Someone's Else's Shoes

Today I wore someone else's shoes
by accident

Worn out by anger
clothed in conviction

An ill fit that I knew at once.

I could not walk far in them.

Books and Biscuits

for Todd Bol, 
founder of the Little Free Library movement
rest in peace













In my neighborhood, dear one,

books wait for me around the corners

in little wooden boxes built with care that say

“Take one. Leave one.”

Text books, magazines, dog-eared classics

and brand new bits of wisdom 

or adventure.

I pull old friends off my shelves,

fill my backpack, 

and leave them by the armload.

They always find a home.

Your neighborhood may not be so blessed.

In your home, books are in short supply, 

but in this room we share,

we share -

words and stories, truth and laughter

snake skins and hand prints and 

portraits of princesses, 

robots and monsters,

hugs and tears and knock-knock jokes.

Take one. Leave one. 

And we will meet 

for hot chocolate and sourdough biscuits

on some fall day

surprised by sunshine

and books.

Tongue of a Teacher

The Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher
Teacher whose eyelids are weary
Weary of battling evil
Evil, a vast word
Word by word by word, we climb
Climb the daily steps
Steps of the temple of learning
Learning to be calm, be here, be wind
Wind and trees, river and stone
Stone that is shaped, river that flows
Flows and ebbs, erodes and feeds
Feeds the trees
Trees that give, trees that bear
Bear with the storms, bare in winter
Winter wind lashing the branches
Branches hung heavy with fruit
Fruit of the knowledge of good and evil
Evil, a vast word
Word of the Father
Father of lies
Lies of our leaders
Leaders with false tongues
Tongues that can lash
Lash like the wind
Wind that is weary
Weary of wandering
Wandering humble with bowl in hand
Hand to mouth
Mouth with a tongue
Tongue of a teacher.

Feet of Clay

Feet of Clay

Dear ones,
prayers of promise to the future,
I want you to know
I have feet of clay
And though I love you
I will forget -
names and birthdays and
how many lizards you have.
I will forget
and you will change.

You will grow tall
and lose your cherub’s fat.
Your face will harden,
maybe, too, your heart.
Your muscles will grow taut and lean.
Your hips may swell.
Your eyes may shift their sheen
While other dear ones fill my busy mind.

One day you will stand in my doorway
expectant
An eight-year-old only inside
inside
inside your eyes.
“Remember me?” you ask.

My heart remembers.
I promise it does.
But my brain is worn
and crowded as an antique train station
that welcomes hundreds
and sends them on their way.

Forgive me, dear ones.
I have feet of clay.

On the Brink

On the brink, on the edge
The precipice, the abyss, the ledge
You reach out to me,
Your cry for help
 echoed by a host
 of survivors
 and of ghosts
silently insisting I step up.
My heart trips on the weight of it.
Can I weave my words into a lifeline?

Stay.
Live.
Learn as long as you can
And I will too.
Let's meet on the mountaintop at the end
and share stories of our adventures.

The Jagged Edges

Contemplate the jagged edges:
of raspberry leaves

and soaring pines
of shredded clouds
and war-torn souls
of letters etched in granite
and the pores of aging skin.

Can you feel the edge of God's shadow
when you wander inside it?
Can you know the shape of God's footprint
when you stand within its walls?

Jagged edges give
to floating molecules their form.
They are the borders
that define the name-filled world.

Borders come in many shades.
Let us not get drunk on them.

Does shadow imprison light
for crossing the border at noon?

Awake! (inspired by the words of Paolo Coelho)

Awake!
Awake!
     though the world is still in darkness
Awake!
     though you want to sleep
         just a little longer.
Awake!
     and look up -

Look up from the dust and dung.
Look up from the muck and mire.
Look up and you will see the stars.

The stars.

They shine still
     through the half-destroyed roof of the world.

I am a Stone

I am a stone
Stone of the deep world
World cut from sharp rocks
Rocks hard as eons
Eons of pounding surf
Surf and sand and soil that stirs
Stirs the depths of ancient strands
Strands that weave into sounding life
Life of mounding and moveable earth
Earth that cradles my stony self
Self told in bone
Bone that is unknown
I am a stone.

