A Believer's Journal

Love is not delicate but fierce,
No fair flower, fragile and fleeting,
Flourishing rapturously for a time
Before fading in the face of frigid fall winds.

Love is fierce and unflinching,
Unflagging patient, insistently persistent,
Bravely navigating the caprices of this life,
Fading and re-blooming, faltering and rising again.

Love is no rare treasure,
No prize of fickle fortune
Celebrated in song and fable
Sought by many, but found only by a fortunate few.

Love is as common as it dares to be,
Its path not hard to find, but daunting to undertake,
Long and sometimes laborious, uncertain but certainly formidable,
Reaping its rewards, both at its end and all along the way.

cruel indignity

        awakened some minutes before way too early
        muted moaning escalating to pitiful whining
        then a sudden yelp or insistent bark

        is it a cry of pain or frustration
        an urgent plea for help or an evocation of despair
        I don’t know and maybe he doesn’t either

        leveraging myself from the bed
        I leverage him, hoisting heavy and trembling body
        to stand over legs now all too unreliable

cruel indignity

        he staggers forward, stopping and starting
        sometimes just standing, as if lost
        not knowing or not caring what to do next

        trundling, stumbling, crumbling over the threshold
        he saunters round the corner of the porch to leave his refuse there
        unwilling and unable to descend the few steps into the snowy yard

        sometimes he doesn’t make it that far
        raising himself, somehow, in the night
        to urinate or defecate within the house that is called by his name

cruel indignity

        beautiful thick coat now bedraggled and smelly
        listless and laggard now at his brother’s invitations to play
        body collapsing, legs splaying, beside his supper bowl

        sleeping most of the night and the day, peacefully enough
        but restless and demanding when awake
        out and in, up and down, unable to be satisfied

        endearing, affectionate companion now provoking irritation
        his disrupted life disrupting mine
        our being together, once a consummate blessing, now an ordeal

cruel indignity … and heartbreaking ending

        just this morning, a sudden turn for the worse
        out once in early morning, but now struggling futilely to rise
        spirit willing but flesh weak and broken beyond repair

        I put my hands under his chest and lift, in vain
        body uncentered, wholly off balance, legs limp and useless
        I carry him outside and he poops as I hold him

        I lay him on his bed and stroke his muzzle
        and in the midst of the struggle and the sadness and the losing
        there is a moment of peace and of deep gratitude

goodbye, Stoney Bear

Victory disguises itself over time
Toil and trouble tarnish the sublime
Duty and drudgery dominate the mind
While once-firm beliefs inexorably unwind
And hopes and dreams are left behind
But what will be is no less certain
We only wait to raise the curtain

I am of the ground
lumpy and misshapen
not yet beautiful
but in the eye of your imagining

You knead me and you shape me
the image conceived in your mind now birthed in my body
its curves and edges sculpted under the careful caress of your fingers
its form reflecting the wonder of your genius

Like the clay in the potter’s hands
so am I in your hands

A poem written this morning in response to an image painted by Gebre Kristos Desta, an Ethiopian painter and poet.

Blood.
Blood red,
battered, scattered, splattered.
Is this what we do best,
build cravenly cruel machines —
crosses and guillotines, gas chambers and nuclear submarines —
to batter and scatter and splatter
blood?
Blood red,
blood of hundreds of Ukrainians and hundreds of thousands of Syrians
blood of a million Cambodians and six million Jews,
blood of three thousand New Yorkers and forty thousand Nagasakians, your
blood.
Blood red,
brightly, brilliantly red,
battered but vibrant,
scattered but brimming with energy,
splattered but pulsating with life.
Blood.
Life blood.
Life is in the blood. Life is in your
blood.

Three short poems written this morning playing with rhyme …

Out of the muck

What luck
Got my truck
Out of the muck
In which it was stuck

1 John 4:18

Spiders and snakes,
heights and quakes.
Strangers and failure,
Loneliness and censure.
Falling and flying,
losing and dying.
All of our years,
filled with fears
nothing can alleviate,
nothing can ameliorate,
nothing can attenuate,
but love.

Listening to Bela Fleck’s “My Bluegrass Heart”

What fun! the fiddle diddles and dances
while banjo clucks and mandolin prances.
Bravo! the bass galumphs and ambles,
as dobro glissades and guitar gambols.
Bela and Michael, Molly and Sierra,
Justin and Mark, a bluegrass coloratura.

it is not merely the notes that matter
but the spaces between them
          and the silence

four arms and four appended bows unmoving, suspended in air
the last vibrations of violin and viola and cello strings now unheard
yet indelibly etched into feeling and memory by that exquisite moment
          of silence

breath and bones and bosom seized by the sudden cry of the loon
its ebbing wail pulling water and wood and paddle and body into its ineffable yearning
yet its power to transfix, transform, transcend is released in what follows
          in the silence

it is not merely the words that matter
but the spaces between them
          and the silence

the poem speaks as much by what is left unwritten
and the sermon by what is left unsaid
the Lord is in his holy temple, let all on earth
          keep silence