Published Books

Published in 2018. Sixty-five poems. Categories: Faith, History, Wisdom, Parables, Prophesy, and Social Justice. Out of print.

Published Poetry

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Agency

What does it mean to be the salt of the earth?
Salt is a preservative.
It is used for seasoning and with healing.
Salt is a helping agent.

What does it mean to be the leaven?
Leaven makes the bread rise.
It softens the bread and makes it more digestible.
Leaven is a helping agent.

What does it mean to be the light for the world?
Without the light,
we stumble around in the dark.
Light is a helping agent.

If you are the salt of the earth,
the light for the world, and the leaven,
you are a gift to the earth.
It has nothing to do with heaven.
You are a helping agent
by making the world—this world—a better place.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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Chapel of the Transfiguration

The first thing I saw was the constellation of houseflies
on the Chapel of the Transfiguration window blocking the grandeur
of the Cathedral Group with Grand Teton in the center.
The fly was the filthiest of creatures to my fastidious eye.
I was offended at first: the sacred was marred by the profane.
so I stepped outside the log church to see
the majesty of the mountains beneath the blue canopy
without the pious interference of human hands.

That was sixty-two years ago. I’ve had a rethink.
God is not captured, domesticated, and confined
to churches, but is alive in every created thing.
Without a nature-based spirituality, the word profane
means outside the temple. Are we fish looking for water?
And why do we argue about who owns the water?

Chapel of the Transfiguration, Moose, WY

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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Come Together

Come together, people of faith,
from the farthest corners of the earth,
from faith traditions round the world—
come together to honor the worth
of every person from birth to death.

Come together, come together!

For you without your daily bread
who sleeps with stars overhead,
we offer hope—be not afraid.
A better future lies ahead;
people of faith are by your side.

Come together, come together!

People of faith call for justice
in politics, law, the marketplace
where greed and malice are commonplace.
People of faith will never allow
that every person has a price.

Come together, come together!

Come together, people of faith,
from the farthest corners of the earth,
from faith traditions round the world.
Unity of faith is a force for good;
universal tenets are understood.

Come together, come together!

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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The Big Nothing

What happens to the indigenous peoples
living in someone else’s promised land?
We never know because they are slaughtered

or erased forever as a culture.
Nothing to see here—
their story is a big nothing.

Historians connect the dots of known events
across white silences of ruined chronicles
forever mute.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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The Body and Its Desires

for Matthew Arnold

The gods consume nectar and ambrosia on Olympus
and amuse themselves by looking down on us
dispassionately. Cool detachment is a sardonic business.
Hellenism insists we see things as they are.
For right thinking, the body and its desires are a barrier;
we are cautioned to keep the mind completely clear.

Hebraism counters that the body and its desires
are a barrier to right action. The Lord requires
clarity of thought chastened by strictness of conscience.
The principal rubric of the Law is studied obedience
to the will of God. The Lord has a vertical presence—
aloof except to chastise with corrective fires.

In the time it takes a Sierra redwood in the ageing
of two thousand rings, many gods have come
and gone in the public square. Further, we become
weary of our own fungible ground of being—
the dreary march of certainties by which we cling—
as we amble toward the dust from which we came.

More crucial over the years than definitions of the divine
are behavioral tendencies toward either thought
or action when it comes to the body and its desires.
The tension between Athens and Jerusalem defines
every age, and will continue, like it or not,
to shape our every outcome of action or thought.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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Love is a Twofer

Love is a twofer.
When you say you are in love
or you assert the aphorism, God is love,
you infer duality.

God is the subject
and [something] is the object.
The something is the world
and all its inhabitants.

There is no love without the lover and the loved,
without the me and the you,
without one or the other.

Have you ever experienced love?
You will then understand the Sufi maxim,
You are the mirror in which
God sees himself.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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The White Christ

Red-bearded, blood-soaked Thor faced off
against the white Christ
at the end of the first millennium.

Icelanders had to choose.
For the pagans, white stood for cowardice,
but the heavy hand of King Olaf

forced a deal the pagan holdouts
could not refuse.
The second millennium is in the past already.

The state supports the old white Christ,
but attendance is low in the state church.
Icelanders go through the cafeteria line

and select their religion.
Bureaucrats record their preferences.
It’s all very low energy.

There won’t be a saga-worthy single combat
between the white Christ
and some adversary in the future.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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The Alpha and Omega of Gratitude

Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Gratitude is the sum of what you sense and say.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.

Longing for things you lack is a flawed attitude.
Always be thankful for what you have today.
Feeling grateful in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.

Do not devalue the goods you currently hold.
What you have today was only hoped for yesterday.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.

Lust for things puts you in an anxious mood.
You’ll find your happiness in the persons you most enjoy.
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.

The lives of those you love will increase in magnitude
as you count your blessings and walk with them in the Way.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.

The ungrateful person is one who journeys in solitude.
Appreciation is the greatest kindness, far and away.
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2023

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Life and Death in the Back Yard

The neighbor’s cat with the pure black fur
noticed my movement in the kitchen
and fixed his stare at me.
I eased forward to get a better view
of our small, oval-shaped lawn
through the sliding glass door.

The tan corpse of a baby rabbit
was less than a foot away
from his extended paws perfectly aligned,
and the diminutive Lion King,
head turned to the left with eyes locked on me,
was announcing to the whole world,
“Look what I did!”

Hunger had nothing to do with it.
We feed that cat when the neighbors leave town.
It was pure sport.
I opened the sliding door and yelled “Yah!”
and the cat high-tailed it over the south fence.
Maybe you’ll be a coyote biscuit someday,
I thought.
I hope you enjoy that experience.

I checked the tiny rabbit.
Yes, it was dead.
We don’t have a pet cemetery on our property,
so I chucked the corpse over the back fence
into the nine-acre greenbelt behind the house.
It was an inglorious end
to a life that never really got started.

After that, I took down the empty birdfeeder
hanging from the arch over the gate
to fill it up with songbird seeds from Ace Hardware.
Nancy had been bugging me for a week,
“You need to feed the birds,”
and I would reply,
“These creatures lived for millions of years
without our help. They can fend for themselves.”
“Yes, but I like to look at them.”

I turned the feeder upside down
and pounded on the base
to shake loose the crud on the bottom
Then I filled it to the brim with seeds
and rehung it from the arch.

Song sparrows were the first to attack the feeder
and the last to leave.
Others were the dark-eyed junco,
spotted towhee, northern flicker, house finch,
and surprise! the black-capped chickadee.
The goldfinch made a rare appearance.
Tiny birds suddenly popped out of the blackberries
at breakneck speed to the arched gate,
hop-hopping to the feeder for a snack,
then flit away into the thicket.

I was like a songbird god
summoning my peoples to a rich buffet,
from the east, the west, the north, and the south:
Bring my sons from far away,
and my daughters from the ends of the earth.

MyEdmondsNews, September 2022

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Glass Half Empty

He loved to be the devil’s advocate.
If you pleaded in favor of the notion of progress
or argued for the goodness of faith-based optimism,
he would, in his quiet way,
set out to destroy your thesis point by point.

Dad was a philosophical pessimist.
He was not emotional about it,
but he felt he was doing you a favor
by exposing the flaws in your illusions.

Optimists look at the bright side.
He would gently point out
the human condition was not improving at all.
As he aged and declined in health,
he believed history was not progressing,
but actually was getting worse.

There is something to be said
for being correct about the human condition.
When he was young and full of life,
he took pleasure in setting the record straight.

Dad put himself in a logical box.
By placing himself,
the world, and all its inhabitants
on a metaphorical death row,
what was there to live for?
Where was the happiness in soft nihilism?

MyEdmondsNews, September 2022

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Summer Romance

Of all my days to middle age,
you gave me less than ten.
So little time

from moon to rising moon.
A meteor flared and fell
on an August night

now thirty winters dead.
The lingering light:
for that I give you thanks.

The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, Edited by James Crews, Storey Publishing, 2022

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For the Faces I Will Never See

Christmas 2020

Long stretches of handling the hooks*
with rhythmic certainty
seamlessly moving forward on a row
occasionally looking up at a movie
seen before many times
(knowing which scene is coming)
sometimes losing track
of the sequencing cadence
or noticing the row does not look right,
counting, counting, ripping out,
saying a word not safe for work,
re-reading instructions
then back on track,
finishing the main pattern
and refining the border—
the final step—until
done at last!

For the faces I will never see,
you bundled newborns in other arms,
my love goes out to you.
I imagine my yarn
chucked against your chin,
but that is where my story ends.
Wear it well
and pay it forward
for children of your own
if you can.

*Crochet

MyEdmondsNews, September 2021

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Owl Love

Sometimes on my morning run,
I hear the call and response
of two owls.
They move around,
never in the same place twice,
but I know who they are
because the smaller of the two
is one white note higher
on the keyboard,
and each has a pitch
always the same.
No one owl initiates the call
every time.
They take turns.
The 2-hoot call is followed
by a two-Mississippi wait
for the 2-hoot response,
then they take 15 seconds
to think about it
before the next exchange.
I imagine both
are saying the same thing:
“I am yours.
I am here for you.”

MyEdmondsNews, September 2021

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Childhood Memories

Memories of my childhood
are hopelessly corrupt.
Facts are elusive.
The core event may stay the same,
protruding like a stone
in a turquoise tidal pool,
but ancillary facts appear,
disappear, reappear,
and shape-shift over time.

Facts are fleeting,
but feelings are forever
and absolutely incorruptible.
Memories are not unlike
the garden-variety dream
where the main takeaway
is not the inscrutable plot,
but the emotion I am feeling
when I awake.

MyEdmondsNews, September 2021

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Into the Winter

In a far field of broken turf and mud,
a quarter horse stands statue-still.
The sunless sky trades its feathery mist
for twisting steam from out of the pasture thaw.
A puff of breath betrays a living death.
The horse is dying; legs are stiff as stone.
Where once he raced from line to picket line
of ragged timber that rims the rolling farm,
today he labors long at standing still.

MyEdmondsNews, February 2021

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We All Start at Zero

The practiced hands of the good-humored doctor
pull the infant out of the warm duskiness
of an amniotic ocean into the unfamiliar glare
of delivery room lights. It is a rough business,
coming into the world, but every person
in the room is pulling for the startled new arrival
to survive, grow, thrive, and come of age.

In this instant, we align ourselves with God
to affirm the wholesome generative forces of the world.
We all start at zero. Look at the face
of the newborn child. Where is the theological construct
of original sin? Do you see it? No?
The swaddled baby is laid on the mother’s chest
and begins to learn the ambivalent ways of humankind.

MyEdmondsNews, February 2021

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The Politics of No

No, we are not bewhiskered woodsmen posing
with a fabled misery whip 12-feet long
emerging from the sepia history of real men

or frugal, gaunt survivalists riding out
the Great Depression or the khaki war machine
fighting to the death against the Axis powers

or fearless astronauts landing on the moon.
As the swaggering first citizens of a unipolar world,
we are soft from indolent years of privileged ease.

We are soft without a great enemy to fight
so we look within and fight among ourselves.
We harden into corpulence and intellectual sloth

as nimbler nations strive to take us down,
not by the savagery of war, but with whispered lies
designed to divide us into two contending camps

dueling to the death of the great American experiment
of broad-shouldered accomplishment of big things.
No, my friend, we are not that nation anymore.

MyEdmondsNews, February 2021

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Rejection

The same stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.

~Psalm 118

The great American poet was gravely ill.
Confined to home, he was game enough for an interview.
As I was ushered into his august presence,
I noticed letterhead papers taped to the walls
of the rooms, corner to corner from floor to ceiling.
Each was a version of, “Sorry, not for us.”
Of course, I started to laugh, which was the point.
The old man’s voice was soft but clear:
“The rejection letters keep me humble,” he said.
“I often wonder where the editors and publishers—
these gatekeepers—are today with their insights.
The uncharted path is hard to follow at first.
I get that. Sometimes it takes a while
for the world to come around to the unforeseen reality
that a loathed new idea despised by the authorities
will be the conceptual capstone of the coming age.”

MyEdmondsNews, July 2020

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Mass in Times of a Pandemic

Kyrie eleison

Have mercy upon the people of faith, O Lord,
who put their trust in you, as an enemy, unseen
and silent, steals across our land and the world
abroad to tap on shoulders—as if at random
like a monstrous game of tag—of unsuspecting men
and women who strive to make it through the day.
We sing, Kyrie eléison, Christe eléison,
Kyrie eléison, with great gladness; and we pray:
Give us courage, O Lord, come what may.

Gloria

We shoulder sorrows at the end of a darkened day,
seeking shelter against the forces of the night,
and in the lengthening shadows we find our way
to the empty tomb of Christ with the perpetual light
of one hopeful candle burning bright
to celebrate the risen Lord. We look to the west:
the glow of the golden sun gives way to the light
of vespers. Secure in our safe lodging, we are blessed
to praise the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Credo

How did the Coronavirus disaster come? Two ways:
gradually, then suddenly. Science knew it was real
and lethal, but leadership dithered for many days
until a great nation was brought to heel.
Worse than war, we tumbled down into the hell
of separateness. Each of us must suffer alone,
apart from the warmth of fellowship in which we feel
a common bond. But we shall rise again!
Even in isolation, we are one unbroken chain.

Sanctus

The virus requires we find new ways to cope.
Gatherings are banned; individuals widen their space.
In isolation, we glimpse in memory, dimly, but we hope
to see each other soon face to face,
cheek by jowl, in a happier time and place.
Privately, we pray, Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of hosts. By the loving grace
of God, we plan to come together fully
as one body and sing the Hymn of Victory.

Agnes Dei

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world. We the faithful may be sheep
in need of a good shepherd or innocents in the ways
of the world, but the body of Christ is wide and deep
and the people of this church have commitments to keep
whether blown to the four winds or gathered in place.
We are set on sowing in the Spirit—in the hope of reaping
eternal life. My friends, go in grace
until we meet again face to face.

Published in the St. John’s Episcopal Church newsletter, The Episcopaper, in January 2021.

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Bus Poem: Hard Times

Her long and pallid fingers
grip tight an impish pair
of toddler boys
as she climbs onto the bus.
I lift my eyes to a stretched-long face
as white as chalk—
a face evocative of the Great Depression
when hard times were black and white.

