Wait

Cold winds lash

spring branches;

new leaves

lust

for heat;

torn stems

litter

tender new grasses

and wait

for discordant chimes

to rend the sky,

release bright spirits,

charm the shy sun ,

and cast to waiting earth

Summer.

Through These Front Windows

see how our neighbor’s trees

fill with dusky breeze

as bright sky fades to bluest steel.

Light laces through the blackening limbs;

swaying crowns arch

while just above

climbs the golden star.

Oh! See how the planet, worlds apart

from our own treading voyager,

glides through God’s black, velvet heart.

Darkness fill the tender earth.

Sudden night joyfully buoys

our slowly turning, blue-green world

with His sacred void.

Wrapped in Trembling Skin

Wrapped in trembling skin,

my throbbing nerves

synapse

to chaos, pain, and pleasure

permeation of

sensation.

Fear or joy

compounds

the fall of day.

Night

fills my eyes

light fails.

Clouds

pile high, tear

to tatters, shred

vapors scudding over

grey hills.

There

I see
my self-

made

hell.

Motion

My body’s always in motion

running through unseen routines

forcing air, chest rising and falling,

heart-blood coursing  

through a million small chambers

to glow red again.

Even at rest

my chest rises to cold air

and drinks it in, clean and clear,

and with heady ambition,

I run,

my aging legs pounding

this treadmill

to nowhere.

But I know this

is a temporary condition.

Soon enough

my blood will congeal and

pool into still, cool wells.

No more will I wake

though bright morning itself

should shake my shoulder

and with swelling song

bid me rise,

for I am not made

for eternity’s day.

Death waits

and will not

be turned away.

May 1, 2011

At nightfall
we wait for the news

disasters lurking, terror
wafting across the land,
like an acid wind

when we hear
that he is dead!

A sudden crowd fills the park
as though we won the super-bowl!
World Champions!
U S A!

I hear their voices
praising God for the bullets
that pierced his brow
and spattered his foul mind
down to a place
as dark
as his murdering
soul….

… but his soul!

Now he goes
to his center,
to face the One,
to face his victims,
to acknowledge the lives he shattered
and dip his hands into pools of innocent blood.

I feel the glow
of justice; but what about
my own soul?

“Love your enemy”

“Forgive those who
trespass against you”

I am not half
so good as that, but
in my guilty depth
I know
I must not revel
in this evil man’s
death.