43-47
Women’s work: for mother and daughter,
work goes on hour by hour.
They grind the grain into flour,
make a paste by adding water,
and place the dough onto a stone
in the smoky oven. They work to the bone
in the sweltering heat while the men
gathered in the temple are cool and clean.
∞
May 2, 2023
The Living Stone
1 Peter 2:2-10
The temple was not built with living stone.
Nothing made by human hands can last
forever. The second temple’s time has passed
after more than half a millennium, as you can see.
The Israelites built it; the Romans tore it down.
Come to him, the living stone, and be a living stone
yourself—in a spiritual house for all eternity.
∞
May 10, 2023
Paul at the Areopagus
Acts 17:22-31
inside
the stone deity
stone
∞
May 17, 2023
The Theology of Suffering
Words cannot explain suffering.
Don’t waste your time with “Why me?”
Of the myriad sufferings in the world,
choose one:
the suffering of Jesus.
Then get to work.
You will be glad and shout for joy.
Be grateful you still have agency
for Gospel action.
∞
May 24, 2023
Class of 1960
We meet again, halfway to the sea;
we touch again, halfway from the snow.
Our disentangled lives have floated free
through range and farm and city far below,
and far away from home. We floated free
within the groove of the river’s quiet flow.
Our lives are channeled—this we clearly see;
our cut of land determines where we go;
but how we go is up to you and me.
Entangled as we are again tonight,
salute the past, then say a last good-bye.
Remember me as I appear tonight
and I’ll remember you with an inward eye
until the whispering river meets the sea.
NOTE: I wrote this poem in 1990 for the 30th reunion of the class of 1960, San Marino High School, San Marino, California.
∞
May 30, 2023
We Have Questions
Digging deep into a pocket of nothingness,
the Webb Space Telescope uncovers
new stars and new pockets of nothingness.
We assume something is there. Nothingness
is a placeholder word for things undiscovered.
What about, we ask, the end of time?
Logically, a beginning, middle, and end
affects all things, including time
we are told—my personal time and Time
itself. What happens when we reach the end?
Is nothingness just another placeholder?
Dare we assume there is something more?
∞
June 7, 2023
The Thing Itself
1 Samuel 15:22
When a man loves a woman,
does he love a painting of the woman
or the woman herself?
Surely he knows the painting
is not the thing itself.
When a woman loves a man,
does she love a photograph of the man
or the man himself?
Surely she knows the photograph
is not the thing itself.
Photographs and paintings are representations,
not the thing itself.
Sacrifices and offerings are representations
of our obedience to God,
not actual obedience.
Obedience to God is the thing itself.
∞
June 14, 2023
The Birth of Laughter
Genesis 18:1-15
Infertility is hereditary.
If your parents didn’t have kids,
neither will you.
This was not a laughing matter
to the old man Abraham
and the old woman Sarah
who tried for years without success
to have a child.
God promised Abraham he would be
the ancestor of a great nation,
but the line dies with infertility.
Abraham and Sarah were astonished
when the three mysterious visitors
informed the wizened Abraham
that he and Sarah would finally have a son.
Abraham laughed,
Sarah laughed,
and God smiled at the absurdity.
NOTE: The name Isaac (Yīṣḥāq) means “he laughs/will laugh” in Hebrew.
∞
June 21, 2023
Ishmael
Abraham loved both his boys;
Sarah spurned the elder son.
Sarah wanted the second born
to inherit and grow the family business.
For the fair-minded father, it was disturbing
to learn the younger Isaac was his heir.
The scandal of election seemed unfair—
chosenness kicked Ishmael to the curb.
Abraham sent Ishmael away,
but God continued to watch the boy.
The Lord made a great nation of him
and honors his descendants to this day.
∞
June 28, 2023
Dad Critiques the Sermon
Dad did not have much use
for organized religion,
but he took us to church
for the appearance of family unity.
He surrendered one hour
to avoid the grief of not-going.
He was silent before,
during, and after the service
every time except once
when I said something kind
about Dr. Gray’s sermon
and Dad, staring straight
at the street ahead,
called B.S. on the pastor
for a sermon Dad considered
logically incoherent
and biblically incorrect.
Dad was an avid fan
of logic problems and, of course,
faith requires some skips in logic.
Until that moment,
I had no idea he knew anything
about the Bible,
but there he was,
the well-schooled village agnostic,
countering by throwing
his proof texts over the wall
at Dr. Gray’s assertions
about the Sunday lessons.
It was years before
he opened up to me again
about religion,
but his silence was not
for lack of interest:
he paid attention to everything.
∞
July 5, 2023
[haiku]
August moon
children disappear
into their lives
NOTE: I wrote this poem for the 50th reunion of my high school class.
∞
July 12, 2023
Joy at Daybreak
I run the trail before the rising sun.
Cyclists will not be riding up my back
in the bleak early hours when all is black.
Body and soul are one on the run at dawn.
A careful stride keeps me free of pain
for an hour or more. I focus on my hushed exhale
on every fourth step as I master the trail.
Impurities slip away from body and brain.
With snowy cedars in the light of day, my mind
departs from mindful concentration to free association.
Tri-colors whirl, unfurl, flutter in the wind
as swaying timbers mingle with the heavens,
all powder-blue, white, and forest green
for me: delight is color, sun-rinsed clean.
∞
July 19, 2023
Chaff
Psalm 139
“Have you been saved?” is the wrong question.
All of us are saved together.
All creatures and the cosmos itself
originate from one divine source.
At death we all return to the source.
The loving God is within us, at home,
patiently and kindly awaiting our recognition.
As creator of all, God is in every thing,
present at all times in all places.
God promises that nothing is wasted,
not even the oft-disparaged chaff.
Like all of us, chaff has a mission:
to protect the wheat berry from harm.
God is inside every thing
and every thing is inside God.
Whosoever loves God loves all that is.
∞
July 26, 2023
Glass Half Empty
He loved to be the devil’s advocate.
If you pleaded in favor of the notion of progress
or argued for the goodness of faith-based optimism,
he would, in his quiet way,
set out to destroy your thesis point by point.
Dad was a philosophical pessimist.
He was not emotional about it,
but he felt he was doing you a favor
by exposing the flaws in your illusions.
Optimists look at the bright side.
He would gently point out
the human condition was not improving at all.
As he aged and declined in health,
he believed history was not progressing,
but actually was getting worse.
There is something to be said
for being correct about the human condition.
When he was young and full of life,
he took pleasure in setting the record straight.
Dad put himself in a logical box.
By placing himself,
the world, and all its inhabitants
on a metaphorical death row,
what was there to live for?
Where was the happiness in soft nihilism?
∞
August 2, 2023
[tanka]
the blacktop road
comes to an end here
at the edge
of the wilderness…
be not afraid
∞
August 9, 2023
Praise for the Black Church
It’s hard to be humble—for those of the majority race
who are always favored first when it comes to power.
Oh, sure, there is empathy: imagine the horror!
But no one is thinking seriously of trading places.
Like Joseph, west Africans once had independence.
Mercenary brothers sold them into slavery
and they bore brutal bondage from birth to grave
on our soil. No one is wiser than their descendants.
It is difficult for whites to accept that the last are first
and the first last. Some believe the Haves
and the Have Mores on earth are bound for glory
where we are saved by following private paths,
but black churches proclaim the true story
of inclusion as taught to us by Jesus Christ.
∞
August 16, 2023
Inclusion
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Inclusion comes through love. Love makes it real.
In the name of love, barriers pass away.
When Jesus walked the earth in the imperial day
of Tiberius, gentiles were shunned by society in Israel
and a wall divided the people with dreams unclear
from those who lived in the hope of a promised lord.
