Faith

I still remember how cold it was the night I denounced You
          All I had with me was a good friend, a cup of tea,
          and 18 months of brokenness steeped in bitterness
Those words dropped like anvils, but more like seeds
Watered by sorrow and pruned by pain,
    it all began to grow
And My God is it beginning to bloom










I still remember how warm it was the morning I remembered what it was to hear Your breath.
          It was 3 days after I'd buried You beneath my roots
          entombed in the earth You'd made
There was no angel's chorus, just a fallen Daisy
I withered, You shot up
    But winter is ending,
and Spring carries in its wings the promise of inosculation

The Harvester

There was a message I knew as a boy and forgot as a man. It’s odd how no number of prosecutions can retrieve the lost memory that time stole, but we roll with the punches so I grew up without it. What a painful mistake. So I take one look back and see that I’m beginning to fall into the wisdom of childhood, and it is a testament to you. You, sir, were man enough to be a boy, and that’s why I remember that time of brokenness in you. It was years ago, and every tear that flowed over the news of broken marriage and the terrors of life was never seen by any eye but your own, and even those had drowned them in a sea of joy. So the story goes that a child got news through some game of eavesdropping that some awful illusion was set to be performed—your house was going to disappear before your very eyes. I still recall the paleness of my own skin. Who would dare take what belonged to you? So all six years of mine emptied all six marbles out of that leather bag. Fingers tore through every crevice that only a child’s fingers could find to gather everything you would need. Some two dollars and thirty seven cents later, I wrapped my fingers through those leather straps and pulled the mouth shut on your new mortgage, hoping that every ounce of pull would embrace you tighter, assuring you that nothing could take you away. A six-year-old child trying to bring solace to the halls of that home we would save together. I sent it with some confident words as a letter that the bank could read when they brought their surefire apology. I’m still not sure why you cried that day before the face of another—my mother knew our plan would work. Time proved our efforts true, and to this day you’ve never moved. Apparently, though, I lost my marbles when I poured them out and never could remember why I gave you that bag.  Fast forward fourteen years, add a beard and I’ll tell you what I learned. That unmoving man across the street never changed. Your house grew wild and free and beautiful trying to match its keeper. I learned what it meant to pay bills and grow up, and you didn’t age a day. Your soul is deeper than time and younger than a weary earth. And that sweetest birth of springtime is caught in every gleam that you give back to the soil you work. As those months passed by, you watched me grow as a tree that hadn’t proper roots. So that one day as you knew I might be felled, you walked out to anchor me. The small treasure I’d given you once had left my pockets empty, so I rode my motorcycle in tattered clothes hoping my gas tank would stay full and my body far from blacktop. And I cannot forget the man who skipped out as a schoolboy with a gift in hand. You must have planted that leather coin-purse I’d given you because it had grown into a jacket that you placed in my foolish branches. It hugged me tighter than those leather straps that held you from my youth. I’ve worn that embrace ever since. I’m learning to remember, now, how to reap my child-ness. And as I’ve grown into a boy I’ve stuck closely to the story of a God who gave His Son as Christ to die and bring new life to fallow ground. I’ve thrown off death like Jesus threw away the stone and found that His words echo today: “The Harvest is ready but the workers are few—now love one another and do as I do. Serve the broken, bless the lame, for God has spoken in His name that each shall slay his own desires and give himself to something higher.” But sweet brother, I have nothing to preach to you, for this is precisely what you taught me as a man. For we each have sacrificed something small as gifts to bless each other in time of need. And though I forgot every word of this as I grew old, your fierce youth has brought the age out of me and I’ve begun to grow, as but one sapling in a forest. So rest now, Good Harvester—the crop is gathered, the feast prepared. The time has come to celebrate. Precious Bacchus, know this: that tales make rivers run with wine that we may recall for a moment that they run with water, and a sweet, sweet flow it is. 

Chains of childhood could set us free

Eyelids dropped like curtains, and so it began.

The world was beautiful and old, but everything was new to us.

It was a book whose spine was broken

Because we’d opened it so many times.

And our illiterate minds didn’t stop us from writing every story

just to find it scribed in the pages of all our adventures so long passed.

Bare feet upon barren earth,

We hadn’t learned that worms were dirty

So we let them dance through our fingers,

Sewing tales that were older than the trees.

We were free from the roots that anchored our elders like alders—

Tumbleweeds in desert storms, we rode like cowboys

and hid like Indian summers.

We took three steps back, drew pistols, and fired.

Bang! Drop dead tired in the grass, drew long breaths,

and drew anything the clouds could grow into.

I hid and you sought out

every secret I’d ever buried with army men

in my backyard. You said you could be the cop

and lock up all of my fears. I told you I’d be the robber

who stole you away from everything

that tried to make lost kids found.

They were they days when we could sit at a table for hours

and pretend anything into being. Reality was childish

but our Imaginations were wildly true.

Those days when rainbows were our favorite color

Because Martin’s movement seemed silly

and klans of panthers seemed impossible.

When the rules of physics did not apply

And even if they did, we they didn’t weigh us down.

But now they have, and I miss the days when we were young.

This blog

I could fill a thousand journals trying to catch a single snapshot

But the pictures are all too small, and my photography is no better than my writing

Marriage

You have to fight a lot of people before you finally meet your match

Dragonry

Pipe lit, embers glowing—I am a dragon

But I never cared much for treasure or slaughter, so maybe I’d just rather be a writer of old.

They were wise, possessing secrets of generations.

They knew what it was to see the world from far above.

They are calloused and secluded,

need no companionship but the tales of an age long past and the understanding that future will bring about little change but their death.

Come to think of it, maybe I wanted to be a dragon all along.