Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Where the day will take us












Where the day will take us                       

Harder each year, becomes the routine –
folding and unfolding myself;

reach, stretch, bend and arch. 
Harder still to flex that not-the-body

pertaining to me – to keep it vital –
generous and receptive.

Jesus said, become as a little child –
when I went about 

where the day would take me,
shedding a life in time

of hierarchical impositions;
exploring the outposts and wild purlieus –

nameless and unruly; heroic and detached.
It’s not that unmarked tablet

(lost on the way to school)
we must recover but, our flexibility,

our susceptibility, slipping out
of our tendencies, our utterly crushing contexts,

young and vigorous, lithesome and nimble,
adventuresome deep in our bones,

as we go about exploring the vast,
Godly paths of where the day will take us.

O child of God, are your own arrangements
superior to your Father’s intentions?    
___________________________________
(photo by Dassel/pixabay)

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

God's gift


God’s gift      

Enjoy this moment God has made,
o companions, knowing full well

we have no right to joy –
not having earned it,

not owning it nor having created it. 
It’s a loan, a temporary possession,

slipping inevitably through our fingers.
Endure the suffering moments as well –  

God’s loan, also – knowing we do not
own suffering and have not earned it.

We pray for one and not the other
but, God gives neither joy nor pain;

God’s gift is life – temporary, also –
the fleeting, undivided experience

and awareness of it – the ecstasy and horror,
love and bitterness, grief and pride,

the gentility and brutality of it through which
we must make our way, time after time,

until God gathers it all back again
into His vast, bestowing arms.

O child of God, to accept the gift of God,
accept the total, eternal ownership of the Giver.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Portrait


Portrait         

A charcoal portrait which represents me
as much as apparently anything else,

all down on paper in black and white;
stationary lines arc and wriggle,

twist and flow, crafting brows,
hairlines and facial features.

I’m the empty space, I suppose,
sketchy, binary, insinuated;

formed and shaped
by shades of black and gray.

The black is my ignorance – 
overwhelming; peripheral; defining.

The white is my emptiness,
at center stage, the light’s facsimile.

I become existent where there is nothing -
allowing the backdrop to seep through.

Having mislocated myself, I cleave desperately
to the ignorance that appears to define me.

O child of God, the goal is not to know yourself 
but to be Who You are and always were.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Apple-cheeked son



Apple-cheeked son

Perfect is the poem until the book is cracked,
meaning and structure imposed from without;

eyes taken off even for a moment
and it returns to its original


apple-bright, closed-cover perfection,
where, composed of unassailable unity,

aptness and utility, it doesn’t mean a thing. 
But seized and probed, quoted and exploited,

read assiduously between the lines,
its perfection is seemingly destroyed

by the critical reader’s inherent
self-serving fantasy, leaving it to rot

like carelessly bitten fruit tossed aside
in the original garden state of non-attachment.

O child of God, you are also
the apple-cheeked son of Adam and Eve.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Paper tiger



Paper tiger
       

At some point, the path becomes self-verifying,
its own guide; with easily discernible boundaries.

At some turn in the road, annihilation
portends freedom, the right thing to do;

the only treasure to give.  Every self-assertion
becomes transparent and repugnant;

every question identified as the dodge,
deflection that it is; every guile pathetic,

the crumbling castle, feet of clay;
the paper tiger insufficient in its roar. 

At some point, the arrows fail to penetrate
and the clamor of the crowd, the invalidation

of the enchanted, the drunken and oblivious
become palm leaves under donkey hooves,

aiding the pilgrim to wend his way. 
At some arrival, you swing through a door

and though you weave in and out for a time thereafter,
losing your grip and footing, there’s no turning back,

no way to remain that which you no longer
seem to be and have lifelong been.

O child of God, the path never gets easier
but dedication brings surety and daring.