Preface

1

Memoir, if it's not too late
for a backward documentary, a journal reconstructed on whims and maybes making up for years of forgetting to take notes: whims for what and how much I choose to remember, maybes for all that cannot be said with certainty, which is nothing (whims) and everything (maybes).

Certainly there is purpose in whims and maybes.  But it's not for me to say.

There will be, anyway,
an attempt at order and veracity, as there is, after all, a desire to be read and remembered.  Chapter one: I was born.  And in the end, I will simply stop writing.  Which is what we all progress towards.  Inkless we are born, and inkless we shall be in our final moment, but what stories there are to be tols, what whims and maybes to be written inbetween!

So let me begin.

2

The big chapters are daunting: love, faith, health, pride, humility,
so let me start with tamer subjects: diversions, distractions, digressions.  You can skip this section if you want, but this is what defines me:

old fashioned poetry,
watching birds in their natural state,
listening to human music;

joys of discovery,
paddling down a slow river,
taking time for an arthouse movie;

aerobic meditation,
finding rhythm in routine,
sometimes changing the pace.

Noticing the rul of threes.

The big chapters, love and God and healing, the ups and the downs,
will be more important I suppose, or as important as  story for posterity should be.  But this is me, and this is my proper introduction.  Chapter Two, then: I am alive.  Maybe, whimsically, this will be the whole story.

3

And it is your story, too:
you, to whom I have turned, are in these pages, every one of you.

Sister Anne, who prompted me this summer with a passing what if.  Brother Dan, who has inspired and reinspired the ink to flow.  Brother Josh, who shows beyond scribbles what it means to live.

Son Andrew and daughter Kirsten, my flesh and blood, my dreams and hopes, wonderfully determined to be more than a reflection.

Mother Marilyn, and father Joe too, whose own faces I sometimes see in the mirror, and there you are in my smile too.

And more of you: friends, associates, neighbors, fellow congregants.  Ghosts from the past, strangers I have yet to know, and many more whose names I'll never learn: thank you all the same, for being the faces I see in front of me and within me, the very mirrors to my soul.

4

As I write this I am sitting on the edge of a river.

I have found myself here many times, perched pretentiously where the Fisher King wept, where Sidharta attained peace, where many before me have waited and drawn pictures in the sand.  There is a river in every big city, it seems, and streams across every page of history, throughout the world and even into the realms of mythology and legend.

I like a big river, an important river that connects with all others, a river with a famous name and a powerful flow.  Give me Mark Twain's river, but let me find it as Huck did, a few miles out of town; let me sit along its rich banks with nothing but time, away from instructions and factories, unconcerned with obligations and inheritances.  Let this be my Stillwater, full of life and purpose, with destiny beneath its gentle surface,

and tomorrow I may weep and seek and wait along these banks, but for today,
let me know this river's simple serenity.

5

Serenity: now there's a prayer!
A wish and a word: I might as well fly to the top of the world or trudge across vast deserts. I could just as easily become one with this big river.

"Calm down," says the ferryman.  Yeah, sure, easier said than down.

If peace were as easy as pausing I would stop everything and let this water flow.

To know serenity, santi, salaam, shalom, I should not trouble you, or myself, with these opening chapters or the easier pages of this story, Let me skip right to the faith adn love and healing; let me sit down, close my eyes and surrender.

A wish and a word, to accept the things around me, just as they are, to not be afraid of the world I'm in, to find my perch a few miles out of town.  A prayer, even before I confess my faith, before I know what to believe.

Here, at the beginning of my story: serenity.

6

The serenity prayer continues, seeking courage and wisdom,
but these too I'll save for the later chapters: perhaps I'll be bolder and smarter with experience and age, somewhere down the river a ways, past 50, 60, 70...

for now, though, it is enough to accept the things I cannot change, to let my fears be taken by the quiet current ---to simply be!

Existing, persisting, maintaining, remaining:
keeping my place in time, or the space, in any case, that I've been given for the moment.  Here I stand.

And if, for the moment, I let intellect distract me, to exist somewhere between Kierkegaard and Nietsche, surely I would falter; likewise, if I let my blood boil within me, like a fanatic or a patriot, I might lose my place, this moment in which I find myself.

It is not too deep to pray this prayer though, a singular pray in need of being prayed:
Grant me, God, serenity.