I am a stone
Stone of the heart-force -
Force that rolls and pelts and stills
Stills me to solid polished gray
Gray as the shade-cool river bed
Bed of the earth
Earth that is ancient and new
New as the now, lost as time
Time locked in geodes and crystals
Crystals that cut bone
Bone that is unknown
I am a stone.

Give Me a Weary God

Give me a weary god
One who knows what it means to bend,
To take a knee or bow a head,
Emptied, cast down, enslaved.

Sustain his rebellious spirit.
Pull a guilty glory from his likeness.
Turn his grace upon those heavy hearts
Who are struck together by the tempest.

Behold that spitting form,
The backward shame of heaven,
Spewing disgraced insults.
Help obedient hearts defy that high name

That name that sets himself above the cross
And puts every death to shame
For the sake of inglorious human vanity.
Confront his hateful ways and curse his tongue
For reviling humane earth.

Slaves stand with wounded hands
Confronting bold-faced adversaries - flint-skinned, taut-lipped.
Regard their stricken, burning backs.
Exalt their wounded tongues and ears.

On this bare morning we stand together.


- inspired, reconfigured and crafted from Isaiah 50:4-9 and Philippians 2:5-11, Palm Sunday, March 2018

The Basket

I am an astronaut awash in stars.

I am a shipwreck survivor,
  collapsing at last on the shore.

I am a burrowing hermit crab,
   slipping in and out of safe darkness.

I am a weary traveler resting under a tree.

I am carrying a basket of souls,
   and being carried in the basket.

Memorial Hill

Sitting on the hard edge of the past
our conversations punctuated with stars
and lack of sleep
we tangle and untangle
thoughts, selves, souls, hearts, limbs.

Behind us, the Memorial -
calcified, unchangeable -
petrified lives engraved in granite,
an homage to the carnage of glorious war.

Before us, rolling into verdant growth and open air,
a hill, cascading down from our feet to
a field, wide and waiting for play, and
a forest ranging deep and rising away into
sky, vast and shifting and rich with sunrise,
the scents of lifting flight
and all the blooming atmospheres of tomorrow -
of what could- may-will be -
eternity.

This pause, this sitting-on-stair,
this meeting of flesh on stone,
is all that we can rightly call
Now -
a thin edge -
a molecule of a moment -
a word that falls into space -

a kiss to vanish on your face.

-Amherst College, Reunion 2018

Breath and Twine

Have the courage to breathe,
Breathe compassion,
Compassion for the world as it is.

Is there room to breathe free,
Free the fluttering wings in your chest,
Chest that rises and falls,
Falls with the ocean waves -
Waves of despair and hope?

Hope swells, crests, sweeps
Sweeps the shores -
Shores of souls,
Souls entrusted to our care.

Care comes in boxes of twine,
Twine around fingers, hearts, lungs,
Lungs straining against the world,
The world as it is.

Is there a way to weave,
Weave twine into baskets,
Baskets that hold such a wavering thing,
Thing that ebbs and flows,
Flows through our fingers,
Fingers that weave twine,
Twine into baskets,
Baskets that hold hope?

Dormant Tomorrow

Buried in darkness -
Dormant, asleep -
Growing in secret,
Preparing to rise,

Past selves are reborn
when new voices shout,
demanding peace
as only the young can.
Tomorrow belongs to them.

And us?
The gray ones
Weary with wisdom
And life
And loss
And the slow ticking pace
Of our worn and beating hearts?
We step with soft footfalls on this earth,
behind the stomping feet of their warrior dance,
tending the next row
of sleeping seeds.

Disembodied Endings

Dying in this furtive world
Illuminated only by breath
Seven dragonflies dance across the sky,
Each one a sin, and a virtue.
Make mine bold, glittering, aquamarine.
Bring nectar and ambrosia to the farewell feast.
Our days are numbered like the hairs on your head, or the
Diamonds that float across infinite waters.
In time, the world will float, too.
Endings are like that -
Dire and magnificent.

