Shades of cloud
Shadows of wet
Grey and white
With hushed tones of
Silver and pink and brown
Race
Transforming
Above me
Where air must be blowing
With certainty
To the South
Of all things (I thought the rain was coming from the Southwest.).
Layers of mystery
Blessing us with mist
Uncertain rain
Still giving life to summer growth.
And the strange, newly arrived
Brown wasps huddle
In the crotches of the live oak
With glossy black wings
Wrapped like coats
Against the cool August breeze.
The quiet whispers of life and even frost
Of death and the harvest of abundance
All in a single wisp of atmospheric breath.

Two shorter poems I have been working on for Ash Wednesday and the beginning of our Lenten journey.

Rumpelstiltskin

Hard we work
To make of life's gold
A more manageable straw.
Worn and weary,
We transform the glory of our given days
Into something we can hold
Time
Value.
Oh to stop --
Just stop --
And speak only the unknown name
Of holy,
Holy,
Holy,
And rest in life's grace.

Toward the cross

Somewhere inside
Perhaps just to the left of the heart
And pressing on a lung
There is a gathering of brokenness
Like shattered glass;
Sharp
Cutting at the core
Grinding out each costly breath
And making feeling fearful.
Perhaps in the sunlight
It would reflect
Even shine
The deep red of church glass
If I can tear from my breast
Shard by shard
The pain;
A slow process at best.
And surely I will miss a crystal or two
To remind me
That breathing expends
And feeling enslaves.
Life and death depend one on the other;
They intertwine
And unite
Like lovers
Yearning for each other
Until inhale and exhale
Exalt
Into a final glory beyond.

The Visit


Perhaps once in a decade a certainty comes
Unbidden and unexpected.
The sad vagaries and the lovely mysteries pile up together,
As hours and days and years blow past,
Like garbage at the curb or stars clustered in the Pleiades.
And then it happens -- as it did this morning.  
Alone, I begin to awaken, slow and worn.   Alone.
But not, for there at the foot of the bed I feel the weight of someone,
A gracious pressure on the blankets nearby.
But not imagining anyone in my room with me
I wait with my eyes closed to be clear on just who it is.
As the morning consciousness comes, I realize there is no one there,
But still feel the presence, the ponderous certainty of someone.
So I open my eyes to see,
Even a bit afraid of who is there,
And the certainty is gone.  
Only last night’s dirty socks which I was too tired to put in the wash basket
Sit on the ground by the bed.
Seeking to be sure, I am left alone again.
No presence.  No weight.   No certainty.
Surely I could not have borne the vision of it,
So it dashed off.
Still, I was visited
In my loneliness and dreamy waking
By a message of love and certainty to lift me
For perhaps another decade or so until, forgetting,
I hear or feel or somehow know another word of truth.

Winter’s Change

My fingers sting with sharp cold.
Ah yes, this beauty comes at a cost. 
The evening’s powder snow purifies the morning landscape
And takes the last hint of life from the rose that had hung on into January.
And as the first light burns at the distant end of all I can see
The ghostly white turns to reflect the rosy warmth
Deceiving perhaps -- still just as frozen as it was before --
Or beginning just barely its slow decent into the ground.  
I walk with gentle care
For each step dents the holy surface
And mars the sweet chilled blanket.  
I have no more intent to change the snow 
Than the snow desires to burn its ice into my skin,
Yet we both do what we do not mean to do 
And change comes. 
For I cannot but gravitate down into the earth
And the new snow cannot but be snow.    
Then, without a warning, a dusting from a holly tree bowed with the weight
Breaks the silence without a sound but with a glitter dancing in the still air.  
The sun glows yellow in the transformation as snow is not snow but air
Floating with glory.
Was it a  bird that gave the snow it’s new way?   
It was too gentle a touch to have been a clumsy squirrel.  
There was no wind.
Perhaps it was an angel speaking.
There is something in this morning that warns of death 
And dances new life.
Something that hammers resurrection into dying flesh.
Something. 
Perhaps.  
So too, perhaps, I can be more than one who dwells in winter snow,
More than one whose toes, unfeeling, longing for a warm fire, sink through to the soil.
Speak to me angel.
Speak.
That I may hover in the morning sun
And glow.

"Humble beginnings"

I rise to welcome the local star

Religiously

When I am at the beach

As if it might not boil through the blue sea's horizon 

And make a new day

Without me,

Although it has done that for longer than I can envision

Just fine.

Today, the orange peeks out 

From its hiding place beneath the earth

Through a Venetian blind haze

That trims slices from the molten god

Revealing no easy round

But a shape-changer 

Driving swiftly from the wave edge

Toward some unmarked but well-worn zenith.

It writes secrets in an ancient, unknowable language

On the calm and welcoming water's face

First in the orange-red of a steep Japanese garden bridge

Lending its arch over a stone creek.

Then, imperceptibly, it bakes golden-yellow

And seems to speak anew.

Finally, white-hot characters sparkle their harsh yet vague

Message I cannot decipher 

Or even stand to look upon for long -- 

Mysteries that warm me

As I watch their sacred dance

And wait in wonder 

For a word

Standing on the cool sand

In worship. 

Beach

While the sun is still low
Only promising in its great orange eye, lined with the morning’s wet and feathery clouds,
The white, dry unblinking baking to come,
I walk and gather shells along the wet margin
Where the sea smacks the land.
The cool of the foam rolls up my wandering,
Covering my steps before I move on.
The sand gathers in hair on my lower leg and  between my toes.
I love the smooth silky feel of my skin after the washing of the sand and the salt-mineraled deep.  
It does not appear to be a pod so much as a longer parade --
The dolphin playing and feeding just past the sandbar all together
Spitting the blue-green glowing sea from their white-pink blowholes
And swallowing the fresh, cool air, to dive,
Their beautiful  half circles knitting together water and sky
Punctuated by the rare but grand leap above
That allows me to see their sleek bodies
As my breath leaps with them in surprise.
Before so much blessing and curse
A fortnight of years or more ago
I gathered the biggest, perfect ones.
I was good at this.
Entire whelks with royal purple decoration,
Moon snails with pink spirals as big as a fist,
Clam shells to cover a whole breast to then uncover
Or to fashion as plates for the family dinner on the deck
With a chilled bottle of beer and laughter.
Today, I do not see much large and whole.
There is one small silver one, but it is not for me --
So clean and complete.
Life’s glory dwells in this worm-holed brown chip striped with gray, worn ridges
That sings passion and death,
Harmonizes perseverance with holy apathy,
Yearns for the beat of my inner breast to hope what it can and abandon the rest.
There are dreams still
Broken and sharp-edged
Hard and true.
I exhale the hurt and sadness of the years
But not the honest, earned toughness of what remains.
I inhale the fresh cool air, to dive,
To knit heaven in this wounded flesh.  

The Uneven

Even the holy seems to come out uneven.
At the close of communion, there is extra;
Not exactly God's abundance, but more than enough.
Bread ripped into fingertip bites;
Jesus leftover.
And I must take some of the blood also
To wash down the dry and crumbling body
And still speak out to the crowd.
It takes some Jesus to swallow Jesus;
More in the mouth to digest the sacrifice.
But not too much
Since the blood makes me light-headed
And sleepy.
So some of the wine remains to be poured into the ground.
And the earth communes also.
Who communes and consumes?
Who is fed?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Even the uneven is feast.