Love joined the two. As Isaiah said,
“Peace, peace to the far and to the near.”
How much has really changed since Caesar’s day?
We live in times when hate is in the air.
We seek a certain solace in the tribal fold,
but mindfulness cancels hate; inclusion is the way.
Instead of disputations to win over the neighbor,
we offer the power of love to embrace and hold.
∞
August 23, 2023
Why Caesarea Philippi?
Matthew 16:13:20
What better place to ask the question—
Who do you say that I am?—
than the well-traveled intersection
for politics, religion, and trade,
Caesarea Philippi.
Armies are tramping through all the time
and it’s the trade route between Damascus and Tyre
and there are shrines to the old pagan gods.
All these concerns come together here
at this familiar crossroads.
So, when Jesus pops the question,
his followers might be tempted
to think he represents an earthly endeavor:
material wealth, military power,
or prominence in the religious establishment.
For Simon Peter, son of Jonah,
flesh and blood did not reveal the answer,
but our Father in heaven.
∞
August 30, 2023
[haiku]
replaying an argument…
a deep contrail scratch
in cirrus clouds
∞
September 10, 2023
Adorning the Poor With Victory
Psalm 149
What happens after the Lord
wreaks vengeance on the nations?
What happens after the Lord
binds the kings in chains
and their nobles with links of iron?
What happens after the Lord
inflicts on them the judgment decreed?
What does it mean to adorn the poor with victory?
What happens to the poor after the glory of conquest
is showered on all the faithful people?
∞
September 15, 2023
The Smartest Guy in the Room
It took me a while to notice
the chip on his shoulder.
He never made a scene
and yet he silently saw himself
as the smartest guy in every room.
He sized up each man
by noting the factual errors
and rhetorical flaws.
Like a judge in Olympic diving,
he lowered the poor man’s score
and Dad always came out on top
even when he didn’t.
And women, by definition,
could never measure up.
Nineteenth century gender inequality
was baked into his understanding
of the great chain of being.
My sister and my dad
attended the same college.
Only one graduated Summa Cum Laude
and was accepted into Phi Beta Kappa
and it wasn’t him,
but it made no difference.
∞
September 20, 2023
As a Rose Unfolds Itself
Stunned to hear your marriage is falling apart,
I look to see you sad, defeated, but no!
You are energized—fired up and ready to go.
The unencumbered life gladdens your heart.
As a rose unfolds itself,
there is always an exact time
when beauty is most compelling.
For you, that time is now.
I wrote these lines when you were twenty-one.
Society believes that beauty will have its say
briefly before a long denouement of decay.
Wrong. The unfolding of beauty is never done.
Unlike the athlete whose turn on the stage is short,
beauty draws from character to counter age.
A woman’s poise and wisdom keep the page
from turning; they keep the book from snapping shut.
Character powers the engine that drives the train
along a set of tracks uniquely yours.
This time belongs to you. Enjoy the years
to come as your own master of heart and brain.
∞
September 27, 2023
[tanka]
My glass is filled
with dusk tonight…
I swirl the west and think of you
and sip the stars
down to the stem.
∞
October 4, 2023
Memory
One day tells its tale to another,
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language,
and their voices are not heard,
their sound has gone out into all lands,
and their message to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:2-4
In the beginning, the memory barely fits
a Times Square video screen.
In the end, the image is wallet sized.
In addition, there is an altered state:
the uncarved block becomes a sculpture;
the portrait of a lady becomes a smile.
In the beginning, myriad details cling
to the core event. Incessant winds
of the mind erode the loose periphery
and one by one, over a long life,
the less essential falls away
into forgetfulness. In the end,
the stripped-down core event—
some instance of love, triumph or shame—
remains intact forever.
∞
October 12, 2023
Arguing Over the Kids
Exodus 32:1-14
My children? These are your children!
It was by your power
you freed them from bondage.
What will the Egyptians say
if you set your children free
only to destroy them in the wilderness?
And what about your hopes
for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and their descendants?
Have you forgotten about that?
∞
October 19, 2023
Macedonia and Achaia
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Looking out over the caramel landscape,
the least of the apostles announced,
On this blade of grass, I build my church.
∞
October 26, 2023
Pilgrim
Matthew 22:34-46
Come home, come home to the simple life:
Love God with all your heart,
with all your soul and with all your strength.
This is the first and greatest rule.
Come home, come home to the holy life:
Love your neighbor as yourself.
These two rules are all you need.
Everything else is explanation.
Come, pilgrim, come home to God.
Clear your mind of the cares of the world.
It does not matter how far you roam.
The road from home is the road to home.
∞
November 1, 2023
The Big Nothing
Joshua 3:7-17
What happens to the indigenous peoples
living in someone else’s promised land?
We never know because they are slaughtered
or erased forever as a culture.
Nothing to see here—
their story is a big nothing.
Historians connect the dots of known events
across white silences of ruined chronicles
forever mute.
∞
November 8, 2023
The Parable of the Rich Fool
Luke 12: 13-21
He who dies with the most toys wins,
a rich man said.
Today he is dead.
What do you win when death begins?
When death steals you before the dawn,
what is the measure
of stored up treasure?
Who honors you when you are gone?
∞
November 15, 2023
WARS IN MY LIFETIME
Judges 4:1-7
World War II
a boy-soldier lies
with his face
on the continent of Europe
and his feet
in the Atlantic
Korea
when we died,
they said casualties were low;
they gave us medals
and thanked us
for our service
Vietnam
I am an American fighting man
no visible foe
no battle lines
no inner hate
no reason why
Desert Storm
no longer
forward-leaning warfighters,
the wounded
are deleted
from the present tense
Iraq
Iraq War,
my, how you have grown…
look at you:
such a big boy
and so strong!
∞
November 22, 2023
MASS IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC
Psalm 100
Kyrie eleison
Have mercy upon the people of faith, O Lord,
who put their trust in you, as an enemy, unseen
and silent, steals across our land and the world
abroad to tap on shoulders—as if at random
like a monstrous game of tag—of unsuspecting men
and women who strive to make it through the day.
We sing, Kyrie eléison, Christe eléison,
Kyrie eléison, with great gladness; and we pray:
Give us courage, O Lord, come what may.
Gloria
We shoulder sorrows at the end of a darkened day,
seeking shelter against the forces of the night,
and in the lengthening shadows we find our way
to the empty tomb of Christ with the perpetual light
of one hopeful candle burning bright
to celebrate the risen Lord. We look to the west:
the glow of the golden sun gives way to the light
of vespers. Secure in our safe lodging, we are blessed
to praise the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Credo
How did the Coronavirus disaster come? Two ways:
gradually, then suddenly. Science knew it was real
and lethal, but leadership dithered for many days
until a great nation was brought to heel.
Worse than war, we tumbled down into the hell
of separateness. Each of us must suffer alone,
apart from the warmth of fellowship in which we feel
a common bond. But we shall rise again!
Even in isolation, we are one unbroken chain.
Sanctus
The virus requires we find new ways to cope.
Gatherings are banned; individuals widen their space.
In isolation, we glimpse in memory, dimly, but we hope
to see each other soon face to face,
cheek by jowl, in a happier time and place.
Privately, we pray, Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of hosts. By the loving grace
of God, we plan to come together fully
as one body and sing the Hymn of Victory.
Agnes Dei
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world. We the faithful may be sheep
in need of a good shepherd or innocents in the ways
of the world, but the body of Christ is wide and deep
and the people of this church have commitments to keep
whether blown to the four winds or gathered in place.
We are set on sowing in the Spirit—in the hope of reaping
eternal life. My friends, go in grace
until we meet again face to face.