Her photo-flash whiteness indicates
the final stage of terminal fatigue.
Translucent skin,
sanded smooth from toddler work,
is the thinnest possible film
over a blue vein near the collarbone.
Thin lips are drained of color.
Fatigue’s garment is the absence of color.

Her large protective hands
caress the boys.
The three of them form
a triangle of touching and soft murmuring.
The boys are rested,
well-behaved and full of color,
but she is black and white,
a bright dust-bowl face of exhaustion.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2020

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As a Rose Unfolds Itself

For my daughter

Stunned to hear your marriage is falling apart,
I look to see you sad, defeated, but no!
You are energized—fired up and ready to go.
The unencumbered life gladdens your heart.

As a rose unfolds itself,
there is always an exact time
when beauty is most compelling.
For you, that time is now.

I wrote these lines when you were twenty-one.
Society believes that beauty will have its say
briefly before a long denouement of decay.
Wrong. The unfolding of beauty is never done.

Unlike the athlete whose turn on the stage is short,
beauty draws from character to counter age.
A woman’s poise and wisdom keep the page
from turning; they keep the book from snapping shut.

Character powers the engine that drives the train
along a set of tracks uniquely yours.
This time belongs to you. Enjoy the years
to come as your own master of heart and brain.

MyEdmondsNews, July 2020

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The Lake

Intuitive images of truth
from out of the liquid eye

are writ in stagnant brown
when scuttling winds are shy

or lush voluptuous blue
erotic as a lover’s sigh

or red on twilight orange
where the blood syllables fly.

The poet dreams his life
as the lake dreams the sky.

MyEdmondsNews, March 2020

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My Moment in Time

Curving through a basalt cut,
the slim-waisted river brings
waters from the Two Oceans Plateau

at Jackson Lake to the faraway waters
out west, all the way to Astoria.
Cache Peak is due south.

Smooth-sanded alluvial fans
are tan with flecks of sagebrush teal.
To the north, the massive Craters of the Moon

lava fields lie between the river
and the distant mountains of central Idaho.
I stand alone in this isolated spot.

Civilization is nowhere in sight.
Little has changed since the Bonneville Flood
scoured the Portneuf River Valley

at the end of the Ice Age or even
when the first people arrived more
then ten thousand years ago.

This moment by the river—my moment
in time—is a one-of-a-kind snapshot
in the millions of years that some version

of the Snake River flowed to the Pacific.
This tiny stretch of river is not
the complete river any more than lives

exists in isolation apart from all the brothers
and sisters of the past, present, and future.
Like the island in the stream parting the waters,

it isn’t you who travels forward.
The small measure of time meant for you
travels toward you and beyond you.

MyEdmondsNews, March 2020

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The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

I was an L.A. kid. My favorite sport
was baseball. The weather was always kind
enough for a game. My friends and I
knew the batting averages and the earned run
averages of the players in the PCL,
and all the major league stats. I followed the Angels.
It was always a treat to go to Wrigley Field
with my dad and watch the Angels play ball.
I never went without some friends from school.

One Saturday, my dad took me and two
of my friends to an Angels game. We sat near
the back of the lower section overlooking
first base. There was a section in front of us
right by the visitors’ dugout completely empty.
These seats were the most expensive in the park,
but today, those ticket holders did not show up.

Wrigley had a custom to let the local kids
into the stands after a couple of innings,
just to fill up the ballpark. It was a neighborly policy
with the surrounding community in south L.A.
and it helped to boost the noise for the home team.

The man complained and muttered racial slurs
for two innings before my father finally
had enough. Dad was sure the commentary
was ruining the experience for me and my friends.
After one racist rant too many, my father turned
to him and said, “Hey, knock it off.
We’re trying to watch the game.” The man was caught
off guard, “Well, it isn’t fair. I paid good money
for these seats, and those kids don’t deserve
the luxury box.” Dad said, “I heard you bragging
about your seats when you came in. You said
they were perfect. What happened? Relax,”
he said gesturing toward the buoyant fans
in the stands, “enjoy the game with the rest of us.”

It worked. We never heard another word.
Later, my dad explained it this way:
“It is a gift just to be there at Wrigley Field
where the sun is shining and the Angels are winning.
Be happy. It doesn’t matter where you sit.”

MyEdmondsNews, March 2020

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clicking Send—
she is the last
of my parents’ generation
gone are the trees
I used to climb

Atlas Poetica

∞

the river
always leaves its source
yet it never leaves
the tangled fishhooks
of loves false and true

Atlas Poetica

∞

tonight
by the lemon tree
our first kiss
I ride home
on a horse of oxygen

Atlas Poetica

∞

the baby is dead . . .
while he stares
into the street
she feels her breasts
filling with milk

Atlas Poetica

∞

deep grasses choke
the broad path
we used to walk
our past is lost
in a seamless field of green

Atlas Poetica

∞

Now That I Am Dead

On reading “Evening Land” by Pär Lagerkvist

As I stooped through the low portal of death,
I saw my human fate
emptied out into the lethe.

Life’s luggage of love and hate
was left behind the wall;
the gardener burned my once-essential freight.

I asked myself if this was all.
Intelligent souls clicked like dolphins in the wind
on either side of the wall,

discerning everything. My mind
came clean; discernment whirled ahead
as soon as I was schooled by the garrulous wind.

Now that I am dead,
I know that God did not create the soul;
the soul created God instead.

Now that I am dead, I know the soul
imagined heaven straddling earth
where God was hired to rule

irascible man and iterative death/rebirth.
I dreamed of an infinite life,
a dream encoded before my birth,

because one life was not enough.
I know that paradise was once inside my head,
now that I am dead.

Scarlet Leaf Review, Anniversary Edition 2018

∞

Change

For a Memorial Service

The sacred sea defines
our summed collective soul.

Our infinite designs
are in the sea’s control.

We scarcely understand
our fundamental start.

We cannot comprehend
the sum of every part.

As the aeons come and go,
its silent flow and blend
is all we ever know;
but now we feel the wind.

A molecule of water
that skims the sacred sea
and breathes corporeal air
resembles you and me.

As soon as we are tossed
above the nurturing foam,
this flesh, from found to lost,
obscures our natural home
in such a pleasing way
we lose the cosmic sweep
of comely, sunborne spray
rounded by the deep.

Scarlet Leaf Review, Anniversary Edition 2018

Celebrating Peace

Today we gather in this faraway space
to celebrate what never took place.

Under this cloudless sky
the Unknown Soldier did not die.

No one was wounded on this spot.
Nary a soldier fired a shot.

No soldier sang a battle hymn
or killed or died or lost a limb.

On this our distant grassy field,
no corpse was lifted onto a shield.

The world at war is far away;
let peace begin with us today.

Fog is rising from the thawing ground.
Birds are soaring without a sound.

Cedars shimmer in the morning breeze.
Snowy mountains back the trees.

For a world at war, where do we start?
Peace begins in the human heart.

By changing hearts one by one,
changed hearts lower the gun.

Today we promise to work for peace,
changing hearts in the name of peace.

The world at war is far away;
let peace begin with us today.

Scarlet Leaf Review, Anniversary Edition 2018

∞

nightfall
a cricket aria,
then the chorus

‘t schrijverke (the Netherlands)

∞

pan-fried trout
I learn something new
about my father

The Heron’s Nest
Heron’s Nest Award, December 2011: Editor’s Choice
Carving Darkness, Red Moon Anthology, 2011
Haiku Foundation Per Diem, February 2014
Per Diem Archive on the Haiku Foundation Website

and

Haiku App (Apple)

∞

winter
the empty space
inside the cello

Modern Haiku

and

‘t schrijverke (the Netherlands)

∞

pinwheeling leaves
thirty-five years end
with the word amicable

Frogpond

∞

August moon
children disappear
into their lives

Modern Haiku

and

San Marino High School class reunion memory book

∞

Sawtooth Mountains
the alpine lake is stocked
with clouds

Modern Haiku

∞

as I cut and splice
a few salient vignettes,
the rest of my life
spools out
on the cutting room floor

Simply Haiku

∞

walking away
from the laugh track
into the twilit park
into the noise-cone
of a brood of cicadas

TSA Ribbons

∞

Taps…
the widow folds her life
and puts it away

Simply Haiku

∞

waking up
to the first nudge
of pain
great unweavings begin
with one loose thread

American Tanka

∞

summer heat
coming all this distance to find
nothing but distance

Paper Wasp

∞

the pounding surf
why does it matter now
after 40 years?
bleached stones against
the bleached sky

Simply Haiku

∞

redgold salmon
flap their tails…
Indian summer

Paper Wasp

∞

the hard-breathing trout
explaining death
to a child

Frogpond

∞

bitter snowstorm…
strangers become friends
for a day

The Heron’s Nest

∞

I put down my pen
to watch the birds
swallows criss-cross the street
hour after hour because…
I have no idea

TSA Ribbons

∞

dried dogwood flowers
the old couple
eats in silence

Simply Haiku

∞

deep coral tulips—
our quiet
conversation

The Heron’s Nest

∞

phosphorous flares
illuminate those
about to die
Huey gunships
are pissing bullets

Simply Haiku

∞

restless ducks
fly south
fly north

The Heron’s Nest

∞

looking ahead to the past
remembering the future
one datastream
the road from home
is a road leading home

Simply Haiku

∞

a pinwheeling leaf
strikes the watercourse
and floats around the bend
gone forever
do you ever think of me?

Simply Haiku

∞

repair work
on the dam
emptying out
the harmony
of water and mud

Simply Haiku

∞

she touched my cheek
and turned away—
summer’s end
how many turns
around the sun?

TSA Ribbons

∞

the river flowed backward
for her—friends took leave
one by one
she is all alone
at the source

TSA Ribbons

∞

double-clicking
the Events folder
our first kiss
remembering your touch,
the tilt of your face

TSA Ribbons

∞

Oregon fog
rumors
of mountains

The Heron’s Nest

∞

wind over the lake
desiccate leaves
scrape indolently
at our feet
like the years

American Tanka

∞

my glass is filled
with dusk tonight
I swirl the west and think of you
and sip the stars
down to the stem

Simply Haiku

∞

lost mojo
on the Red Line
a sweet face
no opportunity
for me

TSA Ribbons

∞

The Way

The way eludes the snare
of language. It is hard to catch the wheeling birds
scurrying up helixing stairs,

but harder still to catch the way with words.
The heart that hangs stretched and framed
is not the heart of hearts;

the way that can be named
and then defined is not the way.
The way conceals itself by being nameless.

Abundantly clear from far away,
the mountain up close fades to shades of white;
such vastness mirrors the way.

The patient, widening eye controls the night.
Eventually, patterns emerge,
defining themselves with immanent light,

suggesting a subtle demiurge
behind a shadowy veil
behind another veil on heaven’s edge

behind the tangible veil
of earth; for earth is the pattern for humanity,
then heaven for earth; and through the farthest veil,
the way spins out our destiny.

Arnazella

∞

1066

Historians lust for great events,
the violent one percent,
so nothing happens nearly every year.

Stamford Bridge and Hastings stretched a month;
whatever happened years before
or since that raven glut?

For each combatant, hundreds more
were not involved, as Norseman, Norman, Celt
and Saxon plowed the green

or toiled the cold Atlantic,
gave birth in perishing huts or softly sang
for children alliterative lullabies.

Arnazella

∞

Class of 1960

We meet again, halfway to the sea;
we touch again, halfway from the snow.
Our disentangled lives have floated free
through range and farm and city far below,
and far away from home. We floated free
within the groove of the river’s quiet flow.
Our lives are channeled—this we clearly see;
our cut of land determines where we go;
but how we go is up to you and me.
Entangled as we are again tonight,
salute the past, then say a last good-bye.
Remember me as I appear tonight
and I’ll remember you with an inward eye
until the whispering river meets the sea.

San Marino High School class reunion memory book
(written in 1990)

∞

North San Diego County

The grass of Kearny Mesa
grew up to be
a hundred shopping malls.

The naked hills were clothed
by Mediterranean housing projects.

Some rural routes
are giant interstates.

I never gave a thought
to golden grass
or granite hills
or dusty roads
when they were there,
before the dozers carved the land.

Thirteen

∞

Back Jackknife

for Bud Baldwin

His rigid arms are pointing down as he walks
the diver’s practiced pace toward the edge
and deftly spins around to set his feet.
The crowd grows quiet as he is on his toes,
to seek and find the pulse of limber steel.
With that assured, arms come up, palms flat
and facing down; knuckles nudge his gaze.

Silence snaps—he takes the backward leap,
exploding blind at forty-five degrees
(too high, you flop; too low and over you go),
and belly muscles pull his daggered toes
into a row of waiting fingertips
still reaching out directly from the chest.
he shuts the knife exactly at the apogee;

His body forms a tight, symmetrical V.
and just a blink beyond, he pops the knife.
The head flies back and arms in tandem follow
violently; so head, arms, and back design
a deadly blade to cut the water clean.
He nails the perfect dive. And slicing through
the bottom of the sky, he suns in blithe applause.

Aethlon

∞

High Jumper

The changing years extend, but still I shine
above the crossbar straddling six foot three
at the quarter finals in May of ’59.

My father’s grainy photo caught the victory;
I share with him the moment’s immutability.
Time cannot erase the singular joy

of jumping—the illusory release from gravity.
I keep the gold and the aura of a perfect day,
but changing years took the boy away.

