Tuesday, May 31, 2011

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.

Friday, May 27, 2011

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.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

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.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

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.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

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.