7

So now I have the groundwork, the riverbank work, for the first several chapters of my story:

I was born, I am alive.
I have an audience who shares my moment and a studio that gives me peace.
And I have an opening prayer to accept what I've been given.

After this may come those chapters on love and faith and health and pride and humility ---maybe,
if I am drawn to write that far and if there is still ink in my pen.

And if, of course, I am whimsically stirred to remember those big daunting subjects when the time comes and the blank pages are before me.  Or maybe, on that whim, I will simply set the pen down then and there, and let the opening chapters speak for themselves, being the heart and soul of what I remember.

Let it be, one way or the other.

But let me begin.

We Will Draw Near

An interpretation of Karl Jenkins' Adiemus

Brother, may the Lord be with you
Like a shepherd in the field
Giving you the meaning of Immanuel.
May that mean the whole world to you,
God's world ever given to you,
Blessing you no matter where you are.

Sister, may a world of peace be
With you everywhere you go,
Everywhere the meaning of Immanuel.
May it mean that God will hold you
Like a mother holds her child who
Looks into the eyes of loving care.

Refrain:
And may God's face shine upon you
With an everlasting smile,
Giving you the meaning of Immanuel.
May you know that God is with you everywhere.
(We will draw near.)
May you know that God is with you everywhere.
(We will draw near.)
Immanuel! 
Immanuel!

(Repeat Refrain)

Child, may the grace of God be
Something you will come to know
Living in the meaning of Immanuel.
As you wander through the fold and
Grow beyond the mother's hold, may
You still know you are a child of God.

(Repeat Refrain)

May the hands of the father bless you.

(Immanuel!)

May the arms of the mother keep you.

(Immanuel!)

May the face of God shine on you.

(Immanuel!)

May the grace of the Lord go with you.

(Immanuel!)

May the peace of the world be in you.

(Immanuel!)

May you know God is always with you.

Immanuel!

Immanuel!

Simple Prayers

Simple prayers, each beginning the same.

   For the sparrow reluctant to sing (an introduction to Melodia):
      Thank you God for all that you give us.
      Thank you God  for everyone among us.
      Thank you God for being here with us.

   For the daily song discovered (an introduction to My Walking Song):
      Thank you God for walking with me --- teach me to pray.
      Thank you God for talking with me --- teach me to listen.
      Thank you God for telling me what I need to hear --- help me to remember.

   For untangling our lives (an introduction to Denouement):
      Thank you God for the fields around us.
      Thank you God for the winds that lift us.
      Thank you God for letting us go.

   For sanity beyond suffering (an introduction to A Starry Night):
      Thank you God for the ground and the sky.
      Thank you God for lights familiar.
      Thank you God for places beneath the stars.

   For the sun that rises over us all (an introduction to An Open Field):
      Thank you God for languages and perspectives.
      Thank you God for place and time,
      Thank you God for poetry and possibility.

   For unexpected moments (an introduction to The Pecatonica):
      Thank you God for the winding river.
      Thank you God for times together.
      Thank you God for the banks that rise above us.

   For all that we have to learn (an Introduction to Montrose Harbor):
      Thank you God for small sanctuaries.
      Thank you God for lakefront dawns.
      Thank you God for everywhere our journey leads us.

   For hope beyond the grave (an introduction to Mimus Polyglottus):
      Thank you God for chances to smile.
      Thank you God for lives to celebrate.
      Thank you God for songs to keep singing.

House

This is our new house, same as the old house,
Where we once lived before moving away
Into the next house, the house before this house
Ran out of room for a family to stay.
We thought the next house might be the last house
To live out our days in an ambient way
But this is the next house after the last house,
Where we once lived before moving away.

We thought the last house might be the best house,
And it was nice for a year and a day:
It was a new house, a nothing-to-do house,
All we could want for the price we could pay,
And it was a big house, a two story tall house,
A dream house for those who like dreaming that way;
At least it was newer and bigger than this house,
And it was nice for a year and a day,

But we missed our old house, our used-to-be-cold house,
And found our way back to a place we can say:
      "A house that is old is a house that’s well settled,
      A house that is small can be comfortably warm,
      And the house that is ours at the end of the day
      Is the house we return to, the house we call home."
This is a good house, the house we remember.
We’ve found our way back to a place we can stay.