∞
November 29, 2023
Blessings
Blessed are those who hunger for justice.
Blessings to the powerless
and their allies driven to cure injustice.
Blessings also to those who refuse
to hate their abusers.
This is the hardest task of all.
Never forget—each person’s face,
even that of your adversary,
bears the imprint of the Lord.
Resist injustice with every bone in your body,
with all your might,
with your every breath,
with your very soul,
as if it was a matter of life and death,
which it is.
∞
December 6, 2023
Holy Communion
The dove spreads wings of the present and past.
Warm thermals lift these wings of time.
One wing is us in this sacred place.
The other bears souls of every age.
Our world was once a lightless void.
From that the Lord created the world.
From things not seen, he made the earth.
From a spark, the Lord gives us birth.
On edge from dust to dust again,
by our faith we know there is a plan.
We look ahead with absolute trust.
By faith we sing the Great Amen.
We fold eternity into a day.
Time slows to a stop with body and blood.
We eat this bread and drink this wine.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
∞
December 13, 2023
Agency
What does it mean to be the salt of the earth?
Salt is a preservative.
It is used for seasoning and with healing.
Salt is a helping agent.
What does it mean to be the leaven?
Leaven makes the bread rise.
It softens the bread and makes it more digestible.
Leaven is a helping agent.
What does it mean to be the light for the world?
Without the light,
we stumble around in the dark.
Light is a helping agent.
If you are the salt of the earth,
the light for the world, and the leaven,
you are a gift to the earth.
It has nothing to do with heaven.
You are a helping agent
by making the world—this world—a better place.
∞
December 21, 2023
The Yoke
The yoke you wear is the load you bear.
Who will make the yoke you wear?
The yoke you wear is yours alone.
Will you build a yoke on your own?
Will fear become your lasting load
to burden you on the darkened road?
Will you be angry on the morrow
or shoulder some remembered sorrow?
A worker in wood has a better way
to lighten your load in every way.
You can trust the carpenter’s son.
He knows why and how it’s done.
Jesus knows the grain of oak.
He will make a gentle yoke.
His heart is humble—learn from him.
Take his yoke and walk with him.
∞
December 28, 2023
Love is a Twofer
Love is a twofer.
When you say you are in love
or you assert the aphorism, God is love,
you infer duality.
God is the subject
and [something] is the object.
The something is the world
and all its inhabitants.
There is no love without the lover and the loved,
without the me and the you,
without one or the other.
Have you ever experienced love?
You will then understand the Sufi maxim,
You are the mirror in which
God sees himself.
∞
January 3, 2024
The White Christ
Red-bearded, blood-soaked Thor faced off
against the white Christ
at the end of the first millennium.
Icelanders had to choose.
For the pagans, white stood for cowardice,
but the heavy hand of King Olaf
forced a deal the pagan holdouts
could not refuse.
The second millennium is in the past already.
The state supports the old white Christ,
but attendance is low in the state church.
Icelanders go through the cafeteria line
and select their religion.
Bureaucrats record their preferences.
It’s all very low energy.
There won’t be a saga-worthy single combat
between the white Christ
and some adversary in the future.
∞
January 10, 2024
[tanka]
brainstorming
in the corner office
on the fifth floor…
the high seriousness
of fall colors
∞
January 17, 2024
Micah
Micah 5:2-5
The prophet Micah foretells the fall
of the corrupt and faithless elite of Jerusalem;
the fall and revival of the Kingdom of Judah;
the Messiah’s birth in the town of Bethlehem.
Because of Bethlehem, we honor Micah.
We are mindful that the great and good
often come from out of nowhere
and not from the gilded houses of the world.
Born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth
by ordinary folk Mary and Joseph,
Jesus came from out of nowhere
to shock the world into the Common Era.
∞
January 24, 2024
The Way
The way eludes the snare
of language. It is hard to catch the wheeling birds
scurrying up helixing stairs,
but harder still to catch the way with words.
The heart that hangs stretched and framed
is not the heart of hearts;
the way that can be named
and then defined is not the way.
The way conceals itself by being nameless.
Abundantly clear from far away,
the mountain up close fades to shades of white;
such vastness mirrors the way.
The patient, widening eye controls the night.
Eventually, patterns emerge,
defining themselves with immanent light,
suggesting a subtle demiurge
behind a shadowy veil
behind another veil on heaven’s edge
behind the tangible veil
of earth; for earth is the pattern for humanity,
then heaven for earth; and through the farthest veil,
the way spins out our destiny.
∞
Circle of Love
We offer communion to a weary world in pain.
We share our bread and wine with the troubled world again.
Welcome to the stranger who seeks to be our guest.
All God’s children are sacred; every child is blessed.
Communion offers hope when the future is dark with doubt
when women and men believe there is no way out.
Come share with us the healing power of love
where the blessed spirit is descending like a dove.
We offer communion to a weary world in pain.
We share our bread and wine with the troubled world again.
Come, neighbor, come and join our circle of love
where the love of neighbor mimics heaven above.
Love of God and neighbor is all you need to know.
Our circle of love remains wherever you may go.
We offer communion to a weary world in pain.
We share our bread and wine with the troubled world again.
NOTE: This is one of the anthems I wrote for the St. John’s Church choir. Melody: Handel: Judas Maccabaeus HWV 63 / Part 3 – 58. “See, The Conquering Hero Comes!”
∞
February 6, 2024
At the Dinner Table
The dreaded “How was your day?” question
interrupted the shoving of food
into our mouths.
What could I say?
I spent my day looking out the window
wishing I was on the playground,
but I couldn’t mention that
so I made something up
that passed inspection.
Then my sisters had to talk about
the girl things they did.
We all pretended to be interested.
Conversation dwindled to nothing.
All we heard was the shoving of food.
Dad never said a word.
He was a CPA and no one
wanted to hear about his day
of entering debits and credits on a ledger.
Mother broke the silence
with her bottomless desire for appreciation,
“Yum, this is delicious,”
drawing attention to her own cooking.
That was our cue.
“Oh, yeah, this is great!”
was the usual throwaway line.
Mother picked up on the synchronicity,
and assumed we were insincere,
but, no, the food was great.
She was a wonderful cook
and yet there was never enough praise
to make her happy.
∞
February 14, 2024
[tanka]
deep grasses choke
the broad path
we used to walk
our past is lost
in a seamless field of green
∞
February 21, 2024
Bus Poem: My Iranian Gentleman
In his soft-spoken, conspiratorial voice
he told me his name,
but it flew in one ear
and out the other
and I failed to ask again.
To this day he is: my Iranian gentleman.
His jackets were a blend of wool
and cigarette smoke.
Occasionally, he gave me a hint
of yesterday’s cocktail.
He was a determined reader of books
in English and Farsi—
books about Kissinger, the Shah,
Mohammed Mosaddeq, Iraq,
and, of course, Iran,
the headwaters of every sadness.
Saucer eyes flickered
behind tortoise-shell glasses.
Whip-thin, he looked taller than he was.
With a full head of hair
not yet entirely gray,
he was once a handsome man.
Once he was a man of importance,
a corporate lawyer in Tehran
until the students drove him out.
Now he works at the EPA.
I could not get him started
on the law or the environment.
His only public passion: Iran
and what America should do about Iran.
Three daughters in Qom,
an ex-wife somewhere,
a lost career—
the man was lonely
and wanted to go home.
I ride a different bus now.
I did not expect to miss him,
but I do.
So much fruit beneath the husk
of political grievances
was never shared—
his daughters,
his youth at university,
Persian history and culture,
adjusting to American life.
Strangers on the bus
are best kept that way.
I do not like to show my cards.
But this option for a healing friendship
slipped away to my regret.
