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