When You Traveled

What did you see?
I saw a city swollen with people,
days numbered in their hearts,
busy with coming and going.

I saw where the crowd gathers
a square filled with carven images
and idols of wood and stone
surrounded with many little shops
selling items of plastic and clay,
bright glass and metals.

Carvings were there of nude
mythical women nine feet tall
and seated Buddas
twelve feet tall.

People played sweet songs
on the wooden flute and guitar,
sat in the shade of trees
with comfort of ice cream.

I saw the keepers prospered
by thousands of little purchases
the pilgrims made.

There was a strange planet in the sky
drawing closer,
but no one noticed.

when I saw the prosperity everywhere,
I wondered where the poverty
might lay hidden.

Young Or Old

from earliest memory
your word has been my companion.
Before I could read the upside down book
in the pray-puzzled  afternoon,
by day or by night a star you were,
a beacon by storm or by rock or by drowning,
a fireside glow to build a home around,
shadow of friend,
feel of hand,
your touch, tears,
guidance, repentance and restraint.
Young or old, at your word,
I am always a child with you.

Stainglass Conversations

waiting for the tolling bell
stainglass resonance of brass
for cafeine to migrate from mug
to morning outlook
at the Willow Street Cafe
tide of spirit and water
bourne of fire ascending,
descending
words like angels
between heaven and earth.

The fig tree stands in the church-yard corner
bearing Abraham's seed without number
overshadowing the town sidewalk
remarked upon by everyone.

The bell tolls and the service begins
light splashes in colors upon the congregation
then someone elderly collapses.

The service stops and everyone prays
while the ambulance comes.

Light flames up through the windows
splashing the sky.

During The Franz Lizt Concert, His Latter Work

A motorcycle roars
into the spaces
between notes, the graces
in a two hundred year old
musical prophesy.

I find its passage well expressed,
timely,
forgiven and perfectly foreseen.

After the biker,
the piano tiptoes away,
disappearing among flattery of fern
into a dark tunnel of trees
woodland mist swirls,

A nightingale sings.

Bethesda Trilogy

          I
Hiking to Bethesda

Wind sings,
assembling ancient words
in rustling leaves,
sentences already spoken.

A bell carved of rolled away stone
resonates like an empty tomb,
“holy, holy holy!”.

a flooding river,
a drowning,
a granite avalanche
exhaling “hosanna!”

An eagle soars
over shattered ruins
on updrafts of prophesy
screaming “Get ready!”

a broken high craig
wet with clouds of visitation,
an echo through the rainbow,
peak to peak,
wailing electric blues
of mourning,
trumpet reveilles
of victory.

I walk with you this valley town,
fallen walls carved
with petroglyphs
of gospel and doom,
doorways beckoning
with fealties of skin,
between all the smoking ruins.

                   II
       Waiting In Bethesda

we sit or pace or stand
by the pool of Bethesda,
we are the halt and lame,
the broken ones,
limbering our voices,
strumming softly
on battered guitars,
fingers drumming,
humming, singing
with cracking voices,
fragments of ancient verse,
stringing harmonic fractals
of experimentation,

waiting by the pool,
keeping watch day and night
by turns,
sampling the vacuum
for waves of the Spirit,
astral provoking
with arpeggios of exploration,

waiting in Bethesda
under the marble porch,
small among portico columns,

waiting beside the pool,
prayer rhythms
rising and falling,
breathing, sleeping,
by the pool where stars glitter,
the sun and silent moon,

waiting for the angel to come,
to stir the water in our souls,
scatter the reflections,
give us a living song!


                   III
        The Song Comes

Skimming vortex forth on seas of sound,
streaming from safe harbours of tradition,
winged sails fill with spirit winds,
soar over the harbour,
Bethesda’s agitated pool,
rising through startled flocks of brazen bells
in deafening carillon
from a congregation
of parochial belfries,
whose sudden commotions
scatter flocks of armoured predators,
heavily accustomed  to ecclesiastical feasts
of slow thickened blood.

Sailing weightless from Bethesda,
as one divinely called by name,
sailing swiftly from Bethesda,
as an arrow sent,
a radiantly singing bride,
her sparkling veil raining liquid fire,
sowing fields of blossoming light,
encircling in dizzy orbit
a dark bewildered world.

A Concert For Two Hands

             I
Send words, I Am,
skipping across blue waves,
send them shining, I Am,
through stain-glass parables,
colored crystaline analogies
uphill to the nest beneath the steeple
where Sabbath bells wait
to sound the hour,
incubate flesh long dead
to music.

Send words that sillouette
mysteries and draw them
from timeless shadow,
fleshless grave.