Filling in the Blank

Theistic evolution,
that god plus evolution equals now
is your answer, and all that remains
is deciding who God is.  Yes,
and who are you and what is now
and where are we going from here?
I believe — do you want to know what I believe?
Not really, you say.  Clever little
conversation stopper, and yet
you have learned that you can
tell everyone what you believe
if only you do not lead with a question.
Believe it and impose it.
But I believe you are right.
(Now do you want to know?)
Blank plus evolution is, you say,
and we fill in the blank with
Buddha, Christ, Mohammed.
Or godlessness, emptiness, chance.
You get to choose what leads you to now:
the blank is true, and beyond this
we may never know the empirical truth
but we will rest in our faith.
But I believe — a statement, not a question,
that I cannot rest in godlessness,
that Genesis is true, setting us free,
that God is the beginning and the end,
the Big Bang and the final Word,
the constant Grace and the now,
Immanuel.  This is what I believe.

And you can call me, as you call yourself,
a theistic evolutionist with a neat little formula,
and you can rest in this, but now read on.
Read the poetry of John
and the songs of David,
the trial of Job and the angst of Qoheleth
Read the Gospels and Acts
and the letters to the early churches.
Read Revelation, and argue with it all,
question if you must, but register
all the incompetent hyper-human
history of one corner of the world,
the bumbling children of God,
trying to get to now,
trying to understand.

2

John wrote: this was Andrew’s random choice
for a moment of devotion, my sound request
in the midst of anger, vespers to escape
the disorderly storm...
and the soundless stream of consciousness
that flows into matins the morning after,
Where it is silent if not peaceful.  I write
as the children sleep.
I read: the Word, capital W.
I underline: the Word of life,
the Life made visible.
I know: we saw it, we share it
and now I write, small w,
that joy may be complete:
yours, ours,
we share this Life, capital L,
as we live in each other’s lives.

And now I am writing to you, son,
because your sins have been forgiven,
this is true, and I am writing to you, daughter,
because you have come to know the One,
the creator and the forgiver
who has existed since the beginning.
I am writing to you, children,
because you have defeated the darkness
and come to know the Father of all fathers
I am writing to you now
because you are strong
and filled with the Word
and continually filling in the blanks,
discovering the One
who has existed since the beginning,
sharing the One who forgives, the One
who first said, “Let there be Light.”

Beautiful choice, Andrew.
And Kirsten, beautiful premise.
There will be anger and insolence
and there will be times of silence too,
But you, each of you, are beautiful
and you complete the Joy, capital J,
that helps me fill in the blanks
Of my own life.

Sweet Charity

I watched a play, Sweet Charity, so full of social choreography and the edges of emotion, so typical a musical with everything on display, pleasantly raw, that I forgot for two hours, even more, that I was there alone.  Intermission reminded me, temporarily, while the house filtered into the lobby and the actors were left stuck in an elevator in the dark, but fifteen minutes later I sat down and got right back into the play, naively sweet yet cloyingly real how he was afraid to kiss her and she as avoiding the backstory.  And I admit, I was even close to tears, close to feeling my feet in their shoes, until the ending, oh.  An artless set of lies, an unrelented pause in the music, and awkward, beatless moves from stage left to stage right, until...  an hour later I'm alone, and painfully aware.

May 1

Originally there was a song in my head
    It was not sweet, like candy,
but fresh, like wind through the trees.

Once I was drawn to the songs of birds,
    until I began to hear the harmonies
of leaves, dancing ---

    less, I suppose, what the birds
        were singing about
    than where they were singing from.

Word

1

I begin with the premise that there is a God.

In the beginning: we start all over,
Where every good book must begin,
And not with “at” or “from” or “once upon,” but IN.
This is the story, the truth of God,
And here is the first thing we ought to know:
There is no moment where God did not exist.

God is the beginning, the action, the whole creation;
There can be no single point at which or from which
God the great I AM began to be.  God was 
In the beginning, as God is 
In the present and in the ever after, 
Not “to,” “until” or “of a time,” but IN.

And notice: it is the same beginning
In the days of Adam as in the days of Jesus.
Now is the spark of our creation,
And now the start of our salvation: 
God is in our birth and in our redemption,
The beginning of being and the stretch of eternity,
The breath of our formation and our resurrection,
All at once, our first day and our seventh day.

