Slow Rise

Somebody once asked me, “What is
the eternal value of baking bread?”
Where is the longevity of the briefest moment?
What is the profit of a moving breath?

The flavors interwoven like delicate threads
Refreshing the air like white eyelet curtains
We close our eyes, we lift our heads.

Here, now,
Waving in the sun-bathed scent of tall grass
And the pastures murmuring with bovine contentment;
The hills clustered together and sprawling apart,
White puff clouds peeling back like a tea towel
To let in sun heat, letting our souls rise,
Slowly, pulling together the flavors of childhood,
Breathing in the aroma of dreams and hope

Here, now,
We sit together and break bread,
Pulling apart at the oneness, stretching out
Empty hands, and filling hungry spirit bellies
For a taste of salvation, a taste of new life again.

Honest Woman

You cannot make it of me,
Nor I of myself, contort and strain
Against my true nature, my brand.
An honest woman cannot be made,

Only broken, confronted, surrendered,
Only by way of bowing down whole self
Reserving nothing, hiding nothing,
That I might find refuge in the cleft.

Refuge from? Self-destruction,
The dishonesty lurking there
Behind seductive corners, beckoning
To taste and glut and evolve

Into a would-be goddess
Whose distempered appetite
Makes her demands for more, ever more,
Forever dissatisfied, forever dishonest.

My heart unkempt, and perhaps hair, too,
I come not strutting but prostrate,
Heart bowed, soul desperate, hands outstretched
To a king, a savior, the only true Maker of honest things.

Plus Lent*

Lent-time hunger
is stirred and swells up
from spirit famine;
leaves chocolate decadence
on thirsting tongue.

“Slow, slower!” cries the soul,
yearning to feast
on eternity’s cadences
of mystery birthed in cosmic
knowledge, known colloquially as, faith.

*pronounced "ploo lahn”, means “slower” in French.

Orient

They say
that there is no need to orient,
to posture, to approach,
to follow or obey;
to prepare a soul

for that homestretch movement
into light and majesty’s domain.

The sacredness of things, they say,
is outdated and overrated,
thumbed down and ignored.

To truly be is to not try;
to become is to bend
self-will, our greatest demigod
into a posture of ignorance,
an irredeemable sin
in a sinless realm.

But I? I am a seeker,
humble sojourner,
knocker, pleader, bent-knee
crawler, prostrate thinker,
prayer-practitioner, reasoning-user;

faith-sword wielding, a counter-rebel
in a rebel’s world; living on the breath
of One from another realm,
following a sacred, incandescent star
in a starless philosopher’s gloaming darkness;

depth-plunging, truth excavator,
a slum-treading soldier sent
to counteract the ugliness
of popularity’s deceptions;

a righteousness slave
to pound the drums of freedom,
to walk in time, preparing a way
to the hallelujah chorus;

no lone crusader,
but one of many, marshaling
one another, our reverent rhythm warring

to push back the heavy veil,
to bring dawn breaking in
a wartime crescendo,
a battle cry of life and sanctification,
then-

Victory will emerge
in a global resurrection
and a universal song.

Selah.

Someone Said

Truth like rain had fallen
iced and hard.
Perhaps it had blistered
'haps it did burn.

Perhaps that apple
that had fallen
'haps it merely
had a worm.

And perhaps the evil
is only imaginary
the darkness, light tricks,
pain: kindness misconstrued.

Perhaps the demons
merely angels
'haps that God
merely delusion

Someone said.
Someone said!
T'was swiftly and oh so well-spoken
Only, I wonder, only, I hesitate,

For the orators and philosophers
who applaud god-forgetting
and intellect strutting
seem themselves to have forgotten

That someone's
perhaps troubled now,
'haps less than happy now,
for that someone happens to be dead.

Wintering

Seasonally peppering us with her bland white pigments,
Winter creeps up in bare-bone whispers and the bleak absence
of things once known and felt and pulsing through like hot blood,
to say only, "Perhaps, though, not?"

Her mood is tempestuous and capable, a white-washed threat,
but it is her quiet, too, that frightens and resonates.

In this ice-prismed uneasiness is her ability to freeze time,
to render earth bare and brittle, cold and un-moving,
urging us to authenticate and to prove truths taken for granted,
in the mist of amnesia fogging up our soul's summer light.

And so we fall back on memories and monuments and monumental holidays
of sacred rememberings and the hurried ignoring, a pretentious ignorance.
We exhume a grace that is grated, shredded, and grating on our nerves
until we are left to pick up the tissue paper and truth in its smallest fragments:
Pieces of peace-less crude elements, until we turn to one another in urgent tones,
to say, "These? Only these forms left of the promise and the magic and the grandeur?"

Here we are left with Winter's mandatory pause- that authoritative opaqueness,
a revolving kind of numb to enforce her agenda, talons sheathed but stretching
in cool white feathered clouds, to say: Just think. Just wait. Just pause.

Slower, more slowly, the frills shrink away in her unrelenting gaze
to lay humanity bare in humility and our squeamish self-reflection
until we see- finally see, really see, the light resonating, engulfing,
surrounding, in a majestic and cosmic, ethereal pursuit.

And the spin and the dance and the motion of truth's scarlet story
thrums us back into the arms of resurrection life once more.

Apple Spies

The drumming up of little feet
moving of chairs made complete
with water rushing
giggles hushing

Mother waits, unperturbed.

The opening and closing of doors
wind in their hair, mud on the floors
climbing the trees
"Quietly, please!"

Mother requests, unconcerned.

Later confessions reveal
organic apples they would steal
and delight in their prize
apple skins on their eyes

Mother listens, not surprised.

For secretly, Mother always knew,
just what her littles were trying to do,
and quietly delights in their schemes, and sighs,
for Mother secretly loves her Apple Spies.