NOTE: I wrote this in 2004 when I was working in Bethesda, MD.
∞
February 28, 2024
[haiku]
winter
the empty space
inside the cello
∞
March 5, 2024
The Hills of the Central Coast
Under a raspberry haze, row after row
of the smooth-sanded hills of the Coast Range
compress into a flat two-dimensional view.
Except for the accidental live oak here
and there, bare grassland is all I see.
Telescoped ridgelines are like art-paper cutouts
stacked on a canvas: the lowest are khaki tan;
the highest in the back are on the brown edge of black.
Only the silhouette of the topmost ridge remains
at the coming of night. Unchallenged by city lights,
a tsunami of stars washes over the world.
∞
March 13, 2024
[haiku]
the hard-breathing trout
explaining death
to a child
∞
March 20, 2024
Summer Romance
Of all my days to middle age,
you gave me less than ten.
So little time
from moon to rising moon.
A meteor flared and fell
on an August night
now thirty winters dead.
The lingering light:
for that I give you thanks.
∞
March 27, 2024
Sacralized Violence
Look down on the Great Plain of Esdraelon
from the hilltop at Nazareth. History is written in blood.
Deborah and Barak routed the kings of Canaan
at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo. The torrent Kishon
purged the Canaanites. Josiah was slain by the forces
of Pharaoh Neco at Megiddo. Saul and his sons
were decapitated after battle with the Philistines.
At Jezreel, Jehu killed Jehoram and Ahaziah
and, following that, he slaughtered all their men
and all the prophets of Baal. Then he turned
to Jezebel. He ordered his men to throw her
to her death from the palace window where she was eaten
by ravenous dogs. But Jehu wasn’t done!
He hunted down and killed all the royal princes
and had their heads displayed at his command.
Jehu invited the worshippers of Baal to come
to a ceremony, then trapped and murdered them all.
He converted the Temple of Baal into a latrine.
Thousands of ordinary men were killed or maimed
because ambitious kings invoked the deity.
The arms of the survivors were weary from all the decapitations.
Kishon is a winding river of entrapment and slaughter.
The Plain of Esdraelon is a place of tragedy and war.
The oldest scriptures record such sacralized violence
by men. To credit God is the brief of the nihilist.
∞
April 3, 2024
1066
Historians lust for great events,
the violent one percent,
so nothing happens nearly every year.
Stamford Bridge and Hastings stretched a month;
whatever happened years before
or since that raven glut?
For each combatant, hundreds more
were not involved, as Norseman, Norman, Celt
and Saxon plowed the green
or toiled the cold Atlantic,
gave birth in perishing huts or softly sang
for children alliterative lullabies.
∞
April 10, 2024
Clicking Hyperlinks
John 15:9-17
Above all, love is seen in the love
of the Father. When we click on the word Father,
it opens on the Father’s love for the Son.
When we click on the word Son,
it opens on the Son’s declaration
that he shows his love for the world
by laying down his life for his friends.
When we click on the word friends,
we learn they are friends of the Son
for as long as they follow the commands
of the Father to love one another.
Reading the unfolding message
of the Gospel of John
is an endless explosion and expansion
of hyperlinks where all words
are interconnected and self-referential,
summed in the seamless command of love.
∞
April 17, 2024
Wheel of Water
for God’s creation
Grass emerges from the winter snow.
Blades lengthen. Flowers grow.
Trees in the wind sway and sough.
The summer of life is all we know.
Autumn breezes start to blow
and all of life begins to slow.
Brown turf is snuffed in snow.
Life and death come and go.
Clouds roll in over the plain
releasing countless drops of rain.
Water flows in the seaward drain
only to rise once again.
The wheel of water is an endless chain,
an infinite loop of wax and wane.
The land upholds loss and gain,
but land itself cannot sustain.
Dust is scattered, dust restored.
Not even the land can say: Never!
For children of light who love the Lord,
the wheel of water is a passing pleasure.
We praise creation with one accord
and promise to save this tender treasure.
The children of light love the Lord
and the love of the Lord lasts forever.
NOTE: This is an anthem for the St. John’s choir. The tune is ‘Blaenwern’ written by William Penfro Rowlands.
∞
April 24, 2024
[tanka]
a pinwheeling leaf
strikes the watercourse
and floats around the bend
gone forever
do you ever think of me?
∞
May 1, 2024
The Alpha and Omega of Gratitude
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Gratitude is the sum of what you sense and say.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
Longing for things you lack is a flawed attitude.
Always be thankful for what you have today.
Feeling grateful in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Do not devalue the goods you currently hold.
What you have today was only hoped for yesterday.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
Lust for things puts you in an anxious mood.
You’ll find your happiness in the persons you most enjoy.
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
The lives of those you love will increase in magnitude
as you count your blessings and walk with them in the Way.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
The ungrateful person is one who journeys in solitude.
Appreciation is the greatest kindness, far and away.
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.
∞
May 8, 2024
[tanka]
the boy who came
to be my father
kissed her cheek
what did my face look like
before that happened?
∞
May 15, 2024
Back Jackknife
for Bud Baldwin
His rigid arms are pointing down as he walks
the diver’s practiced pace toward the edge
and deftly spins around to set his feet.
The crowd grows quiet as he is on his toes,
to seek and find the pulse of limber steel.
With that assured, arms come up, palms flat
and facing down; knuckles nudge his gaze.
Silence snaps—he takes the backward leap,
exploding blind at forty-five degrees
(too high, you flop; too low and over you go),
and belly muscles pull his daggered toes
into a row of waiting fingertips
still reaching out directly from the chest.
He shuts the knife exactly at the apogee;
his body forms a tight, symmetrical V.
And just a blink beyond, he pops the knife.
The head flies back and arms in tandem follow
violently; so head, arms, and back design
a deadly blade to cut the water clean.
He nails the perfect dive. And slicing through
the bottom of the sky, he suns in blithe applause.
∞
May 22, 2024
She Loves You
The Kennedy assassination stunned the nation
like nothing else since the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We all remember what we were doing
when we heard the news.
What followed was six weeks of sorrow.
The grieving widow and her two small children.
The horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol.
The Requiem Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral.
Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.
The endless documentaries on network TV.
This went on until the end of the year.
Six weeks of sustained sadness.
Six weeks of ruefulness!
I returned to the Berkeley campus in January
to finish my first semester classes.
I passed through Sather Gate
and entered the Student Union Building
where I met a deafening wall of noise.
The Beatles were singing on the sound system,
“She loves you YEAH YEAH YEAH.”
Everyone in the building was singing along with them
as outrageously as possible,
especially loud on the YEAH YEAH YEAH.
This was our release—
we were done with the enforced solemnity.
∞
May 29, 2024
Friday Night Fights Every Night
The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports–Boxing
from Madison Square Garden
with the Look Sharp/Be Sharp theme song
and Jimmy Powers announcing
was a regular Friday night event
for Dad and me.
Dad never boxed himself,
but he loved the manly art,
the sweet science
as it was called.
I was fascinated
by the different styles of boxing:
the peek-a-boo face shield defense,
the flailing perpetual-windmill offense,
the powderpuff jab while backing away,
the lethal left cross,
the unexpected uppercut,
and the thunderous knockout right
when the victim drops his guard.
For entertainment,
the best matchups paired
the buzzsaw free swinger
against the cautious counterpuncher.
It was fun to watch.
But buzzsaw vs. counterpuncher
was no fun at all
when the parents squared off
later in the 1950s.
It was Friday Night Fights
every night of the week.
Mother was a free swinger,
always throwing the first punches,
launching one haymaker after another:
accusations of bad faith
and compromised loyalties.