Hobo Stew Review

Wordtreasure Diary

Titles

Put On the Armor of Light
Our Corporate Wholeness
Our Responsibility
Turning the Blank Pages
[tanka] in the rib cage
We All Start at Zero
Open My Mind
Life and Death in the Back Yard
Ontological Argument
[haiku] empty
For the Faces I Will Never See
The Growth of St. John’s Church
Lifting the Veil
Wind Over the Lake
The Power of Myth and Metaphor
On the Liberty of Women
The Politics of No
[tanka] vanishing leaves…
The Swans of Skagit Valley
Camp Loowit Alumni
Low Sunday
Metanoia
Women’s Work
The Living Stone
Paul at the Areopagus
The Theology of Suffering
Class of 1960
We Have Questions
The Thing Itself
The Birth of Laughter
Ishmael
Dad Critiques the Sermon
[haiku] August moon
Joy at Daybreak
Chaff
Glass Half Empty
[tanka] the blacktop road
Praise for the Black Church
Inclusion
Why Caesarea Philippi?
[haiku] replaying an argument…
Adorning the Poor With Victory
The Smartest Guy in the Room
As a Rose Unfolds Itself
[tanka] my glass is filled
Memory
Arguing Over the Kids
Macedonia and Achaia
Pilgrim
The Big Nothing
The Parable of the Rich Fool
Wars in My Lifetime
Mass in Times of a Pandemic
Blessings
Holy Communion
Agency
The Yoke
Love is a Twofer
The White Christ
[tanka] brainstorming
Micah
The Way
Circle of Love
At the Dinner Table
[tanka] deep grasses choke
Bus Poem: My Iranian Gentleman
[haiku] winter
The Hills of the Central Coast
[haiku] the hard-breathing trout
Summer Romance
Sacralized Violence
1066
Clicking Hyperlinks
Wheel of Water
[tanka] a pinwheeling leaf
The Alpha and Omega of Gratitude
[tanka] the boy who came
Back Jackknife
She Loves You
Friday Night Fights Every Night
Lao Tzu Advises the Board of Directors
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
The Plumb Line
[haiku] pan-fried trout
Owl Love
The Drifters
On Mount Wilson
You Do Not Always Have Me
Residents Only
[haiku] nightfall
Evening Land
Cigars
On the Bridge
[tanka] lost mojo
Excuses
Perfume
[tanka] a bee swarm of ducks
The Ballad of the Sheaf of Corn
My Moment in Time
What Kind of God
Son of Man
I Was the Messenger
The Talk
[tanka] a pinwheeling leaf
The High Achievers
Now
Herod the Great
The Body and Its Desires
White Privilege High School
What Does Jesus Say?
[haiku] rain
The Ark of the Covenant
[tanka] my glass is filled
Change
The God Guy
Dad Tips the Waitress
Dialog Between Athlete and Coach
[tanka] repair work
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
When Jesus Saw the Crowds
Evening, Midnight, Cockcrow, Dawn
Rejection
Our Love
[haiku] taps…
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
Resilience
Childhood Memories
This is a Test
Jap
[tanka] like a stuttering newsreel
Images of Navy Housing
[haiku] end of an affair
A Moment of Kindness
Cloud Formations
[haiku] in my dream,
Thomas the Twin
Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco
Dorm Room Bull Session
Bus Poem: Hard Times
Snow Day in L.A.
Den Mother
Embraced
[tanka] double-clicking
Murph, the Butcher
Sally, Barb, and Moses
Oneonta Hills
Snoqualmie Valley
Disneyland
Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth?
Dad Has a Mistress
Appointment with the Psychiatrist
Simon, Andrew, James and John
[tanka] on the signal bridge,
In the Ring
[haiku] night winds
Money Man
Don’t Worry About Tomorrow
Last Laugh
Adults Sitting Around Drinking
Norman and Virginia
The Anthropologist
[haiku] The waterfall slows
The Parable of the Growing Seed
Oberlin College
Spring
High Jumper
Wisdom
I Want to Be Like That Guy
Arise, My Love
House Rules for Gender
Chapel of the Transfiguration
Stress
He Called a Little Child
Dad Explains Supply and Demand
The Ballad of Constituency Service
Love at First Sight
Dad’s Politics
Imago Dei
The Recovering Racist
The Surgeon General’s Report
Checkpoint
She Loves You
[tanka] divorce…
Skywaves
Celebrating Peace
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Henry Ford
Black and White
The Blackouts
Winter Scene
The Parable of the Sower
We Are the Christians
[tanka] old friends part:
[tanka] looking ahead to the past
[tanka] you are forever 15 to me
B.A., History, U.C. Berkeley
[tanka] tonight
Sour
At the Airport
Life Begins at 70
[haiku] leaving college
A Tale that is Told
All We Have
Wedding in the Park
[tanka] the Marine was lying low,
The Parable of the Talents
Leaving the Firm
A Missed Opportunity
Isaiah’s Vision
[tanka] as I cut and splice
[tanka] in the Mekong Delta,
Leaders Conference
The Parable of the Rich Fool
Moon Walk
Stupid Ideas
Anxiety Alert
Unappreciated
Disgusting and Slutty
Dog Turd Letter
August 11, 1985
Public and Private Drinking
Mother
Abandoned
Mother’s Politics
[haiku] home after a glum day
Diabetes
Press 2 for English
The Three-day Rule
[haiku] a copper sun
My Son Keeps Getting Fired
[tanka] in Mother’s
Visiting the Oncologist
Into the Winter
North San Diego County
[tanka] the rhythmic flickering
Without a Thought
Beyond the Narrowing

∞

November 23, 2022

Put On the Armor of Light

My nettlesome dream snaps shut.
Instead of rolling over
for more slugabed minutes,
I get up and put on the armor of light—
ready to praise the image of God
on this day
in each face I greet.

∞

November 30, 2022

Our Corporate Wholeness

Two things.
I have a connection
with every other person in the world.
My belief in that connection
is constantly tested and severed.

Perfectionism is a lie.
What if the quarterback has a perfect passer rating,
but his team loses?
How does he feel?
What if the gymnast scores a 10.0
in every event,
but her team loses?
How does she feel?

As for me,
I participate in the wholeness of the human family,
and that is holiness!
It is not my private holiness.
It is our connection together.

All of us as one seek
an active corporate and communal image
of what is happening.
I cannot carry
such glory and greatness
by myself.
And neither can I bear
such universal suffering and sadness.

∞

December 8, 2022

Our Responsibility

The Lord created the heaven and earth.
He created the seas, and all that is in them.

Man had nothing to do with this.

The Lord gives justice to the oppressed,
sets the prisoners free,
opens the eyes of the blind,
lifts up those who are bowed down,
cares for the stranger,
sustains the widow and orphan,
and frustrates the ways of the wicked.

How are these things done?

They are done by those who love the Lord,
by those who follow his commands.

∞

December 14, 2022

Turning the Blank Pages

It was all good for the first three and a half minutes.
He led the orchestral intro from the bench,
waving his arms and bobbing his head
while I turned the pages.
No one was paying attention to me.
Then the orchestra fell silent.
Hr. v. B. launched into his solo part
and I swung open the next page…to nothing.
It was page after blank page
with just the occasional hieroglyphic note
that meant something to him
but nothing to me.

I panicked.
How was I to know
when one blank page ended
and another blank page began?
He took delight in my troubles,
but was kind enough to give me
a surreptitious nod
whenever we came to the end of emptiness.

The concert was a success.
No man was a better friend than Beethoven
when he was in a jolly mood.
I cherish the memory of his howls of laughter
at our convivial dinner after the concert!

Time brings an end to all living things.
Beethoven is gone now.
My own health is fragile.
That night in Vienna when I turned pages
for a generational genius—
unsure of what was coming next,
but surrounded by music most sublime
and encouraged by his bemused glance
at just the right moments—
was a key life lesson.
When we wake up in the morning
or start a new year,
we don’t have a score to follow.
We put our trust in the Master at the keyboard
giving us celestial music and surreptitious nods
as we turn the blank pages of our lives.

Hr. v. B. = Herr van Beethoven

NOTE: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was first performed
on April 5, 1803. Beethoven’s pupil Ignaz von Seyfried
was the page turner.

∞

December 21, 2022

[tanka]

in the rib cage
of bare branches,
the setting sun
hovers
like a heart

∞

December 28, 2022

We All Start at Zero

The practiced hands of the good-humored doctor
pull the infant out of the warm duskiness
of an amniotic ocean into the unfamiliar glare
of delivery room lights. It is a rough business,
coming into the world, but every person
in the room is pulling for the startled new arrival
to survive, grow, thrive, and come of age.

In this instant, we align ourselves with God
to affirm the wholesome generative forces of the world.
We all start at zero. Look at the face
of the newborn child. Where is the theological construct
of original sin? Do you see it? No?
The swaddled baby is laid on the mother’s chest
and begins to learn the ambivalent ways of humankind.

∞

January 4, 2023

Open My Mind

Open my mind to the stranger who differs from me.
Empty my mind, O Lord, of ignorance and fear.
Allow me to live in a world where knowledge is free.
Give me a mind, O Lord, that is always clear.

Open my mind to the stranger of another race.
Let me see him as a friend and not the other.
Allow him to be the gracious guest in my space.
As host, I am pleased to do my best for a brother.

Empty my mind, O Lord, of conventional bias.
Open my mind to unconventional love.
Give me the courage to resist the spitefully pious.
Allow me to assert that love is simply love.

Open my mind to the stranger from a foreign land.
Let me share the warmth of our country’s sun.
If he wants to be my neighbor, I’ll lend a hand.
Our nation’s motto is “Out of many, one.”

Give me the strength, O Lord, not to wait
for a thousand tomorrows to live in brotherly love.
Empty my mind, O Lord, of the ruin of hate.
Open my mind, O Lord, to the rule of love.

∞

January 11, 2023

Life and Death in the Back Yard

Isaiah 49:1-7

The neighbor’s cat with the pure black fur
noticed my movement in the kitchen
and fixed his stare at me.
I eased forward to get a better view
of our small, oval-shaped lawn
through the sliding glass door.

The tan corpse of a baby rabbit
was less than a foot away
from his extended paws perfectly aligned,
and the diminutive Lion King,
head turned to the left with eyes locked on me,
was announcing to the whole world,

“Look what I did!”
Hunger had nothing to do with it.
We feed that cat when the neighbors leave town.
It was pure sport.
I opened the sliding door and yelled “Yah!”
and the cat high-tailed it over the south fence.
Maybe you’ll be a coyote biscuit someday,
I thought.
I hope you enjoy that experience.

I checked the tiny rabbit.
Yes, it was dead.
We don’t have a pet cemetery on our property,
so I chucked the corpse over the back fence
into the nine-acre greenbelt behind the house.
It was an inglorious end
to a life that never really got started.

After that, I took down the empty birdfeeder
hanging from the arch over the gate
to fill it up with songbird seeds from Ace Hardware.
Nancy had been bugging me for a week,
“You need to feed the birds,”
and I would reply,
“These creatures lived for millions of years
without our help. They can fend for themselves.”
“Yes, but I like to look at them.”

I turned the feeder upside down
and pounded on the base
to shake loose the crud on the bottom.
Then I filled it to the brim with seeds
and rehung it from the arch.

Song sparrows were the first to attack the feeder
and the last to leave.
Others were the dark-eyed junco,
spotted towhee, northern flicker, house finch,
and surprise! the black-capped chickadee.
The goldfinch made a rare appearance.
Tiny birds suddenly popped out of the blackberries
at breakneck speed to the arched gate,
hop-hopping to the feeder for a snack,
then flit away into the thicket.

I was like a songbird god
summoning my peoples to a rich buffet,
from the east, the west, the north, and the south—
Bring my sons from far away,
and my daughters from the ends of the earth.

∞

January 18, 2023

Ontological Argument

Assuming that God’s existence
might be proved through logic,
would you and I believe
in such an elegant God?

∞

January 24, 2023

[haiku]

empty
and quiet
putting away Christmas

∞

February 1, 2023

For the Faces I Will Never See

for Nancy at Christmas

Long stretches of handling the hooks*
with rhythmic certainty
seamlessly moving forward on a row
occasionally looking up at a movie
seen before many times
(knowing which scene is coming)
sometimes losing track
of the sequencing cadence
or noticing the row does not look right,
counting, counting, ripping out,
saying a word not safe for work,
re-reading instructions
then back on track,
finishing the main pattern
and refining the border—
the final step—until
done at last!

For the faces I will never see,
you bundled newborns in other arms,
my love goes out to you.
I imagine my yarn
chucked against your chin,
but that is where my story ends.
Wear it well
and pay it forward
for children of your own
if you can.

*Crochet

∞

February 8, 2023

The Growth of St. John’s Church

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

The first to speak is the garden soil.
Our hopes depend on fertile land.
Without the soil, we cannot grow.

Land alone is bereft of life.
What we need is healthy seed.
Without the seed, we cannot grow.

Soil and seed are well and good,
but absent rain what’s our gain?
Without the rain, we cannot grow.

The genial sun laughs out loud.
Garden delight depends on light.
Without the sun, we cannot grow.

Surrender your ego for the common good.
Work as one to get it done.
The Holy Spirit gives the growth.

∞

February 15, 2023

Lifting the Veil

To the east, news-crawler clouds scrape the mountains,
hiding the higher elevations. A kaleidoscope of rain,
wind, and fog turns and turns again
its swirl of gunmetal gray over the lowlands.

A friend of mine comes from the Great Plains
to the Kent Valley at the beginning of the forty days
of gloom. He wonders: is the air like this always
with these speed-of-a-slug cloud-rags, and the rains?

Today, on day forty-one, the veil is lifted
when cold north winds chase the gray
and set the Cascade Range in clear relief
against the blue, and he is blown away
when Mt. Rainier brandishes its swaggering pride
four thousand meters above the countryside.

∞

February 22, 2023

Wind Over the Lake

Wind over the lake—desiccate leaves
scrape indolently at our feet, like the years.
We feel the chill of the restless wind.

Fall’s maelstrom of reds and golds
is all around. The cool, invisible hand
lifts silvering hair.

We are entering autumn of our time together.
Some leaves have fallen, but many remain,
waiting to be plucked by wind over the lake.

∞

March 1, 2023

The Power of Myth and Metaphor

Romans 5:12-19

Death does not hinge on human sin.
Literally.
Paul knows this.

Death and extinction long preceded
the arrival of humans and their sins.
Paul’s audience in the Roman church knows this.

Evolutionary biology is beside the point.
Paul creates a poetic paradigm
to make a point about faith.

His model has an elegant design—
a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
The “first man” Adam has life,

but disobedience leads to death
for himself, for Eve,
for all humankind.

God counters this
with an equal but opposite solution.
The powerful obedience of Jesus

(his faithful death on the cross)
enables the faithful to cancel out
the deadly destiny of sin

and have a new identity and destiny
of righteousness and life
through Jesus Christ.

∞

March 8, 2023

On the Liberty of Women

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference..

