Winter Solstice

The sun hides beneath the Southern hemisphere,

and the darkness weighs upon us early and long today.

A cold, wet breeze swirls memories like flurries

in your mind. You speak to Susan,

dead twenty-two years, so matter-of-factly,

“Susan, get your father his paper.”

Your white brow rests there like a snowdrift,

and the furrows digging at the corners of your eyes,

like plowed fields, sit fallow and frozen.

It's the winter in your eyes

that makes me look away.

You say you're cold and want a blanket:

I rise to give you one, but you damn me

and call Susan. I tell you she's gone out for the paper.

You are quiet again, and grab the blanket

and pull it to your chin. Beneath the white

blanket your breathing is heavy, thick, and slow.

You close your eyes like an early sunset, and the nameless

dark shuts you inside earlier tonight than ever I remember.

Darfur

When the village lies in ashes--
cold, black and silent--three hundred thousand die
and smoke rises like a prayer:
Rachael weeps for her firstborn.

When the bodies lie ashen, too,
the wounds speak into the abyss
and Able's blood cries out from the dust.
Ache, howl, and wail for those who remain!

When a child's form lies in the heap
grasping hollow death and a gash in his head
with small thin fingers,
there is no Phoenix, and he will not rise.

When ashes flit on the wind,
a woman sits and hugs her knees,
rocks slowly and stares distantly
wrapped in red shame like a scarf.

When an old man's tears wet his ash-colored beard,

two million walk the desert road to the refugee camp,
and the church debates the ashen-gray areas of obscure doctrine,
and remains cold, black, and silent.

http://www.phrusa.org/research/sudan/

On the Death of a Common Saint

For Mrs. Mary Dale Fontenot

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “sleep” is the right word--
a way to warm the chill death.

I'll be “here,”
and you'll be gone, You...
A slow sadness invades my soul,
because of your kind heart missing.

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “wake” is the right word--
a way to brighten dark grief

like the make-up the mortician
will put on your cheeks,
and everyone will talk
about how good you look,
how they keep thinking you'll just start speaking.

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “sleep” describes true Sight and Sound
first breaking upon the soul like eternal dawn:

You see All that is clear and bright and true.
And more than tears will darken these eyes
that see dimly as through a foggy glass—and dark—
mere shades and hints, shapes and shadows.

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “wake” can express "in death, still dying,"
gasping for breath beneath the foaming waves,

But you in Life, living, now
alive, at last, to Him Who Is.
I still slumber in half-light
and but dream in phantom dimness.

Tomorrow I will sleep
while you're still waking,
If “waking” can contain ever-newness,
Free and Alive beyond our pale imagination.

Bartimaeus, Shout!

Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Mark 10:46-48

The Master nears:
Cry aloud, in your blindness,
Raise your voice still louder...
Shout through your darkness.
Shout, Shout, Shout!

Don't be silent, though they grumble.
Refuse the rebuke;
Ignore their propriety:
Yell and call, shriek and holler!
Beg light from the Son of David.

And plead for us,
the lame, the mute, and the blind,
too weak to rise,
too frail to ascend,
too darkened to find our way,
Lying on the roadside.

Call, "Mercy" upon these poor.
Rise and go, the Master calls.

Poems after Reading Jesus

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

John 13:34

Un-Depraved

Like a lightening-struck
swaying oak,
split down its trunk,
charred, broken, and burned,
misshapen, leaning, and bare:
So am I, before your grace,
toppled--
split to the core of my waywardness--
fallenness.

Something strange rumbles in
my depraved
soul,
like the streak and rumble from cloud to tree,
and I meet this strange newness alive
to another, and Another, and myself.

Man of Dreams

He is angry now, twenty years later,

for what he had only been sad,

But a man knows things

of which a child only dreams

and so the weight is greater

for the man than the lad.

The blows and belts left scars and welts

on fresh, plump skin, and the roar

defies any cries from bleeding lips.

As night begins, the child grins and sips

his tea while the ice above his eye melts.

And he dreams a familiar dream:

Of a man with a smiling face,

With children running to greet him home.

A gentle man, with arms that are wide

Where children can hide

Beneath a beard and dark eyes;

With the welcome and embrace

of a strong manly grace.