Dad deflected the blows
with his annoying fact-checking,
his claims of innocence,
and by pointing out she needed help.
There was alcohol, always alcohol,
to juice the aggression.
In the olden days,
boxers used to fight
until only one was standing.
My parents fought and fought and fought
every night
and all they did
was hold each other up.
∞
June 5, 2024
Lao Tzu Advises the Board of Directors
The best manager is a gracious guest in my house.
As host, I am pleased to do my best.
We both get what we want.
The best manager is hardly recognized.
Good results come naturally
and the workers say: we did it all ourselves.
The worst manager is known too well:
from below—resentment, hatred, fear;
from above—a ruthless rising star.
Results destroy the worst manager.
Until that day, how many broken lives
will litter the shop floor?
If managers have no further desire
than to embrace and protect, the workers
will have no further desire than to enter and serve.
∞
June 12, 2024
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
I’m feeling special standing in the temple.
I’m such a sight to see!
I lift my words to you my Lord.
Behold: take a look at me!
Indeed, I have risen above the rest.
Lord, you know it’s true.
Unlike these fools, I mind your rules.
My bearing says, “Better than you.”
[Chorus]
Better than you,
better than you.
Lord knows
he’s better than you.
Who needs to ask? I tithe and fast.
My piety’s beyond compare.
It makes me proud to show the crowd
how to strike a righteous air.
My public look is by the book.
My face is pale and wan
and I raise my hands at the proper times.
I show the people how it’s done.
[Chorus]
Better than you,
better than you.
Lord knows
he’s better than you.
The temple is blessed to witness the best;
it’s all about the show.
I’ll close my hour on the temple floor
with this, a truly grateful prayer:
Thank you, Lord, that I am spared
from living a life of sin
like that tax collector over there
and all the others in this room.
[Chorus]
Better than you,
better than you.
Lord knows
he’s better than you.
∞
June 19, 2024
The Plumb Line
Amos 7:7-17
With a plumb-line, the wall of Israel was erected
with closely-fitted, well-joined stones.
These perpendicular stones were the very bones
of a great nation, but a careless people neglected
their promise to the Lord. They failed to stay the ruin.
And now the Lord is holding a line and plummet
against the wall. It is used for building up;
the line is also used for tearing down
as the demolition crew decides how much to raze.
The Lord bears long, but the Lord won’t bear forever.
The herdsman Amos foretells the coming days
of desolation for an errant nation who lost its way.
The bowing, bulging wall is put to the measure;
by the sword of justice, the edifice is swept away.
∞
June 26, 2024
[haiku]
pan-fried trout
I learn something new
about my father
∞
July 3, 2024
Owl Love
Sometimes on my morning run,
I hear the call and response
of two owls.
They move around,
never in the same place twice,
but I know who they are
because the smaller of the two
is one white note higher
on the keyboard,
and each has a pitch
always the same.
No one owl initiates the call
every time.
They take turns.
The 2-hoot call is followed
by a two-Mississippi wait
for the 2-hoot response,
then they take 15 seconds
to think about it
before the next exchange.
I imagine both
are saying the same thing:
“I am yours.
I am here for you.”
∞
July 10, 2024
The Drifters
Their lyrics sealed the promise
of August of ’59,
There goes my baby
movin’ on down the line.
I had a brown-eyed sweetheart
when I was seventeen.
Our worlds were far apart
and the Drifters fell between.
The mournful whine is silent;
the booming drum is dead;
the song has lost its power
except inside my head.
Would I be very different
from others turning gray
who marry good companions
and never rue the day
when I riffle through my files
where the dead events belong
and turn aside discretely
to touch a treasured song?
∞
July 17, 2024
On Mount Wilson
Mother said her father,
my grandfather, had a request.
He wanted to take a drive
up to Mount Wilson for a day
and he asked to take me with him.
Just me.
I thought that was strange,
but I said OK.
It was strange because it was rare
for me to have any alone time
with Grandfather
and to be honest
I was never that close to him
because I feared his temper.
On an overcast Saturday morning,
the two of us took the hour-long drive
from Lorain Road
to the Observatory grounds.
Both of us were familiar
with the telescope
and the public access area
surrounding it,
so we strolled to the edge
of the mountaintop
overlooking the Los Angeles basin.
It occurred to me
this is what he really wanted to do:
look down on the City of Los Angeles.
It was early afternoon
and by now the morning fog
was a layer of unsightly smog
two thousand feet thick
pressing against the San Gabriel Mountains
with only the higher hills of the basin
poking out into the clear air.
There was nothing to see,
but he just stood there
for the longest time,
looking to the south and talking to me.
Somehow, Grandfather found it comforting
to look to the south and talk to me.
Three months later, Grandfather was dead.
∞
July 24, 2024
You Do Not Always Have Me
John 12:1-8
The flowing lake is always filling,
but is never full.
Once there was a true sense of fullness—
of which all that now remains
is an empty print and trace.
The lake strains for completion
with waters around it—
seeking in things that are not there
the help it cannot find
in those things that are.
Instead,
there is a chronic ache
that comes from feeling incomplete.
∞
July 31, 2024
Residents Only
How is this different from the deep south?
There is no “Whites Only” sign
on the front of the Orange Grove Plunge.
That’s one difference.
The sign says,
“South Pasadena Residents Only,”
and you need an official
South Pasadena resident ID card
to show at the door.
That gets you into the pool.
How do you get the official ID card?
You have to live in the city.
How do you get to live in the city
when every residential property
in the City of South Pasadena
is restricted to persons
of the Caucasian race?
The admitting person at the front desk
of the Plunge
knows this is an all-white city.
If you are a person of color,
you can’t buy a home.
If you can’t buy a home,
you can’t get an ID card.
If you can’t get an ID card,
you won’t get into the pool.
Again,
how is this different from the deep south?
There is no “Whites Only” sign
on the front of the Plunge.
∞
NOTE: This is a memory from the year 1955 when I was 13.
August 7, 2024
[haiku]
nightfall
a cricket aria,
then the chorus
∞
August 14, 2024
Evening Land
As I stooped through the low portal of death,
I saw my human fate
emptied out into a lethe.
Life’s luggage of love and hate
was left behind the wall;
the gardener burned my once-essential freight.
I asked myself if this was all.
Intelligent souls clicked like dolphins in the wind
on either side of the wall,
discerning everything. My mind
came clean; discernment whirled ahead
as soon as I was schooled by the garrulous wind.
Now that I am dead,
I know that God did not create the soul;
the soul created God instead.
Now that I am dead, I know the soul
imagined heaven straddling earth
where God was hired to rule
irascible man and iterative death/rebirth.
I dreamed of an infinite life,
a dream encoded before my birth,
because one life was not enough.
I know that paradise was once inside my head,
now that I am dead.
NOTE: Written after reading “Evening Land” by Pär Lagerkvist.
∞
August 21, 2024
Cigars
Cigars evoke the stadium.
Whenever I catch the drift
of a great cigar,
I revisit the Coliseum
where you and I
would cheer the darkest team
In white America.
The tunnels reeked of smoke,
cigars especially;
today I miss the stench.
Cigars evoke for me
our best of times as father and son.
Whatever I meant to you
and you to me
in real life,
together we loved the game.
∞
August 28, 2024
On the Bridge
Hebrews 4:12-16
The word of the Lord is an oscillating dialog
of course-corrections from the officer of the deck to the helmsman
as the helmsman utters “Aye,” repeats the command,
and turns the helm and tiller to the new heading.
Except the word is a quiet voice within
and not a person bellowing over the main.
Brothers and sisters, it connects God with man—
a constant conversation for those who choose to listen.