~ Reinhold Niebuhr ~

Who makes the rules for things we cannot change?
We’ll decide which rules to ignore or keep.

We won’t accept the things we cannot change.
It’s time to change the things we cannot accept.

God, grant to us the wisdom to know the course
you set for us—and not the course by others.

God, grant to us the courage to be the force
to overturn the rules prescribed by brothers.

We won’t accept the things we cannot change.
It’s time to change the things we cannot accept.

∞

March 14, 2023

The Politics of No

No, we are not bewhiskered woodsmen posing
with a fabled misery whip 12-feet long
emerging from the sepia history of real men

or frugal, gaunt survivalists riding out
the Great Depression or the khaki war machine
fighting to the death against the Axis powers

or fearless astronauts landing on the moon.
As the swaggering first citizens of a unipolar world,
we are soft from indolent years of privileged ease.

We are soft without a great enemy to fight
so we look within and fight among ourselves.
We harden into corpulence and intellectual sloth

as nimbler nations strive to take us down,
not by the savagery of war, but with whispered lies
designed to divide us into two contending camps

dueling to the death of the great American experiment
of broad-shouldered accomplishment of big things.
No, my friend, we are not that nation anymore.

∞

March 21, 2023

[tanka]

vanishing leaves…
skeletal woods are rising
from the dead
to clothe the black
with flesh again

∞

March 29, 2023

The Swans of Skagit Valley

Philippians 2:8

To the human eye,
the cornfield empties itself of value
for the rest of the year.

Ragged rows of stubble
stretch to the fog-bleared tree line.

Large puddles of freezing rainwater
and patches of old snow
punctuate the dun-horse devastation.

The autumn crop is obedient
to the point of death.

Tranquility is shattered
by a rising crescendo of trumpeter swans
haggling over their landing spots.

Gleaners from the far north fill their bellies
with the final treasures of the field,
then rise in unison to the heavens,
each as heavy as a small suitcase at Sea-Tac,
necks fully extended,
bleating furiously,
as they bolt for the breeding grounds.

∞

April 5, 2023

Camp Loowit Alumni

Jeremiah 31:1-6

The loveliest things are incredibly brief.
The loveliest things happen only once.
Years compress to minutes.

Nature does not care about your feelings.
Eight months after the 50-year reunion
of Y campers at Spirit Lake,

Mount St. Helens blew apart
and ruined the pristine lake forever.
It buried the YMCA camp

under hundreds of feet of timber and tephra.
Because of debris, the bottom of the new lake
is higher than the surface of the old lake.

The breathtaking symmetry of the iconic mountain,
proudly emblazoned on thousands of postcards,
is reduced to a pile of charcoal gray.

The Camp Loowit alumni
don’t meet in person any more.
They gather on Facebook.

Most discuss the loveliest hours of youth.
But there are some who celebrate
via the sideways scrolling of photographs

the green transformation of the blast site
and the return of animal life,
and though the site is different,

much different, from what it was before,
a new kind of beauty awaits those
who embrace the words of the prophet,

Again I will build you,
and you shall be built,
O virgin Israel!

∞

April 12, 2023

Low Sunday

Low Sunday is the Sunday after Easter
when we cheered the Lord’s ascendance.
The low is not for “low church.”
It’s about the small attendance.

∞

April 19, 2023

Metanoia

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Don’t look back in sorrow
at the wrongs you did to others
or the wrong beliefs you held.
Sorrow is not the ask
of Jesus or John the Baptist.
Nothing you say or do

will change what you said or did,
don’t you see? Peter paused
to let that sink in.
Instead, he said, reorient yourself
to a new way of life, starting today,
with baptism in the name of Jesus

and acceptance of the Holy Spirit.
Some in the crowd turned away
from Peter’s altar call,
but three thousand came forward
and took on their new identities
as the People of the Way

∞

April 26, 2023

Women’s Work

Acts 2:43-47

Women’s work: for mother and daughter,
work goes on hour by hour.
They grind the grain into flour,
make a paste by adding water,

and place the dough onto a stone
in the smoky oven. They work to the bone
in the sweltering heat while the men
gathered in the temple are cool and clean.

∞

May 2, 2023

The Living Stone

1 Peter 2:2-10

The temple was not built with living stone.
Nothing made by human hands can last
forever. The second temple’s time has passed
after more than half a millennium, as you can see.
The Israelites built it; the Romans tore it down.

Come to him, the living stone, and be a living stone
yourself—in a spiritual house for all eternity.

∞

May 10, 2023

Paul at the Areopagus

Acts 17:22-31

inside
the stone deity
stone

∞

May 17, 2023

The Theology of Suffering

Words cannot explain suffering.
Don’t waste your time with “Why me?”
Of the myriad sufferings in the world,
choose one:
the suffering of Jesus.
Then get to work.
You will be glad and shout for joy.
Be grateful you still have agency
for Gospel action.

∞

May 24, 2023

Class of 1960

We meet again, halfway to the sea;
we touch again, halfway from the snow.
Our disentangled lives have floated free
through range and farm and city far below,
and far away from home. We floated free
within the groove of the river’s quiet flow.
Our lives are channeled—this we clearly see;
our cut of land determines where we go;
but how we go is up to you and me.
Entangled as we are again tonight,
salute the past, then say a last good-bye.
Remember me as I appear tonight
and I’ll remember you with an inward eye
until the whispering river meets the sea.

NOTE: I wrote this poem in 1990 for the 30th reunion of the class of 1960, San Marino High School, San Marino, California.

∞

May 30, 2023

We Have Questions

Digging deep into a pocket of nothingness,
the Webb Space Telescope uncovers
new stars and new pockets of nothingness.
We assume something is there. Nothingness
is a placeholder word for things undiscovered.

What about, we ask, the end of time?
Logically, a beginning, middle, and end
affects all things, including time
we are told—my personal time and Time
itself. What happens when we reach the end?
Is nothingness just another placeholder?
Dare we assume there is something more?

∞

June 7, 2023

The Thing Itself

1 Samuel 15:22

When a man loves a woman,
does he love a painting of the woman
or the woman herself?
Surely he knows the painting
is not the thing itself.

When a woman loves a man,
does she love a photograph of the man
or the man himself?
Surely she knows the photograph
is not the thing itself.

Photographs and paintings are representations,
not the thing itself.

Sacrifices and offerings are representations
of our obedience to God,
not actual obedience.
Obedience to God is the thing itself.

∞

June 14, 2023

The Birth of Laughter

Genesis 18:1-15

Infertility is hereditary.
If your parents didn’t have kids,
neither will you.
This was not a laughing matter
to the old man Abraham
and the old woman Sarah

who tried for years without success
to have a child.
God promised Abraham he would be
the ancestor of a great nation,
but the line dies with infertility.
Abraham and Sarah were astonished

when the three mysterious visitors
informed the wizened Abraham
that he and Sarah would finally have a son.
Abraham laughed,
Sarah laughed,
and God smiled at the absurdity.

NOTE: The name Isaac (Yīṣḥāq) means “he laughs/will laugh” in Hebrew.

∞

June 21, 2023

Ishmael

Abraham loved both his boys;
Sarah spurned the elder son.
Sarah wanted the second born
to inherit and grow the family business.

For the fair-minded father, it was disturbing
to learn the younger Isaac was his heir.
The scandal of election seemed unfair—
chosenness kicked Ishmael to the curb.

Abraham sent Ishmael away,
but God continued to watch the boy.
The Lord made a great nation of him
and honors his descendants to this day.

∞

June 28, 2023

Dad Critiques the Sermon

Dad did not have much use
for organized religion,
but he took us to church
for the appearance of family unity.
He surrendered one hour
to avoid the grief of not-going.

He was silent before,
during, and after the service
every time except once
when I said something kind
about Dr. Gray’s sermon
and Dad, staring straight
at the street ahead,
called B.S. on the pastor
for a sermon Dad considered
logically incoherent
and biblically incorrect.

Dad was an avid fan
of logic problems and, of course,
faith requires some skips in logic.
Until that moment,
I had no idea he knew anything
about the Bible,
but there he was,
the well-schooled village agnostic,
countering by throwing
his proof texts over the wall
at Dr. Gray’s assertions
about the Sunday lessons.

It was years before
he opened up to me again
about religion,
but his silence was not
for lack of interest:
he paid attention to everything.

∞

July 5, 2023

[haiku]

August moon
children disappear
into their lives

NOTE: I wrote this poem for the 50th reunion of my high school class.

∞

July 12, 2023

Joy at Daybreak

I run the trail before the rising sun.
Cyclists will not be riding up my back
in the bleak early hours when all is black.
Body and soul are one on the run at dawn.

A careful stride keeps me free of pain
for an hour or more. I focus on my hushed exhale
on every fourth step as I master the trail.
Impurities slip away from body and brain.

With snowy cedars in the light of day, my mind
departs from mindful concentration to free association.
Tri-colors whirl, unfurl, flutter in the wind
as swaying timbers mingle with the heavens,
all powder-blue, white, and forest green
for me: delight is color, sun-rinsed clean.

∞

July 19, 2023

Chaff

Psalm 139

“Have you been saved?” is the wrong question.
All of us are saved together.
All creatures and the cosmos itself
originate from one divine source.

At death we all return to the source.
The loving God is within us, at home,
patiently and kindly awaiting our recognition.
As creator of all, God is in every thing,

present at all times in all places.
God promises that nothing is wasted,
not even the oft-disparaged chaff.
Like all of us, chaff has a mission:

to protect the wheat berry from harm.
God is inside every thing
and every thing is inside God.
Whosoever loves God loves all that is.

∞

July 26, 2023

Glass Half Empty

He loved to be the devil’s advocate.
If you pleaded in favor of the notion of progress
or argued for the goodness of faith-based optimism,
he would, in his quiet way,
set out to destroy your thesis point by point.

Dad was a philosophical pessimist.
He was not emotional about it,
but he felt he was doing you a favor
by exposing the flaws in your illusions.

There is something to be said
for being correct about the human condition.
When he was young and full of life,
he took pleasure in setting the record straight.

Dad put himself in a logical box.
By placing himself,
the world, and all its inhabitants
on a metaphorical death row,
what was there to live for?
Where was the happiness in soft nihilism?

∞

August 2, 2023

[tanka]

the blacktop road
comes to an end here
at the edge
of the wilderness…
be not afraid

∞

August 9, 2023

Praise for the Black Church

It’s hard to be humble—for those of the majority race
who are always favored first when it comes to power.
Oh, sure, there is empathy: imagine the horror!
But no one is thinking seriously of trading places.
Like Joseph, west Africans once had independence.
Mercenary brothers sold them into slavery
and they bore brutal bondage from birth to grave
on our soil. No one is wiser than their descendants.
It is difficult for whites to accept that the last are first
and the first last. Some believe the Haves
and the Have Mores on earth are bound for glory
where we are saved by following private paths,
but black churches proclaim the true story
of inclusion as taught to us by Jesus Christ.

∞

August 16, 2023

Inclusion

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Inclusion comes through love. Love makes it real.
In the name of love, barriers pass away.
When Jesus walked the earth in the imperial day
of Tiberius, gentiles were shunned by society in Israel
and a wall divided the people with dreams unclear
from those who lived in the hope of a promised lord.
Love joined the two. As Isaiah said,
“Peace, peace to the far and to the near.”

How much has really changed since Caesar’s day?
We live in times when hate is in the air.
We seek a certain solace in the tribal fold,
but mindfulness cancels hate; inclusion is the way.
Instead of disputations to win over the neighbor,
we offer the power of love to embrace and hold.

∞

August 23, 2023

Why Caesarea Philippi?

Matthew 16:13:20

What better place to ask the question—
Who do you say that I am?—
than the well-traveled intersection
for politics, religion, and trade,
Caesarea Philippi.

Armies are tramping through all the time
and it’s the trade route between Damascus and Tyre
and there are shrines to the old pagan gods.
All these concerns come together here
at this familiar crossroads.

So, when Jesus pops the question,
his followers might be tempted
to think he represents an earthly endeavor:
material wealth, military power,
or prominence in the religious establishment.

For Simon Peter, son of Jonah,
flesh and blood did not reveal the answer,
but our Father in heaven.

∞

August 30, 2023

[haiku]

replaying an argument…
a deep contrail scratch
in cirrus clouds

∞

September 10, 2023

Adorning the Poor With Victory

Psalm 149

What happens after the Lord
wreaks vengeance on the nations?

What happens after the Lord
binds the kings in chains
and their nobles with links of iron?

What happens after the Lord
inflicts on them the judgment decreed?

What does it mean to adorn the poor with victory?

What happens to the poor after the glory of conquest
is showered on all the faithful people?

∞

September 15, 2023

The Smartest Guy in the Room

It took me a while to notice
the chip on his shoulder.
He never made a scene
and yet he silently saw himself
as the smartest guy in every room.
He sized up each man
by noting the factual errors
and rhetorical flaws.
Like a judge in Olympic diving,
he lowered the poor man’s score
and Dad always came out on top
even when he didn’t.

And women, by definition,
could never measure up.
Nineteenth century gender inequality
was baked into his understanding
of the great chain of being.
My sister and my dad
attended the same college.
Only one graduated Summa Cum Laude
and was accepted into Phi Beta Kappa
and it wasn’t him,
but it made no difference.

∞

September 20, 2023

As a Rose Unfolds Itself

Stunned to hear your marriage is falling apart,
I look to see you sad, defeated, but no!
You are energized—fired up and ready to go.
The unencumbered life gladdens your heart.

As a rose unfolds itself,
there is always an exact time
when beauty is most compelling.
For you, that time is now.

I wrote these lines when you were twenty-one.
Society believes that beauty will have its say
briefly before a long denouement of decay.
Wrong. The unfolding of beauty is never done.

Unlike the athlete whose turn on the stage is short,
beauty draws from character to counter age.
A woman’s poise and wisdom keep the page
from turning; they keep the book from snapping shut.

Character powers the engine that drives the train
along a set of tracks uniquely yours.
This time belongs to you. Enjoy the years
to come as your own master of heart and brain.

∞

September 27, 2023

[tanka]

My glass is filled
with dusk tonight…
I swirl the west and think of you
and sip the stars
down to the stem.