Evolutionists may stumble over the number of days,
Skeptics might question the progression of things,
But those who believe in this beginning
Know the same beginning can continue
From chapter to chapter, can be on every page:
God, who is, can be in our every hour,
Can breathe and beat with us forever,
Part of the conversation and in our endless prayer.

This is the premise I begin with:
And God said, and God saw what God created, 
And it was good.  Another day.

2

So in the beginning was the Word,
And what a beautiful word,
Capitalized and turned into poetry,
Written by Moses, thank you,
And John, thank you,
And God, thank you that every word
I write down, every word I hear and read
Is so wonderfully preceded.

And the word was with God,
And the word was God.
May the words of my mouth be pleasing,
And they will be, of course,
As long as I remember where they came from,
As long as we return with this respect:
We give thee but thine own.

This is my premise:
God is the word, my word,
The being in the beginning,
The presence of I AM, through which 
All other beings began:
Without God there is nothing;
God is always and everything,
Life over emptiness, light over darkness,
The life and light of every being,
The beginning of us all.

As sunlight pours into a darkened room
And changes everything,
So does the light and life of God
Shine into the universe: the darkness cannot win.
In the beginning, God said,
Let there be light,
And there was, and it was good.
God was in the beginning, 
Pouring light into the void and giving life
Now and ever after.  


3

See, and listen, this is my premise:
There is a light that gives
Its light to everyone,
A light coming into our world of darkness,
And light changes everything.

And everything changes with this:
God, Word, light, shining upon us.
Living in our world, walking with us,
God in the flesh, God with us,
Immanuel!

And anyone who recognizes receives,
And anyone who receives the light believes
That God is with us and we are living
In God’s world: IN God’s world
Anyone who sees the glory of this,
The grace and truth and fullness
Of God, the one and only Word
In the world, this is our privilege.

No one can see God, but anyone 
Can see what God makes known,
And by seeing, we are privileged
To be born of God, children of God,
Willed and determined by God alone.
I begin with this premise.

My Doxology

Yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow 
and by whose strength my every song is sung.  

And yes, I think there’s nothing wrong 
with letting my convictions show 
or testifying to the things I know.  

And yes, I’ll sing, and though I’ve learned 
the lesson long ago that God is (always) singing 
greater songs than I will ever sing, 

I will no less keep singing 
to the music God has given me 
and by the truest notes I know,

and with a voice as providence bestows
I’ll raise my earthly spirit up to heaven
as loudly as the wind allows, 

And yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Meditations in a Waiting Room

Today we meditated: father, son
And waited on a Wednesday afternoon
To see the doctor of attention spans
Whom we had hoped to meet at four pm
But found her overbooked and in demand.
We found ourselves within a waiting room
Of fellow patients of psychiatry
(And those of us along for the support)
For two full hours, and ironically
Amid the stacks of social magazines
And with a background television on,
Among a sampling of the population
Listening to hear their names be called,
We meditated. Unexpectedly

My son, the one who never could sit still,
Is starting to mature before my eyes.
He’s waiting here more patiently than me,
And I begin to wonder anymore
If he’d been diagnosed with ADD
A bit to hastily back in the day
When he was acting all of nine years old
And telegraphing his apparent need
For Adderall, if we have come this far
Again to have his old prescription filled
More out of habit than necessity,
And if there isn’t better therapy
In meditations of a waiting room
Than medications of amphetamine.

Today we meditated: everyone
Who waited with us had a different need,
A different habit, if their trials be told,
And yet we seem to be so much the same,
At least as far as anyone reveals.
I don’t begrudge the doctor for her role
In getting us to recognize ourselves
And realize how simple life can be,
How we all need this opportunity
Of time, however given, to reflect
On simple things, like having empathy
Or understanding our maturity
Or sitting in positions of support
Or being patient in a waiting room.

My father once was in a waiting room
For me. The wait was relatively short
And our trial was a different one to tell,
A different diagnosis, but the same
Prognosis: Give it time, give it time.
The doctor didn’t specify these words
Or scribble his prescription b.i.d.,
But as he had my father wait outside
He talked to me a while, and then he asked
If I played chess. This took me by surprise,
But I said yes, and so the troubled teen
And the Psy.D. played chess while the old man
Was waiting in the hall, more patiently
Than I appreciated, until now.

