Scar Tissue

Scar tissue connects my brain to my soul
so I occasionally grit my teeth
and tear them apart.
The pain gives way to disorientation:
the room starts spinning,
colors blur, my eyes unable to focus,
as the borders and boundaries
I have carefully crafted melt.
I have learned to simply
close my eyes
bow my head
and trust
that the floor is,indeed, still.

Truth and Love

Trapped somewhere beneath
my reflexive smile,
my carefully worded phrases,
my patient silence,

Is the Christ
who curses fig trees,
who flips tables,
who sends a rich man home depressed.

I once thought that pulling off
being all man and all God
was his greatest feat
but I am ever more convinced
that we praise him for being,
at once, all truth and all love.

Here is to the one who died
not only because he loved us
but because he told us the truth.

In Honor of Wendell Berry

I saw a slain lamb,
on the highway.
Run over by an eighteen-
wheeler carrying logs
to some place
a thousand miles away.

The Eucharist

On that day,
he will break the seal
Of the bottle,
Let fly the cork,
Spray us with it's foam.

Then we will hear the woody
Mature sound of wine meeting glass;
And he will drink deeply the earthy
Flavor of his creation,
fermented and pressurized
By choice and will and salvation.
Then he swallows, sighs,
And says again: "it is good"

And together we say:
"you've saved the best for last"
And "Amen."

magnificence

We are the giants of Canaan
The enemies of promise
And for the moment saved
by our magnificence

I'll call you Kate, for now

I'll call you Kate, for now,
when waiting gives birth to you
in its precious ways:
by day-dreams and kicked hands,
prayers and poems,
nervous laughter.
And you are known
only in the best of ways:
as your father knows you,
my Kate.

Theology

I, too, come to that tree
and having heard the story
am patient before choosing.
That serpent is still crafty though
and so points to the highest branch,
over to the left, where the leaves
occasionally brush against the tree
of life (on a breezy day). There,
a small dark fruit hangs.
"What fruit is that," I ask with
squinting eyes. The snake replies:
"theology."

Now, the dense fruit in my hand,
the serpent's promise comes,
"You will be like God," and
having heard the story, I am
already swallowing. Then, true
to that serpents word, I crash
into the bushes in search of God.
"Where are you?!" I shout.
His answer comes: "I heard you
in the garden, so I hid."
And seeing his naked body
I pronounce my own curse:
"Put your clothes on, Lord."