NOTE: “On the Bridge” is dedicated to my son-in-law Brady, a Navy combat veteran.
∞
September 4, 2024
[tanka]
lost mojo
on the Red Line
a sweet face
no opportunity
for me
∞
September 11, 2024
Excuses
Jeremiah 1:4-10
We waste a lot of time making excuses.
The Bible is full of them. Some are good
like Moses saying, correctly, he is not eloquent.
The Lord enlists brother Aaron to speak
for him, and that is enough to do the job.
But most excuses are offered out of indolence.
For every Isaiah who says, “Here am I,
send me,” many more can’t be bothered.
Jeremiah is just a kid when the Lord calls
on him. Now the Lord is a master salesman
who knows how to handle every objection.
He has heard them all! He tells the kid
not to worry—He will provide the words
to say, and will protect Jeremiah at all times.
The Lord says to him, “Now I have put
my words in your mouth. Jeremiah: see, today
I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy
and to overthrow, to build up and to plant.”
In our era, everything is totally different
in every way except for the one dishonest
excuse that never goes out of style, “I’m busy.”
∞
September 18, 2024
Perfume
Christmas was coming.
I walked into J.J. Newberry,
the five and dime on Huntington Drive,
and approached the perfume counter.
The saleslady could see
I didn’t have a lot to work with.
She tried to fit quality to my budget
by showing me a tiny container
of a popular brand.
I was not impressed.
I pointed to a larger rectangular bottle
with very pale blue glass.
The price was four dollars.
I put my money down
and left the store
feeling good about myself.
On Christmas morning,
Mother opened my gift
of cheap perfume from the five and dime
and made a great show
of thanking me for my kindness.
“It’s the thought that counts.”
∞
September 25, 2024
[tanka]
a bee swarm of ducks
lifts off from the wetlands,
then forms a V…
what kind of no-mind
makes them do that?
∞
October 2, 2024
The Ballad of the Sheaf of Corn
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Bombs were falling all around
in the darkest hour of the war.
Bombs were falling in London town;
death was in the air.
Within the city, there was a parish
where the people soldiered on.
The harvest festival was a time to cherish;
the work of the church goes on.
The church was decked with local fare
on a fateful Saturday morn.
The smells of autumn filled the air.
In the center—a sheaf of corn.
It wasn’t long after that
the Luftwaffe made a call.
The festive church was laid flat.
There was nothing left at all.
Rubble remained in the months ahead.
Winter turned to spring.
Green shoots rose from the dead
as summer was on the wing.
The people of the church could see in the growth
of the ruined sheaf of corn
a sign that life is stronger than death,
a sign of life reborn.
∞
October 9, 2024
My Moment in Time
Curving through a basalt cut,
the slim-waisted river brings
waters from the Two Oceans Plateau
at Jackson Lake to the faraway waters
out west, all the way to Astoria.
Cache Peak is due south.
Smooth-sanded alluvial fans
are tan with flecks of sagebrush teal.
To the north, the massive Craters of the Moon
lava fields lie between the river
and the distant mountains of central Idaho.
I stand alone in this isolated spot.
Civilization is nowhere in sight.
Little has changed since the Bonneville Flood
scoured the Portneuf River Valley
at the end of the Ice Age or even
when the first people arrived more
than ten thousand years ago.
This moment by the river—my moment
in time—is a one-of-a-kind snapshot
in the millions of years that some version
of the Snake River flowed to the Pacific.
This tiny stretch of river is not
the complete river any more than lives
exists in isolation apart from all the brothers
and sisters of the past, present, and future.
Like the island in the stream parting the waters,
it isn’t you who travels forward.
The small measure of time meant for you
travels toward you and beyond you.
∞
October 17, 2024
What Kind of God
Hebrews 2:14-18
The gods consume nectar and ambrosia on Olympus
and amuse themselves by looking down on us
dispassionately. Cool detachment is a sardonic business.
Hellenism insists we see things as they are.
For right thinking, the body and its desires are a barrier;
we are cautioned to keep the mind completely clear.
Hebraism counters that the body and its desires
are a barrier to right action. The Lord requires
clarity of thought chastened by strictness of conscience.
The principal rubric of the Law is studied obedience
to the will of God. The Lord has a vertical presence—
aloof except to chastise with corrective fires.
The unknown author of the book of Hebrews crystalizes
the Christology of Paul by defining a different kind
of divinity in which the pioneer of our salvation identifies
with the human condition. Jesus is wholly man
as well as divine and, thus, he thoroughly understands
what it means for us to live imperfect lives.
But there is more. It is well and good to know
the Lord has empathy, unlike the dispassionate pantheon
or the distant God of Moses. It begs the question:
what can be done about our suffering and sorrow?
The pioneer of our salvation has come to earth to show us
exactly what we need for true consolation.
NOTE: There is a second version of this poem posted on December 11, 2024. The first two stanzas are the same. The third and fourth stanzas explore the ideas of the British poet and educator Matthew Arnold. See page 68.
∞
October 23, 2024
Son of Man
John 1:1-18
The son of man comes to earth.
Like you and me, he draws a breath.
His life is much like ours: a birth,
a coming of age, and then a death.
The son of man is the suffering servant.
He shoulders sins for a world in pain.
It is his role to lift our burden.
He suffers, he dies, he comes again.
The son of man is the sovereign power
to come in glory on judgment day.
No one knows the date and hour
our floating world will pass away.
The son of man is all in one:
person, servant, magistrate.
The faithful are one with the son of man.
He governs all, both small and great.
∞
October 30, 2024
I Was the Messenger
Tuesday, October 4, 1955
Eighth grade class. Early afternoon.
None of the boys paid attention
to the teacher. The seventh game
of the World Series at Yankee Stadium
was on TV and we were sitting in class
in a cloud of unknowing.
All of us were Dodger fans.
I remember the teacher was annoyed—
boys were whispering among themselves.
She said, “What’s the problem?”
Someone said, “We want to know
who won the World Series.”
“Okay, we need a volunteer
to go to the office and find out.”
Every boy raised his hand.
I was seated in the front row because
my last name was first in the alphabet.
She picked me.
I grabbed the hall pass and took off running.
I was the messenger!
Five minutes later,
I burst through the classroom door
with the great news,
“The Dodgers won 2-0!
Dodgers are world champs!”
Every boy and some of the girls
jumped up and cheered.
After losing to the Yankees
four times since 1947,
Brooklyn finally won.
I remember taking personal credit
for this splendid turn of events,
as if it was me
who drove in the two runs
and pitched the 8-hit shutout.
Everyone was happy,
jumping up and down,
and I was the one who brought the joy.
∞
November 7, 2024
The Talk
Kathy was the first girl I knew well.
She was a tomboy.
Her family lived on a corner lot
with a long rectangular lawn
perfect for tackle football.
She could mix it up
with the best of the boys.
Her dad was the head librarian
at the L.A. County Library.
Kathy and I talked about many things
other than sports.
It was the best of friendships.
Beginning in the third grade,
I had a crush on a girl named Claudia,
but I was too shy to speak to her.
We never had a conversation.
I had a vague understanding
going into the sixth grade
there was a difference
between a Kathy and a Claudia.
Sixth grade was a time
of emerging awareness.
Some of the girls in our class
were beginning to develop
and boys were talking.
One night, I said something
that gave the parents pause.
One of them said,
“We’ll talk about that later.”
The thing is, we didn’t talk about it later.
Days and weeks passed.
Nothing.
I remembered Dad’s peculiar behavior
earlier at Lake Havasu.
He tried to explain the basics
of sex education as part of my effort
to earn a Boy Scout merit badge.
It was the first and only time
I ever saw him blush.