Poems After Reading Dostoevski

“The more conscious I was of goodness and of all
that was 'sublime and beautiful,' the more deeply I
sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink
in it altogether. But the chief point was that all this
was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as though it
were bound to be so. It was as though it were my
most normal condition, and not in the least disease
or depravity, so that at last all desire in me to
struggle against this depravity passed.”

-Fyodor Dostoevski, Notes from the Underground

FALLENNESS
A finger on the trigger
fires the bullet
that kills the man
who sits alone
on a park bench
feeding pigeons
whom he has named
by the names of his cousins.

TRUCE
Battle for the remains
of the carcass ends
by vultures sprawling
wings and screeching
violence, flapping
and agreeing to share
the putrid remains.
I divide
the foul plate
of a purloined pleasure
with you, a nemesis.
So flap and agree;
Rip the carrion
with your curved, sharp,
dark beak.

GOODNESS

“I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an
unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.
However, I know nothing at all about my disease,
and do not know for certain what ails me.”
--Fyodor Dostoevski, Notes from the Underground

You may suppose that I am good;
your supposition may be right,
but not as you imagine.

I am foul, feckless, sick, and weak.

My goodness is a wheat field blown down
by fiercest wind and by hailstones
so large they seem as meteors
of blazing ice, and set aflame
by Samson's pack of tail-tied foxes.

I am pleasant
nonetheless, a man of passion
and of gentle conversation.
You would say of me, “He's a fine
soul.” That's what you would say, if you
should know my outward self. I'm good
in the most common sort of way.

But “good” will not do to describe
the soul of man: That's not the word
to use, and least of all of me.

All's not fair on the shores of man,
but rough jutting, jagged rocks
impose. There's no beauty here
along these barren, lifeless reefs,
only waves and stone, stone and waves;
A tide that shifts and an endless
list of the sea.

You may suppose that I am good;
or that you are good; or we, two, are;
and so we may,
but not as you imagine.

A Gift Abandoned before the Altar

Matthew 5:23-24

Two friends, as you and I, should be by now
further along in matters touching heart
and mind, but here we stay behind a glass
of silence neither means nor cares to break.

A fog it seems to me has risen dark
between our better selves, to dampen minds
and veil our truer souls. I see a light
beyond your eyes inspiring hope that friends

will still be friends despite the angst we now
endure. If we are friends, then all shall pass
beneath the arch of love and grace. And I,
And I must break the years of silent strife.

So trembling, shamed and humbled, I now stand
upon your stoop. Inside I hear a low
rumble shifting across the floor and see
a smile behind the glass of an opening door. 

Yahweh's Serenade

"Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the dessert
and I wll speak tenderly to her.
There I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt."
Hosea 2:14-15

"The Lord your God is with you,
He is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
He will quiet you with his love,
He will rejoice over you
with singing."
Zephaniah 3:17

His tender serenade allures his love;
He speaks into her ear
of blessings rich, and hope restored,
and sings the song, the faithful promise
too long forgotten here.

He's called her out into the wilderness
alone--a desert tryst.
Seclusion strips the heart
of God's embarrassed bride; compassion
and pity beat in Christ.

With gentle hands He caresses her
and gives her back the ring.
Rejoicing over his beloved,
the LORD of all creation
with tears begins to sing.

Familiar Image You Are to Me

Sweet Airoleen, Airoleen, tiny babe new
born into a world of pain. Sweet Airoleen.
Wrapped and warm upon your mother's breast
taking the first draughts of life, Sweet Airoleen.
Sweet life, sweet death, Sweet Airoleen.

Near bald and pink and dear, your mother's tears
rejoice in you, Sweet Airoleen. Tiny Sweet
Airoleen. Plump and frail, your hands still
new-born fisted, but perfect, Sweet Airoleen.
Sweet life, sweet death, Sweet Airoleen.

Universe of flesh, muscle, brain, and bone,
How tiny made, Sweet Airoleen. So small
a voice, so small a cry; so small a face
beside your mother's tender touch. Sweet Airoleen.
Sweet life, sweet death, Sweet Airoleen.

A familiar image you are to me, Sweet Airoleen,
Likeness to your father and eyes your mother's
green, but somewhere else that Image I have seen.
Somewhere else that Image I have seen, Sweet Airoleen.
Sweet life, sweet death, Sweet Airoleen.