∞

October 4, 2023

Memory

One day tells its tale to another,
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language,
and their voices are not heard,
their sound has gone out into all lands,
and their message to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19:2-4

In the beginning, the memory barely fits
a Times Square video screen.
In the end, the image is wallet sized.

In addition, there is an altered state:
the uncarved block becomes a sculpture;
the portrait of a lady becomes a smile.

In the beginning, myriad details cling
to the core event. Incessant winds
of the mind erode the loose periphery

and one by one, over a long life,
the less essential falls away
into forgetfulness. In the end,

the stripped-down core event—
some instance of love, triumph or shame—
remains intact forever.

∞

October 12, 2023

Arguing Over the Kids

Exodus 32:1-14

My children? These are your children!
It was by your power
you freed them from bondage.
What will the Egyptians say
if you set your children free
only to destroy them in the wilderness?
And what about your hopes
for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and their descendants?
Have you forgotten about that?

∞

October 19, 2023

Macedonia and Achaia

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Looking out over the caramel landscape,
the least of the apostles announced,
On this blade of grass, I build my church.

∞

October 26, 2023

Pilgrim

Matthew 22:34-46

Come home, come home to the simple life:
Love God with all your heart,
with all your soul and with all your strength.
This is the first and greatest rule.

Come home, come home to the holy life:
Love your neighbor as yourself.
These two rules are all you need.
Everything else is explanation.

Come, pilgrim, come home to God.
Clear your mind of the cares of the world.
It does not matter how far you roam.
The road from home is the road to home.

∞

November 1, 2023

The Big Nothing

Joshua 3:7-17

What happens to the indigenous peoples
living in someone else’s promised land?
We never know because they are slaughtered

or erased forever as a culture.
Nothing to see here—
their story is a big nothing.

Historians connect the dots of known events
across white silences of ruined chronicles
forever mute.

∞

November 8, 2023

The Parable of the Rich Fool

Luke 12: 13-21

He who dies with the most toys wins,
a rich man said.
Today he is dead.
What do you win when death begins?

When death steals you before the dawn,
what is the measure
of stored up treasure?
Who honors you when you are gone?

∞

November 15, 2023

WARS IN MY LIFETIME

Judges 4:1-7

World War II

a boy-soldier lies
with his face
on the continent of Europe
and his feet
in the Atlantic

Korea

when we died,
they said casualties were low;
they gave us medals
and thanked us
for our service

Vietnam

I am an American fighting man
no visible foe
no battle lines
no inner hate
no reason why

Desert Storm

no longer
forward-leaning warfighters,
the wounded
are deleted
from the present tense

Iraq

Iraq War,
my, how you have grown…
look at you:
such a big boy
and so strong!

∞

November 22, 2023

MASS IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC

Psalm 100

Kyrie eleison

Have mercy upon the people of faith, O Lord,
who put their trust in you, as an enemy, unseen
and silent, steals across our land and the world
abroad to tap on shoulders—as if at random
like a monstrous game of tag—of unsuspecting men
and women who strive to make it through the day.
We sing, Kyrie eléison, Christe eléison,
Kyrie eléison, with great gladness; and we pray:
Give us courage, O Lord, come what may.

Gloria

Credo

Sanctus

The virus requires we find new ways to cope.
Gatherings are banned; individuals widen their space.
In isolation, we glimpse in memory, dimly, but we hope
to see each other soon face to face,
cheek by jowl, in a happier time and place.
Privately, we pray, Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of hosts. By the loving grace
of God, we plan to come together fully
as one body and sing the Hymn of Victory.

Agnes Dei

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world. We the faithful may be sheep
in need of a good shepherd or innocents in the ways
of the world, but the body of Christ is wide and deep
and the people of this church have commitments to keep
whether blown to the four winds or gathered in place.
We are set on sowing in the Spirit—in the hope of reaping
eternal life. My friends, go in grace
until we meet again face to face.

∞

November 29, 2023

Blessings

Blessed are those who hunger for justice.
Blessings to the powerless
and their allies driven to cure injustice.

Blessings also to those who refuse
to hate their abusers.
This is the hardest task of all.

Never forget—each person’s face,
even that of your adversary,
bears the imprint of the Lord.

Resist injustice with every bone in your body,
with all your might,
with your every breath,

with your very soul,
as if it was a matter of life and death,
which it is.

∞

December 6, 2023

Holy Communion

The dove spreads wings of the present and past.
Warm thermals lift these wings of time.
One wing is us in this sacred place.
The other bears souls of every age.

Our world was once a lightless void.
From that the Lord created the world.
From things not seen, he made the earth.
From a spark, the Lord gives us birth.

On edge from dust to dust again,
by our faith we know there is a plan.
We look ahead with absolute trust.
By faith we sing the Great Amen.

We fold eternity into a day.
Time slows to a stop with body and blood.
We eat this bread and drink this wine.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

∞

December 13, 2023

Agency

What does it mean to be the salt of the earth?
Salt is a preservative.
It is used for seasoning and with healing.
Salt is a helping agent.

What does it mean to be the leaven?
Leaven makes the bread rise.
It softens the bread and makes it more digestible.
Leaven is a helping agent.

What does it mean to be the light for the world?
Without the light,
we stumble around in the dark.
Light is a helping agent.

∞

December 21, 2023

The Yoke

The yoke you wear is the load you bear.
Who will make the yoke you wear?
The yoke you wear is yours alone.
Will you build a yoke on your own?
Will fear become your lasting load
to burden you on the darkened road?
Will you be angry on the morrow
or shoulder some remembered sorrow?

A worker in wood has a better way
to lighten your load in every way.
You can trust the carpenter’s son.
He knows why and how it’s done.
Jesus knows the grain of oak.
He will make a gentle yoke.
His heart is humble—learn from him.
Take his yoke and walk with him.

∞

December 28, 2023

Love is a Twofer

Love is a twofer.
When you say you are in love
or you assert the aphorism, God is love,
you infer duality.

God is the subject
and [something] is the object.
The something is the world
and all its inhabitants.

There is no love without the lover and the loved,
without the me and the you,
without one or the other.

Have you ever experienced love?
You will then understand the Sufi maxim,
You are the mirror in which
God sees himself.

∞

January 3, 2024

The White Christ

Red-bearded, blood-soaked Thor faced off
against the white Christ
at the end of the first millennium.
Icelanders had to choose.
For the pagans, white stood for cowardice,
but the heavy hand of King Olaf
forced a deal the pagan holdouts
could not refuse.
The second millennium is in the past already.
The state supports the old white Christ,
but attendance is low in the state church.
Icelanders go through the cafeteria line
and select their religion.
Bureaucrats record their preferences.
It’s all very low energy.
There won’t be a saga-worthy single combat
between the white Christ
and some adversary in the future.

∞

January 10, 2024

[tanka]

brainstorming
in the corner office
on the fifth floor…
the high seriousness
of fall colors

∞

January 17, 2024

Micah

Micah 5:2-5

The prophet Micah foretells the fall
of the corrupt and faithless elite of Jerusalem;
the fall and revival of the Kingdom of Judah;
the Messiah’s birth in the town of Bethlehem.

Because of Bethlehem, we honor Micah.
We are mindful that the great and good
often come from out of nowhere
and not from the gilded houses of the world.

Born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth
by ordinary folk Mary and Joseph,
Jesus came from out of nowhere
to shock the world into the Common Era.

∞

January 24, 2024

The Way

The way eludes the snare
of language. It is hard to catch the wheeling birds
scurrying up helixing stairs,

but harder still to catch the way with words.
The heart that hangs stretched and framed
is not the heart of hearts;

the way that can be named
and then defined is not the way.
The way conceals itself by being nameless.

Abundantly clear from far away,
the mountain up close fades to shades of white;
such vastness mirrors the way.

The patient, widening eye controls the night.
Eventually, patterns emerge,
defining themselves with immanent light,

suggesting a subtle demiurge
behind a shadowy veil
behind another veil on heaven’s edge

behind the tangible veil
of earth; for earth is the pattern for humanity,
then heaven for earth; and through the farthest veil,
the way spins out our destiny.

∞

January 31, 2024

Circle of Love

We offer communion to a weary world in pain.
We share our bread and wine with the troubled world again.
Welcome to the stranger who seeks to be our guest.
All God’s children are sacred; every child is blessed.
Communion offers hope when the future is dark with doubt
when women and men believe there is no way out.
Come share with us the healing power of love
where the blessed spirit is descending like a dove.

We offer communion to a weary world in pain.
We share our bread and wine with the troubled world again.
Come, neighbor, come and join our circle of love
where the love of neighbor mimics heaven above.
Love of God and neighbor is all you need to know.
Our circle of love remains wherever you may go.
We offer communion to a weary world in pain.
We share our bread and wine with the troubled world again.

NOTE: This is one of the anthems I wrote for the St. John’s Church choir. Melody: Handel: Judas Maccabaeus HWV 63 / Part 3 – 58. “See, The Conquering Hero Comes!”

∞

February 6, 2024

At the Dinner Table

The dreaded “How was your day?” question
interrupted the shoving of food
into our mouths.

What could I say?
I spent my day looking out the window
wishing I was on the playground,
but I couldn’t mention that
so I made something up
that passed inspection.

Then my sisters had to talk about
the girl things they did.
We all pretended to be interested.
Conversation dwindled to nothing.
All we heard was the shoving of food.

Dad never said a word.
He was a CPA and no one
wanted to hear about his day
of entering debits and credits on a ledger.

Mother broke the silence
with her bottomless desire for appreciation,
“Yum, this is delicious,”
drawing attention to her own cooking.

That was our cue.
“Oh, yeah, this is great!”
was the usual throwaway line.
Mother picked up on the synchronicity,
and assumed we were insincere,
but, no, the food was great.
She was a wonderful cook
and yet there was never enough praise
to make her happy.

∞

February 14, 2024

[tanka]

deep grasses choke
the broad path
we used to walk
our past is lost
in a seamless field of green

∞

February 21, 2024

Bus Poem: My Iranian Gentleman

In his soft-spoken, conspiratorial voice
he told me his name,
but it flew in one ear
and out the other
and I failed to ask again.
To this day he is: my Iranian gentleman.

His jackets were a blend of wool
and cigarette smoke.
Occasionally, he gave me a hint
of yesterday’s cocktail.
He was a determined reader of books
in English and Farsi—
books about Kissinger, the Shah,
Mohammed Mosaddeq, Iraq,
and, of course, Iran,
the headwaters of every sadness.

Saucer eyes flickered
behind tortoise-shell glasses.
Whip-thin, he looked taller than he was.
With a full head of hair
not yet entirely gray,
he was once a handsome man.
Once he was a man of importance,
a corporate lawyer in Tehran
until the students drove him out.
Now he works at the EPA.
I could not get him started
on the law or the environment.
His only public passion: Iran
and what America should do about Iran.

Three daughters in Qom,
an ex-wife somewhere,
a lost career—
the man was lonely
and wanted to go home.

I ride a different bus now.
I did not expect to miss him,
but I do.

So much fruit beneath the husk
of political grievances
was never shared—
his daughters,
his youth at university,
Persian history and culture,
adjusting to American life.

Strangers on the bus
are best kept that way.
I do not like to show my cards.
But this option for a healing friendship
slipped away to my regret.

NOTE: I wrote this in 2004 when I was working in Bethesda, MD.

∞

February 28, 2024

[haiku]

winter
the empty space
inside the cello

∞

March 5, 2024

The Hills of the Central Coast

Under a raspberry haze, row after row
of the smooth-sanded hills of the Coast Range
compress into a flat two-dimensional view.
Except for the accidental live oak here
and there, bare grassland is all I see.
Telescoped ridgelines are like art-paper cutouts
stacked on a canvas: the lowest are khaki tan;
the highest in the back are on the brown edge of black.
Only the silhouette of the topmost ridge remains
at the coming of night. Unchallenged by city lights,
a tsunami of stars washes over the world.

∞

March 13, 2024

[haiku]

the hard-breathing trout
explaining death
to a child

∞

March 20, 2024

Summer Romance

Of all my days to middle age,
you gave me less than ten.
So little time

from moon to rising moon.
A meteor flared and fell
on an August night

now thirty winters dead.
The lingering light:
for that I give you thanks.

∞

March 27, 2024

Sacralized Violence

Look down on the Great Plain of Esdraelon
from the hilltop at Nazareth. History is written in blood.
Deborah and Barak routed the kings of Canaan

at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo. The torrent Kishon
purged the Canaanites. Josiah was slain by the forces
of Pharaoh Neco at Megiddo. Saul and his sons

were decapitated after battle with the Philistines.
At Jezreel, Jehu killed Jehoram and Ahaziah
and, following that, he slaughtered all their men

and all the prophets of Baal. Then he turned
to Jezebel. He ordered his men to throw her
to her death from the palace window where she was eaten

by ravenous dogs. But Jehu wasn’t done!
He hunted down and killed all the royal princes
and had their heads displayed at his command.

Jehu invited the worshippers of Baal to come
to a ceremony, then trapped and murdered them all.
He converted the Temple of Baal into a latrine.

Thousands of ordinary men were killed or maimed
because ambitious kings invoked the deity.
The arms of the survivors were weary from all the decapitations.

Kishon is a winding river of entrapment and slaughter.
The Plain of Esdraelon is a place of tragedy and war.
The oldest scriptures record such sacralized violence
by men. To credit God is the brief of the nihilist.

∞

April 3, 2024

1066

Historians lust for great events,
the violent one percent,
so nothing happens nearly every year.

Stamford Bridge and Hastings stretched a month;
whatever happened years before
or since that raven glut?

For each combatant, hundreds more
were not involved, as Norseman, Norman, Celt
and Saxon plowed the green

or toiled the cold Atlantic,
gave birth in perishing huts or softly sang
for children alliterative lullabies.

∞

April 10, 2024

Clicking Hyperlinks

John 15:9-17

Above all, love is seen in the love
of the Father. When we click on the word Father,
it opens on the Father’s love for the Son.
When we click on the word Son,
it opens on the Son’s declaration
that he shows his love for the world
by laying down his life for his friends.
When we click on the word friends,
we learn they are friends of the Son
for as long as they follow the commands
of the Father to love one another.
Reading the unfolding message
of the Gospel of John
is an endless explosion and expansion
of hyperlinks where all words
are interconnected and self-referential,
summed in the seamless command of love.