Generations

1

I saw myself today.
Not a mirror image of who I am,
not the left to my right,
nothing so ordinary as that.
I saw a spitting image, a living clone,
a reflection refusing to face me,
my likeness walking away.
I saw this from a distance of many years,
but there I was.
“Hey,” I cried, hoping to connect,
but I did not turn around,
and I saw myself pretending not to hear.
“Hey, listen!” I tried again,
but I know it was pointless:
I am, after all, a stubborn man;
but I am a persistent man, too.
I always have been.
I continued: “Listen to me!”
And I continued, not saying a word.

I’d like to think the years have given me
an advantage, that time is good for something,
wisdom, maybe, or experience.
But as I started chasing after myself
—“Hey! Don’t walk away from me!”—
I realized I was not as fast as I used to be.
The years have aged me and slowed me down.
I do not have the energy I used to have.
I am no longer eleven years old,
nor twenty one, nor thirty one.

I am an age I never thought I would be
seeing myself now as I had forgotten I once was.

Once more I shouted: “Hey!  Wait!”
But my image, my clone, my self
was even further away now, and where
for a moment my image would not listen,
now it could not hear.
There was no longer a refusal to turn around;
there was no reason.
Oh, stubborn boy, persistent man!
You who will not listen to the voice of experience,
the wisdom of years,
you who will outpace the ages,
give me time!  Hear my call!
But of course, not only could I not hear myself,
I never saw myself: my back was turned;
there was no recognition the other way.

I am not who I used to be,
but more than this: I was not yet
who I have become: I could not see,
and it was impossible to see myself
in that old man calling out to me,
and I did not hear, or if I heard,
it made no particular impression.
And yet today, the other way,
the impression is indelible.
There I was!
That was me!
If only I could have seen myself
looking back at me.
If only I could hear myself
calling desperately.

2

So now I am a father.
The generation behind me is
fading and a newer generation
is overshadowing mine.  They,
my son and my daughter, will say
that mine is the generation  fading fast,
that my parents, my living mother
and the memory of my father, are simply
extensions of the same generation:
we are the old, they are the now;
our light fades, theirs is just starting
to shine brightly.

And now I am a father,
repeating myself it seems, falling
into old habits.  I am the one
who will soon, sooner than anyone
expects, become a memory.  I am
the one, too, who will suffer
the indignities of aging:
if not a slow death, at least
the mirror of mortality, and if not
a drawn out suffering, still
they will see me fade.  And I will be
the one who, all too soon, will meet their
mates and bless their marriages and
watch them, oh so quickly, begin
yet another generation.  I will remain
the old, but they will relinquish
their position as the new and they
will join me as a watchful generation,
slowly fading.

I won’t say I can’t wait,
because I’d rather they stay
the now generation for as
long as they can.  My daughter,
age fourteen, gets her driver’s permit
next year already, and I will come to
terms with that —but not so quickly,
no more, let her stay a little girl
who happens to know how to drive.
And my son, age eleven, is starting
to notice the girls his age, and I can
accept that too — but stay there, son,
go no farther for a while.  Be the
now generation for as long as you can,
yet be aware that infatuation will
only lead to your fading, and as for
cars, daughter, they will get you
nowhere.  Look at me, see
for yourselves.

But of course neither son nor
daughter can see me as anything
but a father.  I have always been
a part of their world but never
a part of their now.  And I can
accept this too.  Just let me remain,
as I should be when they are
eleven and fourteen, still in control,
to some degree anyway, of their now.
And let them see me, as they should
at their ages, as something of
a constant; it is not yet time for me
to fade.

This Is My Walking Song

Lately my life revolves around a dog

Who knows whose leash it is and whose routine
We follow, stretching thin the line between 
Our independent wills. 

I see the dog
As one who needs a master, while the dog
Sees one who needs a friend, and if I’ve been
One caught up on commands the dog has seen
Me friendly now and then.  

So man and dog
Since time began have tugged upon this leash
And traveled down the trails of this routine
Each morning looking forward to the walk.

Man and dog, 
Unequally assigned, but side by side
Man walks the dog, dog walks the man, and each
One seems to keep the other satisfied.

     I am the man. This is my dog
     What would I hear if my dog could talk?
     What would I want to say 
          if I were the dog?