Right Now

Right now birds are singing.

Tomorrow I may fail
or you may die
or earth may burn

But right now birds are singing.

Birds are singing
and the air is cool
the oranges are sweet
and the coffee is warm.

Later, tears may come
or fear
or broken bones and promises

But right now birds are singing.

Birds are singing,
my heart is beating,
my lungs are breathing,
my home stands,
and love lives.

Right now birds are singing.

My Heart Cries Havoc!

My heart - oh, my heart -
cries Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!
"Unthinkable" has vanished.
All, all, all is thinkable:

Waters poisoned forests flaming islands drowning -
Wolves at our doorstep with teeth of bullets -

And the children -
God, the children -
Dead, dying, futures mortgaged
Shot down in schools
Homeless in hurricanes
Motherless mobs with
Jackals as nursemaids.
A cage, a cage, for their tender age!

All, all, all is thinkable -
imagined, enacted, decreed and designed -
Locked
and
Loaded.

In a punch in the gut on the morning commute
A bumper sticker flaunts two stark silhouettes:
"Your son," the figure on the restroom door,
"My son," armed with the rifle-death-machine.
"Come and take it" demands the man
With the banner of death by the hotdog stand.

Oh, God! God! God!
What threats are here made,
taunts are here laid
down at our feet?

What will we - can we - wear to shout
our pain - shame - defiance - unity?
What rainbows? What colors? What ribbons?
What orange vests with lists of death?
What shroud, sackcloth, or ashes would be
Enough?

Enough.

"Enough" - an impossible word.

God! Oh, God! Has this world ever learned?
Do we need another flood
to wash clean our sins
of cruelty, violence, greed and despair?

Oh, God! Havoc! Mercy and kyrie!
My heart! oh, my heart!
Break my heart, break!
Oh, Absalom! Oh, fallen sons and daughters!
Fallen on the battlefield of these
thinkable tragedies!

And you who watch and teach and lead -
you who stand and speak and rule
you who make and buy and spend
and end your days when you begin -
arrest your beating hearts.
Drop into time's abyss with me
and see:

In this yawning moment
Your next words matter -

the way light matters or air
or the sun, stars, cosmos,

or this green earth that we
burn so callously
crumbling its nourishing dirt
into garbage dumps
and choking its living waters
with plastic poisons
that suffocate sea turtles -

Oh, god! Can't we see?
Every death is mine-yours-ours.
We choke and gas
ourselves
We massacre
ourselves.

We are the ones
who swallow the plastic
who immolate our souls and our futures
under this brown, sulfurous sky
while children fall - pop! pop! pop! -
to the thinkable tragedy
of our indifference.

"I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?"

Cyberspace is a place where nobody hears,
A soul-less Beast - all mouth and no ears -
An impotent hydra with infinite heads -
A machine made of fury, a furnace for a heart
Gorging on our madness
While we, the blind, gouge out our own eyes,
Bash in our own skulls.

Oh, God! Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!
Let poets scream and wail!
Let artists paint with blood
and writers carve warnings on living bone
while teachers count carcasses
from dawn to dusk.

Hearts of mercury, lead, and fumes - awake!
Wail! Wail and break.

Is there not one soul living to heal the wounds?

My heart - oh my heart -
cries Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!

Before and After Sandy Hook

Before

Everything here shines.
Light winks off the polished tile floors
and loafs in cushioned walls
and pours around the arcing library
dancing on the picture books.

Windows are everywhere!
A world surrounded by sunshine,
a transparent place.
Even when Oregon gray fills the sky
light fills these halls.


After

Today
   windows are the enemy
Today
    light invites death
Today
    sunshine leaves us
unprotected.

With every step the outside world
   threatens attack.
Every shining tile
   is a dead child.

Bullets shatter glass.
Transparent worlds give
   no shelter.
Light brings
   no comfort.
The hallway has
   no end.

I will double-lock my door,
draw the shades and my little ones close.

For the next eight hours,
their lives, their thirty lives,
depend on me to shield them
inside a glass box.