In my final month as a sixth grader,
with my twelfth birthday fast approaching,
Mother abruptly sat me down
and explained the facts of life.
I sat there dumbfounded
as she described the mechanics of sex,
what pregnancy was like,
and how children were born.
It was a torrent of new information
and was hard to process in one sitting,
but at least it was something
other than rumor and gossip.
∞
November 13, 2024
[tanka]
a pinwheeling leaf
strikes the watercourse
and floats around the bend
gone forever
do you ever think of me?
∞
November 22, 2024
The High Achievers
A single mom gave everything she had
to her children. She took care of their urgent needs
at all hours. She worked in a stressful job
to put food on the table and clothes on their backs.
Because of her, there was peace and harmony at home.
The day came when she suffered a stroke and died.
Nothing was the same again. The children devolved
into anger and bitterness. Selfishness ruled the day.
The team was losing. The starting point guard
was bringing the ball up the court and taking
all the shots. His teammates were standing around
watching—hoping to do something useful.
The frustrated coach benched his leading scorer
and put in an unselfish pass-first reserve
who got the whole team up and running.
Soon the team was pulling away for a win.
The leading scorer sat at the end of the bench.
A major company wanted to increase its profits
by reducing payroll, so they laid off thousands
of competent older workers. The new people
struggled to find their footing. Investors were glad
when the stock price and quarterly earnings went up.
But the company lost its edge and never recovered
because of lagging productivity and the great loss
of institutional memory that left with the severance
checks.
The high achievers make things better, not worse,
by their presence. Be honest: are you a high achiever?
∞
November 27, 2024
Now
James 4:14
Life is like a mist.
It is here for a little while
and then it vanishes.
What is your life?
What is your brother’s life?
Have you sinned against your brother?
Tell your brother you are sorry
today.
Has your brother sinned against you?
Do your best to reconcile
today.
It is easy too easy to say, Tomorrow.
When morning comes, we say again,
tomorrow.
The time will come when you and the sun
will lay your heads beneath the rim
of the hills;
In the morning, only the sun will rise.
The time for brothers to heal the hurt
is now.
What is your life?
What is your brother’s life?
Life is like a mist.
It is here for a little while
and then it vanishes.
∞
December 6, 2024
Herod the Great
Matthew 2:1-12
A popular belief was abroad in the kingdom of Judea.
Scholars concluded that seventy-six generations
had passed since the Creation, and that the next,
the seventy-seventh, would gift to Israel the Messiah
who was destined to deliver the nation from foreign rule.
A child born in Bethlehem would be the king
of the Jews—as foretold by the prophet Micah.
The Magi spoke these words to Herod the Great.
Herod was frightened, but he feigned excitement.
He said to the Magi, “Go and search diligently
for the child; and when you find him, bring me word
so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
At the time, he was terminally ill with a hideous disease.
His career was one with many bold accomplishments;
it was also one of cruelty, vengeance, and paranoia,
traits in overdrive at the time of the birth of Jesus.
Herod was thoroughly Roman in murdering each
and every rival to his rule, including his wife
and three of his sons. He murdered hundreds more
real and perceived enemies in his final years
as he assured his lasting legacy in the line of succession.
In the end, nothing happened to the child of Bethlehem.
No one mourned for Herod, a converted Jew—
the son of an Edomite father and an Arab mother—
who did the dirty work for the hated Roman state.
∞
December 11. 2024
The Body and Its Desires
for Matthew Arnold
The gods consume nectar and ambrosia on Olympus
and amuse themselves by looking down on us
dispassionately. Cool detachment is a sardonic business.
Hellenism insists we see things as they are.
For right thinking, the body and its desires are a barrier;
we are cautioned to keep the mind completely clear.
Hebraism counters that the body and its desires
are a barrier to right action. The Lord requires
clarity of thought chastened by strictness of conscience.
The principal rubric of the Law is studied obedience
to the will of God. The Lord has a vertical presence—
aloof except to chastise with corrective fires.
In the time it takes a Sierra redwood in the ageing
of two thousand rings, many gods have come
and gone in the public square. Further, we become
weary of our own fungible ground of being—
the dreary march of certainties by which we cling—
as we amble toward the dust from which we came.
More crucial over the years than definitions of the divine
are behavioral tendencies toward either thought
or action when it comes to the body and its desires.
The tension between Hellenism and Hebraism defines
every age, and will continue, like it or not,
to shape our every outcome of action or thought.
NOTE: The first two stanzas of this poem are identical to What Kind of God? in which I posted on October 17, 2024. There are two versions of this poem. What Kind of God? is for the fourth Sunday of the Epiphany, Year A. This second version is the secular version in which I look at Matthew Arnold’s contrasting of Hebraism and Hellenism. See chapter 4 of Arnold’s “Culture and Anarchy,” published in 1869.
∞
December 19, 2024
White Privilege High School
Professional lawns, exquisite flowers, houses
out of Sunset illumined quiet wealth.
Money was mostly new, but tastefully displayed.
Professional men sipped cocktails with their wives,
quietly, of course, when business deals were done.
The tone was English. Along with Germanic cousins,
British surnames slept on English streets.
Italians, Greeks, and Jews were borderline.
A fleet of Japanese gardeners broke a sweat
in sunny yards. The trash was quietly hauled
each week by courteous men in coveralls.
After school, perspiring maids in uniforms
white or blue would queue for buses along
the Drive to ride a rumbling ashtray home.
The nights were deathly quiet. We never saw
the underclass at dark. Invisible deeds,
professionally drawn by cordial men, kept
our slumber safe, our world a safe cocoon.
Depression-haunted parents pampered us
into the sixties. The gaunt face of poverty
that fueled their fears was one we never knew.
Our class of 1960 naturally believed
in privileged wealth, believed in dread pursuits
of Dry-As-Dust at top professional schools.
Our dreams were so intense before the dawn,
before the day enhanced our consciousness.
From out of the comfortable night we faced the sun.
At long last we were forced to cope with light.
NOTE: I wrote this poem just before the 30th reunion with my class of 1960.
∞
December 26, 2024
What Does Jesus Say?
What does Jesus say about abortion?
The answer is nothing. Nothing at all.
What does Jesus say about The Gays?
The answer is nothing. Nothing at all.
We need to follow the Gospel core.
If Jesus is silent about your cause
and your cause consumes you night and day
does that not give you pause?
Read the Gospels again. Then pray
for the answer. What does Jesus say?
∞
January 2, 2025
[haiku]
rain
first sidewalk slime
for baby slugs
∞
January 8, 2025
The Ark of the Covenant
1 Kings 8
In the red morning on the umber sea,
none of the tall ships, wind or lee,
is lovelier than you, proud lady.
O, wandering bark, come home to me!
The storm is passed. Sailors rest.
The People are safe, no longer oppressed.
The Lord is calling: Be my guest.
You are the chosen. You are the blessed.
The throne of God is in this space.
The Holy of Holies is now in place.
From tent to temple, the race is over.
You are safe at last in Yahweh’s grace.
∞
January 15, 2025
[tanka]
my glass is filled
with dusk tonight
I swirl the west and think of you
and sip the stars
down to the stem
∞
January 24, 2025
Change
For a memorial service
The sacred sea defines
our summed collective soul.
Our infinite designs
are in the sea’s control.
We scarcely understand
our fundamental start.
We cannot comprehend
the sum of every part.
As the aeons come and go,
its silent flow and blend
is all we ever know;
but now we feel the wind.
A molecule of water
that skims the sacred sea
and breathes corporeal air
resembles you and me.
As soon as we are tossed
above the nurturing foam,
this flesh, from found to lost,
obscures our natural home
in such a pleasing way
we lose the cosmic sweep
of comely, sunborne spray
rounded by the deep.