∞

April 17, 2024

Wheel of Water

for God’s creation

Grass emerges from the winter snow.
Blades lengthen. Flowers grow.
Trees in the wind sway and sough.
The summer of life is all we know.
Autumn breezes start to blow
and all of life begins to slow.
Brown turf is snuffed in snow.
Life and death come and go.

Clouds roll in over the plain
releasing countless drops of rain.
Water flows in the seaward drain
only to rise once again.
The wheel of water is an endless chain,
an infinite loop of wax and wane.
The land upholds loss and gain,
but land itself cannot sustain.

Dust is scattered, dust restored.
Not even the land can say: Never!
For children of light who love the Lord,
the wheel of water is a passing pleasure.
We praise creation with one accord
and promise to save this tender treasure.
The children of light love the Lord
and the love of the Lord lasts forever.

NOTE: This is an anthem for the St. John’s choir. The tune is ‘Blaenwern’ written by William Penfro Rowlands.

∞

April 24, 2024

[tanka]

a pinwheeling leaf
strikes the watercourse
and floats around the bend
gone forever
do you ever think of me?

∞

May 1, 2024

The Alpha and Omega of Gratitude

Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.
Gratitude is the sum of what you sense and say.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.

Longing for things you lack is a flawed attitude.
Always be thankful for what you have today.
Feeling grateful in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.

Do not devalue the goods you currently hold.
What you have today was only hoped for yesterday.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.

Lust for things puts you in an anxious mood.
You’ll find your happiness in the persons you most enjoy.
Giving thanks in your heart is the alpha of gratitude.

The lives of those you love will increase in magnitude
as you count your blessings and walk with them in the Way.
Remembering to offer your thanks is the omega of gratitude.

∞

May 8, 2024

[tanka]

the boy who came
to be my father
kissed her cheek
what did my face look like
before that happened?

∞

May 15, 2024

Back Jackknife

for Bud Baldwin

His rigid arms are pointing down as he walks
the diver’s practiced pace toward the edge
and deftly spins around to set his feet.
The crowd grows quiet as he is on his toes,
to seek and find the pulse of limber steel.
With that assured, arms come up, palms flat
and facing down; knuckles nudge his gaze.

Silence snaps—he takes the backward leap,
exploding blind at forty-five degrees
(too high, you flop; too low and over you go),
and belly muscles pull his daggered toes
into a row of waiting fingertips
still reaching out directly from the chest.
He shuts the knife exactly at the apogee;

his body forms a tight, symmetrical V.
And just a blink beyond, he pops the knife.
The head flies back and arms in tandem follow
violently; so head, arms, and back design
a deadly blade to cut the water clean.
He nails the perfect dive. And slicing through
the bottom of the sky, he suns in blithe applause.

∞

May 22, 2024

She Loves You

The Kennedy assassination stunned the nation
like nothing else since the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We all remember what we were doing
when we heard the news.

What followed was six weeks of sorrow.
The grieving widow and her two small children.
The horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol.
The Requiem Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral.
Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.
The endless documentaries on network TV.

This went on until the end of the year.
Six weeks of sustained sadness.
Six weeks of ruefulness!
I returned to the Berkeley campus in January
to finish my first semester classes.
I passed through Sather Gate
and entered the Student Union Building
where I met a deafening wall of noise.
The Beatles were singing on the sound system,
“She loves you YEAH YEAH YEAH.”
Everyone in the building was singing along with them
as outrageously as possible,
especially loud on the YEAH YEAH YEAH.

This was our release—
we were done with the enforced solemnity.

∞

May 29, 2024

Friday Night Fights Every Night

The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports–Boxing
from Madison Square Garden
with the Look Sharp/Be Sharp theme song
and Jimmy Powers announcing
was a regular Friday night event
for Dad and me.

Dad never boxed himself,
but he loved the manly art,
the sweet science
as it was called.

I was fascinated
by the different styles of boxing:
the peek-a-boo face shield defense,
the flailing perpetual-windmill offense,
the powderpuff jab while backing away,
the lethal left cross,
the unexpected uppercut,
and the thunderous knockout right
when the victim drops his guard.

For entertainment,
the best matchups paired
the buzzsaw free swinger
against the cautious counterpuncher.
It was fun to watch.

But buzzsaw vs. counterpuncher
was no fun at all
when the parents squared off
later in the 1950s.
It was Friday Night Fights
every night of the week.

Mother was a free swinger,
always throwing the first punches,
launching one haymaker after another:
accusations of bad faith
and compromised loyalties.
Dad deflected the blows
with his annoying fact-checking,
his claims of innocence,
and by pointing out she needed help.

There was alcohol, always alcohol,
to juice the aggression.

In the olden days,
boxers used to fight
until only one was standing.
My parents fought and fought and fought
every night
and all they did
was hold each other up.

∞

June 5, 2024

Lao Tzu Advises the Board of Directors

The best manager is a gracious guest in my house.
As host, I am pleased to do my best.
We both get what we want.

The best manager is hardly recognized.
Good results come naturally
and the workers say: we did it all ourselves.

The worst manager is known too well:
from below—resentment, hatred, fear;
from above—a ruthless rising star.

Results destroy the worst manager.
Until that day, how many broken lives
will litter the shop floor?

If managers have no further desire
than to embrace and protect, the workers
will have no further desire than to enter and serve.

∞

June 12, 2024

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

I’m feeling special standing in the temple.
I’m such a sight to see!
I lift my words to you my Lord.
Behold: take a look at me!

Indeed, I have risen above the rest.
Lord, you know it’s true.
Unlike these fools, I mind your rules.
My bearing says, “Better than you.”

[Chorus]

Better than you,
better than you.
Lord knows
he’s better than you.

Who needs to ask? I tithe and fast.
My piety’s beyond compare.
It makes me proud to show the crowd
how to strike a righteous air.

My public look is by the book.
My face is pale and wan
and I raise my hands at the proper times.
I show the people how it’s done.

[Chorus]

Better than you,
better than you.
Lord knows
he’s better than you.

The temple is blessed to witness the best;
it’s all about the show.
I’ll close my hour on the temple floor
with this, a truly grateful prayer:

Thank you, Lord, that I am spared
from living a life of sin
like that tax collector over there
and all the others in this room.

[Chorus]

Better than you,
better than you.
Lord knows
he’s better than you.

∞

June 19, 2024

The Plumb Line

Amos 7:7-17

With a plumb-line, the wall of Israel was erected
with closely-fitted, well-joined stones.
These perpendicular stones were the very bones
of a great nation, but a careless people neglected
their promise to the Lord. They failed to stay the ruin.
And now the Lord is holding a line and plummet
against the wall. It is used for building up;
the line is also used for tearing down
as the demolition crew decides how much to raze.
The Lord bears long, but the Lord won’t bear forever.
The herdsman Amos foretells the coming days
of desolation for an errant nation who lost its way.
The bowing, bulging wall is put to the measure;
by the sword of justice, the edifice is swept away.

∞

June 26, 2024

[haiku]

pan-fried trout
I learn something new
about my father

∞

July 3, 2024

Owl Love

Sometimes on my morning run,
I hear the call and response
of two owls.
They move around,
never in the same place twice,
but I know who they are
because the smaller of the two
is one white note higher
on the keyboard,
and each has a pitch
always the same.
No one owl initiates the call
every time.
They take turns.
The 2-hoot call is followed
by a two-Mississippi wait
for the 2-hoot response,
then they take 15 seconds
to think about it
before the next exchange.
I imagine both
are saying the same thing:
“I am yours.
I am here for you.”

∞

July 10, 2024

The Drifters

Their lyrics sealed the promise
of August of ’59,
There goes my baby
movin’ on down the line.

I had a brown-eyed sweetheart
when I was seventeen.
Our worlds were far apart
and the Drifters fell between.

The mournful whine is silent;
the booming drum is dead;
the song has lost its power
except inside my head.

Would I be very different
from others turning gray
who marry good companions
and never rue the day

when I riffle through my files
where the dead events belong
and turn aside discretely
to touch a treasured song?

∞

July 17, 2024

On Mount Wilson

Mother said her father,
my grandfather, had a request.
He wanted to take a drive

up to Mount Wilson for a day
and he asked to take me with him.
Just me.

I thought that was strange,
but I said OK.
It was strange because it was rare

for me to have any alone time
with Grandfather
and to be honest

I was never that close to him
because I feared his temper.
On an overcast Saturday morning,

the two of us took the hour-long drive
from Lorain Road
to the Observatory grounds.

Both of us were familiar
with the telescope
and the public access area

surrounding it,
so we strolled to the edge
of the mountaintop

overlooking the Los Angeles basin.
It occurred to me
this is what he really wanted to do:

look down on the City of Los Angeles.
It was early afternoon
and by now the morning fog

was a layer of unsightly smog
two thousand feet thick
pressing against the San Gabriel Mountains

with only the higher hills of the basin
poking out into the clear air.
There was nothing to see,

but he just stood there
for the longest time,
looking to the south and talking to me.

Somehow, Grandfather found it comforting
to look to the south and talk to me.
Three months later, Grandfather was dead.

∞

July 24, 2024

You Do Not Always Have Me

John 12:1-8

The flowing lake is always filling,
but is never full.
Once there was a true sense of fullness—
of which all that now remains
is an empty print and trace.
The lake strains for completion
with waters around it—
seeking in things that are not there
the help it cannot find
in those things that are.
Instead,
there is a chronic ache
that comes from feeling incomplete.

∞

July 31, 2024

Residents Only

How is this different from the deep south?
There is no “Whites Only” sign
on the front of the Orange Grove Plunge.

That’s one difference.
The sign says,
“South Pasadena Residents Only,”

and you need an official
South Pasadena resident ID card
to show at the door.

That gets you into the pool.
How do you get the official ID card?
You have to live in the city.

How do you get to live in the city
when every residential property
in the City of South Pasadena

is restricted to persons
of the Caucasian race?
The admitting person at the front desk

of the Plunge
knows this is an all-white city.
If you are a person of color,

you can’t buy a home.
If you can’t buy a home,
you can’t get an ID card.

If you can’t get an ID card,
you won’t get into the pool.
Again,

how is this different from the deep south?
There is no “Whites Only” sign
on the front of the Plunge.

∞

NOTE: This is a memory from the year 1955 when I was 13.

August 7, 2024

[haiku]

nightfall
a cricket aria,
then the chorus

∞

August 14, 2024

Evening Land

As I stooped through the low portal of death,
I saw my human fate
emptied out into a lethe.

Life’s luggage of love and hate
was left behind the wall;
the gardener burned my once-essential freight.

I asked myself if this was all.
Intelligent souls clicked like dolphins in the wind
on either side of the wall,

discerning everything. My mind
came clean; discernment whirled ahead
as soon as I was schooled by the garrulous wind.

Now that I am dead,
I know that God did not create the soul;
the soul created God instead.

Now that I am dead, I know the soul
imagined heaven straddling earth
where God was hired to rule

irascible man and iterative death/rebirth.
I dreamed of an infinite life,
a dream encoded before my birth,

because one life was not enough.
I know that paradise was once inside my head,
now that I am dead.

NOTE: Written after reading “Evening Land” by Pär Lagerkvist.

∞

August 21, 2024

Cigars

Cigars evoke the stadium.
Whenever I catch the drift
of a great cigar,

I revisit the Coliseum
where you and I
would cheer the darkest team
In white America.
The tunnels reeked of smoke,
cigars especially;
today I miss the stench.

Cigars evoke for me
our best of times as father and son.
Whatever I meant to you
and you to me
in real life,
together we loved the game.

∞

August 28, 2024

On the Bridge

Hebrews 4:12-16

The word of the Lord is an oscillating dialog
of course-corrections from the officer of the deck to the helmsman
as the helmsman utters “Aye,” repeats the command,
and turns the helm and tiller to the new heading.

Except the word is a quiet voice within
and not a person bellowing over the main.
Brothers and sisters, it connects God with man—
a constant conversation for those who choose to listen.

NOTE: “On the Bridge” is dedicated to my son-in-law Brady, a Navy combat veteran.

∞

September 4, 2024

[tanka]

lost mojo
on the Red Line
a sweet face
no opportunity
for me

∞

September 11, 2024

Excuses

Jeremiah 1:4-10

We waste a lot of time making excuses.
The Bible is full of them. Some are good
like Moses saying, correctly, he is not eloquent.
The Lord enlists brother Aaron to speak
for him, and that is enough to do the job.
But most excuses are offered out of indolence.
For every Isaiah who says, “Here am I,
send me,” many more can’t be bothered.
Jeremiah is just a kid when the Lord calls
on him. Now the Lord is a master salesman
who knows how to handle every objection.
He has heard them all! He tells the kid
not to worry—He will provide the words
to say, and will protect Jeremiah at all times.
The Lord says to him, “Now I have put
my words in your mouth. Jeremiah: see, today
I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy
and to overthrow, to build up and to plant.”
In our era, everything is totally different
in every way except for the one dishonest
excuse that never goes out of style, “I’m busy.”

∞

September 18, 2024

Perfume

Christmas was coming.
I walked into J.J. Newberry,
the five and dime on Huntington Drive,
and approached the perfume counter.
The saleslady could see
I didn’t have a lot to work with.
She tried to fit quality to my budget
by showing me a tiny container
of a popular brand.
I was not impressed.
I pointed to a larger rectangular bottle
with very pale blue glass.
The price was four dollars.
I put my money down
and left the store
feeling good about myself.
On Christmas morning,
Mother opened my gift
of cheap perfume from the five and dime
and made a great show
of thanking me for my kindness.
“It’s the thought that counts.”

∞

September 25, 2024

[tanka]

a bee swarm of ducks
lifts off from the wetlands,
then forms a V…
what kind of no-mind
makes them do that?

∞

October 2, 2024

The Ballad of the Sheaf of Corn

1 Corinthians 15:19-26

Bombs were falling all around
in the darkest hour of the war.
Bombs were falling in London town;
death was in the air.

Within the city, there was a parish
where the people soldiered on.
The harvest festival was a time to cherish;
the work of the church goes on.