     What would I think? What would I know?
     Where would I run to? How far would I go?
     And would I run away 
          if I were the dog?

     Let me stretch this leash from here to heaven,
     Let me sometimes think I know the way
     But let me take the paths that I’ve been given
     And learn what I should say.

     I am the man. This is my dog.
     I try to listen whenever we walk.
     But what can there be to say 
          when you’re a dog?

Sometimes I find myself spinning around
And chasing after things that aren’t there,
Entangling the one whose leash I share
And losing sight of where we might be bound.

I think it’s good to have someone around
To take my side, to set the pace, to bear
The distance and to gently lead me where
I know I need to go,

But I have found
Myself spinning around things I don’t know.
I’m leaping after birds up in the air
And tracking common scents into the ground,

But I have found 
The one whose leash I share at every turn
Keeps telling me the things I ought to know
But giving me the time I need to learn.

     God is the man. I am the dog.
     I’m not the man I once thought I was.
     He seems so far away. 
          I am the dog.

     Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
     Drawing me close to the man up there.
     I don’t have words to say. 
          I am the dog.

     But I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
     And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
     But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given
     And learn what I should say.

     God is the man, but I am the one
     Who walks with him when the day is done
     And with each breaking dawn. 
          I am the dog.

Lately my mind has turned the metaphor
Of man and dog, the leash and the routine
Upon its head. What can these verses mean
If I’m still learning what the walking’s for?

And can there even be a metaphor
Sufficient for the poetry I’ve seen
Along the way, when every step has been
Part of a song I’ve never sung before? 

All the more,
I will walk, and in my walking sing,
And with my singing cherish the routine
And through routine embrace each metaphor 

All the more,
Of God and man, of learning how to pray,
Of never understanding everything
About this life but walking anyway.

     And I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
     And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
     But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given.
     I’m learning how to pray.

     Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
     Keeping me close to the man up there,
     And he’s not so far away. 
          I am the dog.

Identity I

1

Identity
With a capital I,
Subjective me,
My own ID:
It’s who I am,
The verb “to be”
Implicitly
Included in
Identity.
I am:  The name
I call myself
I am: the entity of self
I am: the image of I AM,
Yahweh and Immanuel,
Their meaning in my heart,
And living waters in my veins,
The pulse of my salvation, 
My spirit, my animation,
Every explication
Is identity.

I
ID
I AM
An entity
To be or not
To be: Identity

2

In the mirror I see
Reflections of a
Thousand faces,
Wrinkles of a 
Thousand times,
The profiles of a 
Thousand turns,
The shadows of a
Thousand truths,
A picture that will
Not stand still.
Identity.

This is identity.
This is the place
I come from: family,
The everywhere
I’m going: destiny
And all that’s currently 
Home to me: security.

For now, forever is the way 
I’ll always have some yesterday
In me: identity.
For now, eternity is how
It’s always been more than a soul
Can see: identity.
More than I want to be
Or used to be: identity,
More than I find myself
For now: this is identity.

3

Identity
Rolls down the face
Of farmers and florists
Lovers and loners
Parents and orphans
Teachers and learners
Workers and wanderers
Dreamers and doers
And poets,
And me,
And every tear,
Every line of sweat,
Every drop of rain
Is different and the same,
Hot and cold, salty and sweet.

Identity 
Is a hard day’s work
And a longing for rest,
A burst of emotion
and a latent memory.
Sometimes I want to 
Wipe my identity away,
Pretend it isn’t there
And hide my face,
But sometimes
I just let it roll
Down my cheek
And linger
For everyone to see.

Profile

Don’t be a cipher, someone said.
Show us the face that hides behind
The poems you have let us read,
Give us a glimpse beyond the mind
Of the poet who has edited
His life down into metered lines,
Whose given his blog a leveled screed
But nothing past the words he’s signed.

Here, then, you have my picture: See
The aging and the fattening
Of fifty years, the lazy eye
That looks like it is focusing
On things in the periphery;
See what’s in need of ironing,
The fashions that have passed me by,
The cry for different coloring,

And there is more, of course.  I could
Divulge my sordid history
Of marriage leading to divorce,
Of education forcing me
To compromises, of a good
Career besmirched with obloquy.
But there is always more, of course,
Than who I would pretend to be.