∞
January 29, 2025
The God Guy
Proverbs 9:10
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
How is that?
Fear is the feeling of terror
in a frightening event.
It is respect a servant shows
for the master’s vision.
It is reverence one feels
in the presence of greatness.
Those who fear the Lord
continually are aware of him.
Those who fear the Lord
have a deep reverence for him.
Those who fear the Lord
are committed to obey him.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
but the fool despises wisdom and instruction.
The fool seeks wisdom
while ignoring the Lord
and yet the Lord is the source of wisdom.
The fool has no foundation
on which to build wisdom.
Without a fear of the Lord,
the fool makes decisions
based on faulty human understanding.
The fool despises the Lord’s instruction
and cannot be told what to do.
The fool neither glorifies the Lord
nor gives him thanks.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
We are ruled by a man
who does not fear the Lord.
He arrogates himself to the Lord’s throne
in the chain of being.
We are not terrified by his power.
We do not respect him.
We do not feel reverence toward him.
He is a fool,
but because of self-referential ignorance,
he is the last to know.
His time in power will pass away.
The Lord’s path of righteousness
is the path to wisdom.
∞
February 6, 2025
Dad Tips the Waitress
For the first time in my life,
I noticed how Dad paid a restaurant bill.
I had been watching him silently
on our long trip.
We ate dinner in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The waitress cleared the table
and came back with the bill.
Dad pulled out his credit card
and examined the bill.
I asked him how much he tipped the waitress.
He turned the bill around
and moved it across the table
so I could look at it.
He showed me the individual prices
for the food and drinks,
and the grand total for everything.
He pointed to the grand total and said,
“I tip 15 percent of that amount.”
Dad could do math problems in his head.
He already knew the exact amount
of the tip, to the penny.
Also on the bill was a four percent tax
for the state of Wyoming,
and an additional two percent tax
for Teton County. He said,
“I don’t tip for state and local taxes.
The government had nothing to do with this meal.
The state and county get nothing.”
NOTE: I was a 19-year-old college sophomore at the time. Dad was a conservative Republican with an uncompromising contempt for all forms of government above the local level. The fact he was shorting the waitress did not trouble him.
∞
February 12, 2025
Dialog Between Athlete and Coach
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
A duet: Athlete (alto or tenor) and Coach (bass)
I ran my best, but failed to place.
My legs were dead the entire race.
I don’t have wind. I don’t feel strong.
Tell me: What am I doing wrong?
Unless you change, you’ll never win.
You are running races with the weight of sin.
The weight of sin drags you down.
A change of heart wins the crown.
I like the pleasures that come from sin.
Unless you change, you’ll never win.
Defeat or victory is yours to choose.
The life you live is yours to lose.
(Athlete and coach speak to the congregation in unison)
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
NOTE: These are lyrics for an anthem or a spoken presentation.
∞
February 19, 2025
[tanka]
repair work
on the dam
emptying out
the harmony
of water and mud
∞
February 25, 2025
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
Matthew 20:1-16
I was an L.A. kid. My favorite sport
was baseball. The weather was always kind
enough for a game. My friends and I
knew the batting averages and the earned run
averages of the players in the PCL,
and all the major league stats. I followed the Angels.
It was always a treat to go to Wrigley Field
with my dad and watch the Angels play ball.
I never went without some friends from school.
One Saturday, my dad took me and two
of my friends to an Angels game. We sat near
the back of the lower section overlooking
first base. There was a section in front of us
right by the visitors’ dugout completely empty.
These seats were the most expensive in the park,
but today, those ticket holders did not show up.
Wrigley had a custom to let the local kids
into the stands after a couple of innings,
just to fill up the ballpark. It was a neighborly policy
with the surrounding community in south L.A.
and it helped to boost the noise for the home team.
When a boisterous group of black kids commandeered
the seats in the coveted section down below,
a man sitting near us began to grumble
about them in a loud voice. This same man
was telling his companion at the start of the game
how pleased he was with his seats at the ballpark.
He did have great seats, but it made him angry
when poor kids sat closer to the action.
The man complained and muttered racial slurs
for two innings before my father finally
had enough. Dad was sure the commentary
was ruining the experience for me and my friends.
After one racist rant too many, my father turned
to him and said, “Hey, knock it off.
We’re trying to watch the game.” The man was caught
off guard, “Well, it isn’t fair. I paid good money
for these seats, and those kids don’t deserve
the luxury box.” Dad said, “I heard you bragging
about your seats when you came in. You said
they were perfect. What happened? Relax,”
he said gesturing toward the buoyant fans
in the stands, “enjoy the game with the rest of us.”
It worked. We never heard another word.
Later, my dad explained it this way:
“It is a gift just to be there at Wrigley Field
where the sun is shining and the Angels are winning.
Be happy. It doesn’t matter where you sit.”
NOTE: This Wrigley Field was the minor league home of the old Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. The Angels were the AAA farm club of the Chicago Cubs in the National League. The Cubs played in a much larger Wrigley Field in Chicago.
∞
March 4, 2025
When Jesus Saw the Crowds
Matthew 9:36
When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt the world’s pain—
for the sick, the blind, the troubled
trapped in the grip of demons.
When Jesus saw the crowds
he felt the world’s sorrow.
He wanted to wipe away
tears from every eye.
When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt the world’s hunger.
The tired and hungry sheep
looked up, waiting to be fed.
When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt for those cut off.
He cared for the lonely leper
banished from the village square.
When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt the world’s bewilderment.
The people, longing for God,
were given rules instead.
The people were harassed and helpless
like sheep without a shepherd.
When Jesus saw the crowds,
he was moved by true compassion.
The world has greatly changed
since Jesus saw the crowds.
But we still have pain and sorrow;
we still have hunger and loneliness;
we still have bewilderment.
The Gospel remains the same.
He is moved by true compassion
for the crowds of the dispossessed.
∞
March 12, 2025
Evening, Midnight, Cockcrow, Dawn
Mark 13:35-36
Watchman, wake. Awake and rise!
You must be ready when the master comes.
Don’t let him catch you by surprise
in the evening,
at midnight,
at cockcrow
or at dawn.
Watchman: this charge is yours to keep.
The master comes in a sudden rush.
Don’t let him find you sound asleep
in the evening,
at midnight,
at cockcrow
or at dawn.
Watchman, wake. Open your eyes!
You cannot know the urgent hour,
the hour when the master of the house arrives
in the evening,
at midnight,
at cockcrow
or at dawn.
∞
March 18, 2025
Rejection
The same stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
~Psalm 118
The great American poet was gravely ill.
Confined to home, he was game enough for an interview.
As I was ushered into his august presence,
I noticed letterhead papers taped to the walls
of the rooms, corner to corner from floor to ceiling.
Each was a version of, “Sorry, not for us.”
Of course, I started to laugh, which was the point.
The old man’s voice was soft but clear:
“The rejection letters keep me humble,” he said.
“I often wonder where the editors and publishers—
these gatekeepers—are today with their insights.
The uncharted path is hard to follow at first.
I get that. Sometimes it takes a while
for the world to come around to the unforeseen reality
that a loathed new idea despised by the authorities
will be the conceptual capstone of the coming age.”
∞
March 26, 2025
Our Love
Love instantiates. Twain souls
set out: governed by gravity
sliding scraping muscling through
perilous rapids churning white
bending through forests and fields
beneath the bridges of twelve towns
gaining girth and losing speed
adding a tinge of toxic sludge
to a whispering flood a mile wide.
From glacial melt to delta salt,
this is who we are.
∞
April 2, 2025
[haiku]
taps…
the widow folds her life
and puts it away