The church was decked with local fare
on a fateful Saturday morn.
The smells of autumn filled the air.
In the center—a sheaf of corn.

It wasn’t long after that
the Luftwaffe made a call.
The festive church was laid flat.
There was nothing left at all.

Rubble remained in the months ahead.
Winter turned to spring.
Green shoots rose from the dead
as summer was on the wing.

The people of the church could see in the growth
of the ruined sheaf of corn
a sign that life is stronger than death,
a sign of life reborn.

∞

October 9, 2024

My Moment in Time

Curving through a basalt cut,
the slim-waisted river brings
waters from the Two Oceans Plateau

at Jackson Lake to the faraway waters
out west, all the way to Astoria.
Cache Peak is due south.

Smooth-sanded alluvial fans
are tan with flecks of sagebrush teal.
To the north, the massive Craters of the Moon

lava fields lie between the river
and the distant mountains of central Idaho.
I stand alone in this isolated spot.

Civilization is nowhere in sight.
Little has changed since the Bonneville Flood
scoured the Portneuf River Valley

at the end of the Ice Age or even
when the first people arrived more
than ten thousand years ago.

This moment by the river—my moment
in time—is a one-of-a-kind snapshot
in the millions of years that some version

of the Snake River flowed to the Pacific.
This tiny stretch of river is not
the complete river any more than lives

exists in isolation apart from all the brothers
and sisters of the past, present, and future.
Like the island in the stream parting the waters,

it isn’t you who travels forward.
The small measure of time meant for you
travels toward you and beyond you.

∞

October 17, 2024

What Kind of God

Hebrews 2:14-18

The gods consume nectar and ambrosia on Olympus
and amuse themselves by looking down on us
dispassionately. Cool detachment is a sardonic business.
Hellenism insists we see things as they are.
For right thinking, the body and its desires are a barrier;
we are cautioned to keep the mind completely clear.

The unknown author of the book of Hebrews crystalizes
the Christology of Paul by defining a different kind
of divinity in which the pioneer of our salvation identifies
with the human condition. Jesus is wholly man
as well as divine and, thus, he thoroughly understands
what it means for us to live imperfect lives.

But there is more. It is well and good to know
the Lord has empathy, unlike the dispassionate pantheon
or the distant God of Moses. It begs the question:
what can be done about our suffering and sorrow?
The pioneer of our salvation has come to earth to show us
exactly what we need for true consolation.

NOTE: There is a second version of this poem posted on December 11, 2024. The first two stanzas are the same. The third and fourth stanzas explore the ideas of the British poet and educator Matthew Arnold. See page 68.

∞

October 23, 2024

Son of Man

John 1:1-18

The son of man comes to earth.
Like you and me, he draws a breath.
His life is much like ours: a birth,
a coming of age, and then a death.

The son of man is the suffering servant.
He shoulders sins for a world in pain.
It is his role to lift our burden.
He suffers, he dies, he comes again.

The son of man is the sovereign power
to come in glory on judgment day.
No one knows the date and hour
our floating world will pass away.

The son of man is all in one:
person, servant, magistrate.
The faithful are one with the son of man.
He governs all, both small and great.

∞

October 30, 2024

I Was the Messenger

Tuesday, October 4, 1955

Eighth grade class. Early afternoon.
None of the boys paid attention
to the teacher. The seventh game
of the World Series at Yankee Stadium
was on TV and we were sitting in class
in a cloud of unknowing.
All of us were Dodger fans.

I remember the teacher was annoyed—
boys were whispering among themselves.
She said, “What’s the problem?”
Someone said, “We want to know
who won the World Series.”

“Okay, we need a volunteer
to go to the office and find out.”

Every boy raised his hand.
I was seated in the front row because
my last name was first in the alphabet.
She picked me.
I grabbed the hall pass and took off running.

I was the messenger!

Five minutes later,
I burst through the classroom door
with the great news,
“The Dodgers won 2-0!
Dodgers are world champs!”

Every boy and some of the girls
jumped up and cheered.
After losing to the Yankees
four times since 1947,
Brooklyn finally won.

I remember taking personal credit
for this splendid turn of events,
as if it was me
who drove in the two runs
and pitched the 8-hit shutout.
Everyone was happy,
jumping up and down,
and I was the one who brought the joy.

∞

November 7, 2024

The Talk

Kathy was the first girl I knew well.
She was a tomboy.
Her family lived on a corner lot

with a long rectangular lawn
perfect for tackle football.
She could mix it up

with the best of the boys.
Her dad was the head librarian
at the L.A. County Library.

Kathy and I talked about many things
other than sports.
It was the best of friendships.

Beginning in the third grade,
I had a crush on a girl named Claudia,
but I was too shy to speak to her.

We never had a conversation.
I had a vague understanding
going into the sixth grade

there was a difference
between a Kathy and a Claudia.
Sixth grade was a time

of emerging awareness.
Some of the girls in our class
were beginning to develop

and boys were talking.
One night, I said something
that gave the parents pause.

One of them said,
“We’ll talk about that later.”
The thing is, we didn’t talk about it later.

Days and weeks passed.
Nothing.
I remembered Dad’s peculiar behavior

earlier at Lake Havasu.
He tried to explain the basics
of sex education as part of my effort

to earn a Boy Scout merit badge.
It was the first and only time
I ever saw him blush.

In my final month as a sixth grader,
with my twelfth birthday fast approaching,
Mother abruptly sat me down
and explained the facts of life.
I sat there dumbfounded
as she described the mechanics of sex,

what pregnancy was like,
and how children were born.
It was a torrent of new information

and was hard to process in one sitting,
but at least it was something
other than rumor and gossip.

∞

November 13, 2024

[tanka]

a pinwheeling leaf
strikes the watercourse
and floats around the bend
gone forever
do you ever think of me?

∞

November 22, 2024

The High Achievers

A single mom gave everything she had
to her children. She took care of their urgent needs
at all hours. She worked in a stressful job
to put food on the table and clothes on their backs.
Because of her, there was peace and harmony at home.
The day came when she suffered a stroke and died.
Nothing was the same again. The children devolved
into anger and bitterness. Selfishness ruled the day.

The team was losing. The starting point guard
was bringing the ball up the court and taking
all the shots. His teammates were standing around
watching—hoping to do something useful.
The frustrated coach benched his leading scorer
and put in an unselfish pass-first reserve
who got the whole team up and running.
Soon the team was pulling away for a win.
The leading scorer sat at the end of the bench.

A major company wanted to increase its profits
by reducing payroll, so they laid off thousands
of competent older workers. The new people
struggled to find their footing. Investors were glad
when the stock price and quarterly earnings went up.
But the company lost its edge and never recovered
because of lagging productivity and the great loss
of institutional memory that left with the severance
checks.

The high achievers make things better, not worse,
by their presence. Be honest: are you a high achiever?

∞

November 27, 2024

Now

James 4:14

Life is like a mist.
It is here for a little while
and then it vanishes.

What is your life?
What is your brother’s life?

Have you sinned against your brother?
Tell your brother you are sorry
today.

Has your brother sinned against you?
Do your best to reconcile
today.

It is easy too easy to say, Tomorrow.
When morning comes, we say again,
tomorrow.

The time will come when you and the sun
will lay your heads beneath the rim
of the hills;

In the morning, only the sun will rise.
The time for brothers to heal the hurt
is now.

What is your life?
What is your brother’s life?

Life is like a mist.
It is here for a little while
and then it vanishes.

∞

December 6, 2024

Herod the Great

Matthew 2:1-12

A popular belief was abroad in the kingdom of Judea.
Scholars concluded that seventy-six generations
had passed since the Creation, and that the next,
the seventy-seventh, would gift to Israel the Messiah
who was destined to deliver the nation from foreign rule.

A child born in Bethlehem would be the king
of the Jews—as foretold by the prophet Micah.
The Magi spoke these words to Herod the Great.
Herod was frightened, but he feigned excitement.
He said to the Magi, “Go and search diligently

for the child; and when you find him, bring me word
so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
At the time, he was terminally ill with a hideous disease.
His career was one with many bold accomplishments;
it was also one of cruelty, vengeance, and paranoia,

traits in overdrive at the time of the birth of Jesus.
Herod was thoroughly Roman in murdering each
and every rival to his rule, including his wife
and three of his sons. He murdered hundreds more
real and perceived enemies in his final years

as he assured his lasting legacy in the line of succession.
In the end, nothing happened to the child of Bethlehem.
No one mourned for Herod, a converted Jew—
the son of an Edomite father and an Arab mother—
who did the dirty work for the hated Roman state.

∞

December 11. 2024

The Body and Its Desires

for Matthew Arnold

The gods consume nectar and ambrosia on Olympus
and amuse themselves by looking down on us
dispassionately. Cool detachment is a sardonic business.
Hellenism insists we see things as they are.
For right thinking, the body and its desires are a barrier;
we are cautioned to keep the mind completely clear.

More crucial over the years than definitions of the divine
are behavioral tendencies toward either thought
or action when it comes to the body and its desires.
The tension between Hellenism and Hebraism defines
every age, and will continue, like it or not,
to shape our every outcome of action or thought.

NOTE: The first two stanzas of this poem are identical to What Kind of God? in which I posted on October 17, 2024. There are two versions of this poem. What Kind of God? is for the fourth Sunday of the Epiphany, Year A. This second version is the secular version in which I look at Matthew Arnold’s contrasting of Hebraism and Hellenism. See chapter 4 of Arnold’s “Culture and Anarchy,” published in 1869.

∞

December 19, 2024

White Privilege High School

Professional lawns, exquisite flowers, houses
out of Sunset illumined quiet wealth.
Money was mostly new, but tastefully displayed.
Professional men sipped cocktails with their wives,
quietly, of course, when business deals were done.
The tone was English. Along with Germanic cousins,
British surnames slept on English streets.
Italians, Greeks, and Jews were borderline.
A fleet of Japanese gardeners broke a sweat
in sunny yards. The trash was quietly hauled
each week by courteous men in coveralls.
After school, perspiring maids in uniforms
white or blue would queue for buses along
the Drive to ride a rumbling ashtray home.

The nights were deathly quiet. We never saw
the underclass at dark. Invisible deeds,
professionally drawn by cordial men, kept
our slumber safe, our world a safe cocoon.
Depression-haunted parents pampered us
into the sixties. The gaunt face of poverty
that fueled their fears was one we never knew.
Our class of 1960 naturally believed
in privileged wealth, believed in dread pursuits
of Dry-As-Dust at top professional schools.
Our dreams were so intense before the dawn,
before the day enhanced our consciousness.
From out of the comfortable night we faced the sun.
At long last we were forced to cope with light.

NOTE: I wrote this poem just before the 30th reunion with my class of 1960.

∞

December 26, 2024

What Does Jesus Say?

What does Jesus say about abortion?
The answer is nothing. Nothing at all.

What does Jesus say about The Gays?
The answer is nothing. Nothing at all.

We need to follow the Gospel core.
If Jesus is silent about your cause

and your cause consumes you night and day
does that not give you pause?

Read the Gospels again. Then pray
for the answer. What does Jesus say?

∞

January 2, 2025

[haiku]

rain
first sidewalk slime
for baby slugs

∞

January 8, 2025

The Ark of the Covenant

1 Kings 8

In the red morning on the umber sea,
none of the tall ships, wind or lee,
is lovelier than you, proud lady.
O, wandering bark, come home to me!

The storm is passed. Sailors rest.
The People are safe, no longer oppressed.
The Lord is calling: Be my guest.
You are the chosen. You are the blessed.

The throne of God is in this space.
The Holy of Holies is now in place.
From tent to temple, the race is over.
You are safe at last in Yahweh’s grace.

∞

January 15, 2025

[tanka]

my glass is filled
with dusk tonight
I swirl the west and think of you
and sip the stars
down to the stem

∞

January 24, 2025

Change

For a memorial service

The sacred sea defines
our summed collective soul.

Our infinite designs
are in the sea’s control.

We scarcely understand
our fundamental start.

We cannot comprehend
the sum of every part.

As the aeons come and go,
its silent flow and blend
is all we ever know;
but now we feel the wind.

A molecule of water
that skims the sacred sea
and breathes corporeal air
resembles you and me.

∞

January 29, 2025

The God Guy

Proverbs 9:10

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
How is that?
Fear is the feeling of terror
in a frightening event.
It is respect a servant shows
for the master’s vision.
It is reverence one feels
in the presence of greatness.
Those who fear the Lord
continually are aware of him.
Those who fear the Lord
have a deep reverence for him.
Those who fear the Lord
are committed to obey him.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
but the fool despises wisdom and instruction.
The fool seeks wisdom
while ignoring the Lord
and yet the Lord is the source of wisdom.
The fool has no foundation
on which to build wisdom.
Without a fear of the Lord,
the fool makes decisions
based on faulty human understanding.
The fool despises the Lord’s instruction
and cannot be told what to do.
The fool neither glorifies the Lord
nor gives him thanks.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
We are ruled by a man
who does not fear the Lord.
He arrogates himself to the Lord’s throne
in the chain of being.
We are not terrified by his power.
We do not respect him.
We do not feel reverence toward him.
He is a fool,
but because of self-referential ignorance,
he is the last to know.
His time in power will pass away.
The Lord’s path of righteousness
is the path to wisdom.

∞

February 6, 2025

Dad Tips the Waitress

For the first time in my life,
I noticed how Dad paid a restaurant bill.
I had been watching him silently
on our long trip.

We ate dinner in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The waitress cleared the table
and came back with the bill.
Dad pulled out his credit card
and examined the bill.
I asked him how much he tipped the waitress.
He turned the bill around
and moved it across the table
so I could look at it.
He showed me the individual prices
for the food and drinks,
and the grand total for everything.
He pointed to the grand total and said,
“I tip 15 percent of that amount.”

Dad could do math problems in his head.
He already knew the exact amount
of the tip, to the penny.

Also on the bill was a four percent tax
for the state of Wyoming,
and an additional two percent tax
for Teton County. He said,
“I don’t tip for state and local taxes.
The government had nothing to do with this meal.
The state and county get nothing.”

NOTE: I was a 19-year-old college sophomore at the time. Dad was a conservative Republican with an uncompromising contempt for all forms of government above the local level. The fact he was shorting the waitress did not trouble him.