Send words that clothe them
in gospel,
preach them to gathered
field birds and passers by,
change the forest,
change the world,
make a way for rivers
between stones,
open mouths of earth,
let long closed caverns
resonate with song,

Perhaps a man somewhere may hear
and turning to I Am
be forever glad.

        II
We are caught in the pronunciation
of your single word,
silencing our torrented storm.

Echoeless opus unfinished,
in progress,
a roaring wind,
a whisper
in which even questions
are silenced;
a lullaby,
a call to war,
a song of love,
a pouring of the sea
into a well,
endless as wind with no beginning.

All our efforts repeat
the fragments we comprehend
and mark us to one another
as friend
As we compare and fit our torn slips
from one great manuscript
unfolding as love.

From The Field

You drew me forth,
planted me,
then moved on
to another planet,
another row,
one in a field of red tulips
offered to the sky.

I found a rhythm in your words,
Lord of King James,
rhythm in the tide of tears
that rises from earth deep
and spills,
reckless rises fragrant golden oil
and red squandered blood
I swing in a censor
among singing stars.

Layers

He worked with his hands
on leather for boots
with his hands cut the leather,
glued, sewed, glued and trimmed,
and sewed again,

layers laid down
among deep shadows,
building and rebuilding,
sculpting softly, shaping an artifact
to human need,
A piece of entire human history,

layers poured and dried,
layers of culture
color and texture
stucco, gesso, stone wall plastered,
painted and cracked,
varnished and dripped
over every generation;

fires and wars,
dictatorships, cartels
clearing the rainforest,
loosening tethered souls
of sacrificed children, animals,

layers of caked blood, dried,
sanded with pumice,
clear varnished, watercolored,
crayoned and penciled,
framed, burned, pounded
with a hammer, eaten by beetles
to beaten drums of every age,
reclaimed by jungle whose vines
hold men by the ankles until they cry;

and so it was, overgrown in deep coastal forest,
buried below towering cedars,
he stumbled upon the side of an ancient building
oiled, layered, soaked in centuries almost black
hardwood with a gothic stain-glass window

some faithful one kept a candle
burning where no one but God could know,
glinting rich greens, yellows, blues and reds,
depicting some such pre-historic tale
as only angels tell--

he had met the candle lighter before,
small, her white hair tied in a bun.

It was Christmas eve along the Alaskan Highway
deserted for the holiday at thirty below,
his jeep running out of fuel,
every station closed,
every door barred and locked against him.

Death grinning in the back seat
wearing a festive holly wreath.

When he could go no further,
he pulled into a locked up station, his last hope,
and went for a desperate walk,
the layers of his life grown thin and brittle.

his jacket barely enough,
Not a window showed a light,
the village deserted,
gone to reunions, choir fests,
the sunny warm hearths of relatives,

when he came upon a tiny church,
a light burning, the door unlocked,
there alone in silence
on her knees with her back to the door,
one kneeled devoutly in prayer,
nor did she start at his approach.

she fed him, filled his jeep with gas,
saw him on his way;

thus the layers were applied, the collage
pasted. plastered, a choir softly singing,
filling the gaps, cracks between the planets
between the days making decisions,
gingerly driving upon parallel logs
spanning a broken ice bridge
crossing the Graham River
that midnight Christmas eve,

and the cloud of witnesses
misting up, another year
from another river
at dawn among summer evergreens,
singing at dusk, harmonica melodies rising,
falling, quiet winds.

Journey Prayer

　
　
we have come so far
from anger and rebellion
to this candle lit parchment
in a dusty document library
mysterious with words like "chastity", "modesty",
and "fidelity".

we have walked in your city,
with its leaded stain glass windows,
through quaint old landscape tapestries,
into green farm lands,
cottage clustered villages,
your forgotten kingdom.

Simply kindle in us again
the creative fire of desire and vision,
collecting gifts we find to give,
scribbled scenes,
pages of torn poetry,
kingdom fragments

where you lift the fallen,
rejuvenate the broken,
make the shattered vessel
whole again.

trails of fallen leaves
we follow to the ampitheatre
where hope sings.
　
　

Long Winter

It is spring, and the snow falls,
like it has fallen every day since November.

I eat my gruel cooked over a wood fire.

Every day I split the wood.

Where is my shirt of camel's hair,
the ancient beads I tell?

But I am comfortable and warm,
writing on my computer
made of worried stone.

The sun is filtered
through frozen clouds.

Above them,
Solar flares send killing rays
they say, and solar storms
are flaring now.

Oil fields burn with back smoke.

Tomahawk missiles whistle like arrows,
the earth quakes,
for a moment, the sea
casually abandons restraint,
washes our cities away.

The overcast and falling snow
are my armor.

My prayers to you
slice right through them.