Wednesday

Just Before Twilight




















Evening,
forty miles west of Chicago,
a herd of whitetail cross
bone splintered cornfields
to a tree line in the south
where white oak feebly reach
for the winter moon.  

I light a cigar
and wish for a shot of tequila,
wish it were summer,
and I was pulling up
to the Baptist Mission in Texas
where my old man spoke the word
and the choir rejoiced,
when I believed in tongues,
in heavenly utterances,
and the Holy Ghost was immense power
seething within,
and you, the sacred vessel
I poured myself into.

My thoughts are of a time
when wind surfed the treetops
and apple blossoms swirled down
on an insouciant world and covered two beings
in its mystical cloak,
when I pressed you against the earth
as it spun and traveled
around a star that moved
through space and time
to a point
that exalted you
and love
sacrificed self.

I wrap myself in a season
when I walked in the hullabaloo
of a day,
in the bell
of a lost Sunday,
when tulips were a lover's bed
and wild violets were a bouquet
arranged for you.
I remember a ruckus,
a riot
in my heart,
a hooligan love,
a rapture.

I recall
a time
as north winds rage
at the winter moon,
and the Big Dipper pours
twilight
into evening sky --

my thoughts are of you
as I follow the North Star home,
a thousand stars 
lighting the way.

 Science reveals God's power and majesty. The mysteries that unfold are gifts. We should search the heavens by faith without fear.   




"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."
-- Galileo  

 This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.
-- Newton

Saturday

Buddy Holly Glasses (For My Father)



























All spring
I crashed through doors,
reached blindly for walls
too distant for support,
sacrificed my insides
to Arabic numerals that
appeared and disappeared
on crinkled leaves of wisdom.
All because I loved you,
because I adored you,
because I idolized you.

Then one day, you saw
the unseen
and removed the revered
Buddy Holly glasses,
and the only spectacles that remained
rested on the tip
of your dark brown, Moses-like nose.


Monday

This Spring-like Day In Chicago

This spring-like day in Chicago,
I relax on my back porch listening to the Byrds.
Two Mexican women scurry along my sidewalk. 
They balance bags of clothes on their heads.
Their alien tongue fades around the corner
as they head to the laundromat
on Broadway Street.
Their children dark, black stone eyes,
unafraid of a strange land,
roam and ramble across my yard,
their laughter made for this country.

If I close my eyes and listen,
I hear the laughter and footsteps 
of my grandfather's mother.
A basket of  dirty clothes balanced on her head,
she follows a narrow path to the river.

Friday

Sometimes we have to sit quietly and listen ...


After He Spoke, I Dreamed of Angelfish
















Moon above,
sea below
-- Sturm und Drang
-- under the quilt of guilt.
And still, I feel His presence,
this night of  Eucharist.
Beneath the star of Bethlehem
a million fry flounder,
afflict my soul.

I slam shut the shutters.
Thrash hopelessly till I school.
A billion angelfish and I
falling
through the blue pool of heaven.
Immersing
-- in body
-- in water.

Monday

Spring

Spring

Spring,
who does not love your gown
of green?
In each of us a flower blooms,
and in it is a word.

May mine be strong and full of wonder!


tincup

  . (I can't articulate) We say, 'The river is endless.' This isn't true. It runs into a body of water. We say, 'The sea...