With marriage, I have progeny
With stories of their own to tell;
With education, I have learned
The fathoms of my earthly well
Of ignorance; and should you see
The merchandise I try to sell,
For every dollar fairly earned,
My reputation’s mostly held.

But turn away from all of this.
What should it matter what I wear
Or how I always seem to look
Or just how well I comb my hair,
If I’m a father with no wife,
More lawyer than you’d have me be
Or lead an unenlightened life?
For now, you have my poetry.

Snapshots, Part One

...I, on a rainy day, once found the perfect picture
when sunshine filtered through rolling gray
to give raindrops their color.  Now

1

cameras are useless brushes, should some sudden need occur 
, forever missing pixels, looking past contrast, losing focus; 
paint (oil, acrylic, maybe watercolor?) too cannot capture our 
climate’s spectral shades, frameless moments, shifting facts;
language isn’t any better, not very, but if you’ll pardon
contractions and count them anyhow (allow poetic cheats,
permit imperfections), my pen is drawn.  I’m ready.  I’ll try.  

2

subtitle: 1,000 imperfect words; thesis: an impossible sudoku.
opening paragraph, initial sentencing: possessive noun,
adjectives, subjective action verb, adverbs, et cetera...  already
elliptical critics would criticize, deconstruct, misconstrue &
decompose what I’ve proposed / begun composing: 
meanwhile, earth’s atmosphere weeps / continues weeping;  
another imitative artist cries, his ink unerasably flowing. 

3

precipitation’s plain dull pallette shivers endlessly, above 
below around: today we wait, anticipating better fronts, left 
listening for conclusive punctuation, getting only ellipses, 
gradual premonitions hinting what’s coming: distant booms 
first telegraphed in whiplashed flashes; later followed by 
smells, electricity’s ominous odor, dampened dust, stirred up 
dirt, awakened earth; finally touch, feel: rainfall taking over.

4

rain: cold colorless falling wet hard relentless dominating, 
weather offputting, setting aside coatless hatless daylight 
hours, nature’s nowcast, never mind forecast, upsetting social 
structures, cancelling performances played, attended, 
offering lightning’s unsubscribed sizzle instead, deceptively 
dry; thunder, decidedly loud exclamations without explana-
tion; patter, splatter, drizzle, less music than noise then pour.

5

suddenly walking ruins shoes, driving turns weary chore, it’s 
all souls/machines can do keeping rubber feet/wheels moving 
simply getting home, housed, parked, finding anywhere dry, 
accepting anything, settling, seeking temporary cover like 
poor tired refugees, huddled under square box umbrellas 
with fogged windows, streaked panes: our world’s eyes, 
distorted from unwanted tears, saltlessly wondering why 

6

yet, everpresent, effervescent reason shows itself now, hinted 
within renegade rays of subtlest sunlight revealing rain-
water’s constant beauty: sparkling, living, even as it falls:  
you will see green grass again, these angels say, speaking, 
singing hard working droplets they: we’ll roll those heavy 
clouds away, restore your great forgiven sky, clean slated, 
blue, more breathable, renewed.  holy, fresh, clear water!

7

cleansing, cleaning, washing, rinsing.  (repeating,  
remembering how mother/daughter, taught, still teaches me) 
necessary, yes, she says this was, shall always be,
evermore her favorite time, season, place:  praying amen,
hearing “heavenagain,” feeling particulate waves, 
letting herself become immobilized, moved, emotional,
willingly becoming elementary, simplified, soothed.   

8

reflection...premise...perception...truth, fundamentally faith 
alone explains God’s nature; thus, man’s (woman’s, child’s) 
ritual immersion, each gender, age, every creed’s splash 
therapy, aqua conscience, awakening, rejuvenation; believe:  
reincarnation, return, rebirth, baptism; sprinkling; accept:  
drowning, spiritual surrender inwards, outwards, upwards:  
replacement...promise...permission...life, sacramentally. 

9

indent.  empty space.  leftover poetry, endless stories, 
Yahweh (simple self pronoun, present tense being)
variations.  free association.  blank verse.  filler.  everything
matters, articles, prepositions, objects, conjunctions,
interjections, river bed metaphors, parched desert similes...
consciousness streams, trickles, floods, sates, holds. final 
judgment awaits. stillwater, someday. we’re halfway there.