∞

February 12, 2025

Dialog Between Athlete and Coach

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

A duet: Athlete (alto or tenor) and Coach (bass)

I ran my best, but failed to place.
My legs were dead the entire race.

I don’t have wind. I don’t feel strong.
Tell me: What am I doing wrong?

Unless you change, you’ll never win.
You are running races with the weight of sin.

The weight of sin drags you down.
A change of heart wins the crown.

I like the pleasures that come from sin.
Unless you change, you’ll never win.

Defeat or victory is yours to choose.
The life you live is yours to lose.

(Athlete and coach speak to the congregation in unison)

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

NOTE: These are lyrics for an anthem or a spoken presentation.

∞

February 19, 2025

[tanka]

repair work
on the dam
emptying out
the harmony
of water and mud

∞

February 25, 2025

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

Matthew 20:1-16

I was an L.A. kid. My favorite sport
was baseball. The weather was always kind
enough for a game. My friends and I
knew the batting averages and the earned run
averages of the players in the PCL,
and all the major league stats. I followed the Angels.
It was always a treat to go to Wrigley Field
with my dad and watch the Angels play ball.
I never went without some friends from school.

When a boisterous group of black kids commandeered
the seats in the coveted section down below,
a man sitting near us began to grumble
about them in a loud voice. This same man
was telling his companion at the start of the game
how pleased he was with his seats at the ballpark.
He did have great seats, but it made him angry
when poor kids sat closer to the action.

The man complained and muttered racial slurs
for two innings before my father finally
had enough. Dad was sure the commentary
was ruining the experience for me and my friends.
After one racist rant too many, my father turned
to him and said, “Hey, knock it off.
We’re trying to watch the game.” The man was caught
off guard, “Well, it isn’t fair. I paid good money
for these seats, and those kids don’t deserve
the luxury box.” Dad said, “I heard you bragging
about your seats when you came in. You said
they were perfect. What happened? Relax,”
he said gesturing toward the buoyant fans
in the stands, “enjoy the game with the rest of us.”

NOTE: This Wrigley Field was the minor league home of the old Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. The Angels were the AAA farm club of the Chicago Cubs in the National League. The Cubs played in a much larger Wrigley Field in Chicago.

∞

March 4, 2025

When Jesus Saw the Crowds

Matthew 9:36

When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt the world’s pain—
for the sick, the blind, the troubled
trapped in the grip of demons.

When Jesus saw the crowds
he felt the world’s sorrow.
He wanted to wipe away
tears from every eye.

When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt the world’s hunger.
The tired and hungry sheep
looked up, waiting to be fed.

When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt for those cut off.
He cared for the lonely leper
banished from the village square.

When Jesus saw the crowds,
he felt the world’s bewilderment.
The people, longing for God,
were given rules instead.

The people were harassed and helpless
like sheep without a shepherd.
When Jesus saw the crowds,
he was moved by true compassion.

The world has greatly changed
since Jesus saw the crowds.
But we still have pain and sorrow;
we still have hunger and loneliness;

we still have bewilderment.
The Gospel remains the same.
He is moved by true compassion
for the crowds of the dispossessed.

∞

March 12, 2025

Evening, Midnight, Cockcrow, Dawn

Mark 13:35-36

Watchman, wake. Awake and rise!
You must be ready when the master comes.
Don’t let him catch you by surprise

in the evening,
at midnight,
at cockcrow
or at dawn.

Watchman: this charge is yours to keep.
The master comes in a sudden rush.
Don’t let him find you sound asleep

in the evening,
at midnight,
at cockcrow
or at dawn.

Watchman, wake. Open your eyes!
You cannot know the urgent hour,
the hour when the master of the house arrives

in the evening,
at midnight,
at cockcrow
or at dawn.

∞

March 18, 2025

Rejection

The same stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.

~Psalm 118

∞

March 26, 2025

Our Love

Love instantiates. Twain souls
set out: governed by gravity
sliding scraping muscling through

perilous rapids churning white
bending through forests and fields
beneath the bridges of twelve towns

gaining girth and losing speed
adding a tinge of toxic sludge
to a whispering flood a mile wide.

From glacial melt to delta salt,
this is who we are.

∞

April 2, 2025

[haiku]

taps…
the widow folds her life
and puts it away

∞

April 9, 2925

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

The kingdom of God began
with a solitary man.

The solitary man
was a tiny seed of one.

Growth began the hour
Jesus revealed his power.

The kingdom of God grew
when Jesus added two.

The kingdom grew some more
when followers numbered four.

There were twelve until the day
a follower fell away.

A handful grew into thousands
and thousands into millions.

Nothing on this earth
is fully formed at birth.

From a tiny seed of one
a mighty tree was born.

We rose from the garden sod:
behold the kingdom of God.

∞

April 16, 2025

Resilience

Carey, Idaho

The people come and go,
but Carey is used to the churn.
Time is a daunting flow.

Pioneers long ago
let the church run the town.
The people come and go.

Roads and railroads come slow,
and water is a grave concern.
The town withstands the flow.

Some children come to know
they need to leave to learn.
The people come and go.

Others choose to go
on missions and then return.
The town weathers the flow.

Carey continues to grow.
The seasons take their turn
while the people come and go.
The town welcomes the flow.

∞

April 23, 2025

Childhood Memories

∞

April 30, 2025

This is a Test

Matthew 4:1-11

The verbs to tempt and to test are not the same.
God did not tempt Abraham to sacrifice his one
and only child, Isaac. For it is written,
“After these things God tested Abraham.”
The devil tempted Jesus to turn stones
into bread to prove he is the son of God.
The devil tempted Jesus to leap from the façade
of the temple and force the angels to cushion his bones.
The devil tempted Jesus with his biggest and best
offer: the splendor of earthly kingdoms if he,
in turn, would worship him; Jesus refused.
Temptations bedevil us every hour of every day
as befits our nature, but do not be confused
when the Lord requires your service: This is a test.

∞

May 7, 2025

Jap

I was born in 1942.
One of the first words I learned
as a small child
was the word Jap.
I heard it ten thousand times
before my fourth birthday,
and when I learned to read
it was in the L.A. Times
every day.
Every day.

∞

May 14, 2025

[tanka]

like a stuttering newsreel
from the 40s,
the same events and the same emotions
of joy and disappointment
roll across my mind

∞

May 21, 2025

Images of Navy Housing

Jacksonville, Florida

heat and high humidity
paint peeling from the ceiling
falling to the floor
Mother and the neighbors
holding their sides laughing

Chula Vista, California

heavy downpour
looking out
a second-story window
at a child playing with a tire
in the mud

∞

May 28, 2025

[haiku]

end of an affair
sprinklers go off on schedule
in the hard rain

∞

June 4, 2025

A Moment of Kindness

Matthew 27:11-54

It was a long time ago,
when I was young and in my prime.
I was entering the city for Passover. Lo and behold,

prisoners were leaving the city at the same time
for their executions. One was Jesus.
He was weak from scourging as he struggled to climb

to the place Golgotha while carrying the cross.
Seeing that I was a Jew,
a Roman soldier tapped me aside the face

with the flat of his sword, and said, “You.”
Pressed into lethal service for the Roman
state, I knew what I had to do.

“Brother, let me lift your burden,”
I said, as I hoisted the wood shoulder high.
Together, we walked the hill to his certain

death. I wonder why
happenstance put me in that time and space.
Why me? Of all the events under the sky,

why I was plucked to show some grace?
I was in the right place at the right time.
A moment of kindness can last a lifetime.

∞

June 11, 2025

Cloud Formations

On simmering summer afternoons,
Mother and I stretched out
on the backyard grass
at our tiny wartime tract house
on Brighton Street
close to the Lockheed plant
and we tried to identify objects
in the clouds.
Those were the years
before smog commandeered the skies
over the L.A. basin.
Cumulus clouds were commonplace.

Mother was good at this.
She would spot some formation
in the clouds,
point it out to me,
and then tell a story.
I marveled at the stories,
but most of the time
I could not see what she saw
and that was a common theme
of our sixty-two years together:
we often did not agree
on what we were looking at,
but she could tell a story
like no one else.

∞

June 18, 2025

[haiku]

in my dream,
mother scolds a waitress
the coldest hour of the night

∞

June 25, 2025

Thomas the Twin

John 20:19-31

Faith is trust in the things you cannot see.
Love is service to the least who are plain to see.

Faith without love is life without compassion.
Love without faith is life without a mission.

You honor the Lord by giving your best to others.
Do all you can to help your sisters and brothers.

Walk by confident faith, not by sight.
Trust the Lord to bring you into the light.

Faith and love inspire both head and heart.
This is how the saints are set apart.

∞

July 2, 2025

Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco

We had a large brown radio
in the living room
when we lived on Brighton Street
in Burbank.
Mother and Dad listened
to their shows on Sunday afternoon
while I played with a toy
or worked a puzzle book
on the living room rug.

They laughed at the jokes
on the Jack Benny show
sponsored by Lucky Strike,
and because of their laughter,
I started to pay attention.
I kept hearing the letters
LS/MFT, and I asked Dad
what that meant.
Both Mother and Dad answered together
with a hearty laugh,
“Lord, save me from Truman.”

∞

July 9, 2025

Dorm Room Bull Session

Romans 6:1-11

“Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more,”
said Paul to his roommate, the sophomore philosophy
major
who offered this devil’s-advocate wager.
“I propose to you: the more we sin, the more

God’s grace shall abound. Thus, we should sin
with gladness so grace abounds all the more.
By sinning more, we are doing God a favor
since he loves granting grace to those who sin.”

Paul frowned and countered the jest with commonsense.
“Once we die to sin, why would we stay
in that condition? Why would the emancipated slave
stay with an abusive master? Does that make sense?

If you were released from prison, would you go back
to your cell or would you choose to live free?
The question answers itself. If you won the lottery,
would you continue to live in an old shack?”

Paul’s interlocutor loved to bedevil and astound,
especially in a deep discussion of sin and grace.
He said, “I like to see you red in the face.”
Paul was laughing as they wandered out for a round.

∞

July 16, 2025

Bus Poem: Hard Times

∞

July 23, 2025

Snow Day in L.A.

January 10, 1949

The Starbucks-green fronds
of our stout pineapple palm tree
bent toward the ground
under the weight
of two inches of snow.
Opposing choirs
of leafless deciduous trees
on the west and east sides
of La France Avenue
were brown and white
stained-glass windows
one after another
in the slant snow.
The black asphalt street
still empty of tracks
from the Monday morning commute
had a thick white covering.

How did I react
as a sober seven-year old
waking up to snow
for the first time in my life?
I raced out the front door
and ran up and down the street
in my bare feet and pajamas
screaming like a berserker,
and then started to roll
the foundation of a snowman
on our front lawn
until my parents
put me on a leash
and dragged me back to sanity.

∞

July 30, 2025

Den Mother

She loved a captive audience
of small children,
especially boys.
Given her authoritarian bent,
serving as a Den Mother
of my Cub Scout unit
was a perfect opportunity
to show off her knowledge
without contradiction
to a clutch of 8-year olds
sitting quietly
in a slack-jawed semicircle.

I was taken aback.
The other boys were smitten
by her presentation,
and if you did not know better
you might be thinking
she was flirting with them.
“I really like your mom,”
was a comment I heard
more than once.

∞

August 6, 2025

Embraced

Psalm 139

Front and back, up and down,
side to side—embraced in a warm wave,
I am floating forward from cradle to grave.
God is present in all six directions.

∞

August 13, 2025

[tanka]

double-clicking
the Events folder
our first kiss
remembering your touch,
the tilt of your face

∞

August 20, 2025

Murph, the Butcher

One of the Ms at the M&M Market
on Huntington Drive
in the early 1950s
was Murph, the butcher.
Dad was a meat and potatoes
kind of guy,
and Mother was an excellent cook
of beef, pork and lamb.
It helps to have
the best cuts of meat
and Mother was good
at getting that
by flirting with Murph
on her trips to the M&M.
I saw her in action
many times, and Murph,
bless his heart,
knew he was being played
by a master manipulator.
Mother would give me a wink
as if to say, See how it’s done?
The result was always the same,
and Dad never complained
about his servings at suppertime

∞

August 27, 2025

Sally, Barb, and Moses

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Sally and Barb died a good death.
It has been a hollowed year since the winter last
that our friends of St. John’s Church passed.
Families were there for one last breath.

These women of faith had the time and the grit
to make their peace with God, settle their affairs,
mend old sorrows, shed wholesome tears,
and accept that certain hopes won’t be met.

It is argued the prophet Moses died
a good death because he was given the time
to pass the torch to Joshua; but when he climbed
to the top of Nebo and saw the promised land

laid out before him and realized he would not
be alive to kiss the soil, Moses wept.
We all have expectations. Why was Moses kept
from this? Did forty years come to naught?

What does it mean to die a good death?
According to legend, Moses was buried by God
and no one knows for sure where he is laid.
God was there for one last breath.

∞

September 3, 2025

Oneonta Hills

Dad was a ham radio hobbyist
earning his first license at 14.
It was a happy time for me

when Dad drove up
the winding dirt road
into the Oneonta Hills

in his ’51 Ford V8
where he did his radio checks
from the setup in the car:

“Calling CQ, calling CQ.
This is W6ECM calling CQ.”
Two or three hams, always men,

responded each time and Dad
and these voices in the night
compared notes about their gear.

Dad asked where they were calling from,
making notes in his log,
and there would be a sharing

of new technical developments.
All the technical stuff
was over my head,

but I was blown away
by my Dad’s radio voice,
so smooth and loud and confident

unlike his voice at home
or in public settings.
This was the love of his life.

∞

September 10, 2025

Snoqualmie Valley

Atop Rattlesnake Ridge:
I hear the faint rumblings
of the eighteen wheelers
going through the gears.

The thin meander of Moon Valley Road:
tiny cars nudge along
the edge of the known world.

The Valley of the Moon:
Holstein dots populate
the rumpled green of dairy farms.

Jade foothills in the cloud shadows:
like a logger’s rough stubble,
third-growth Douglas fir
straddles two counties.

The North Cascades:
the bruise-purple ridge rises
to a sky of cornflower blue.

∞

September 17, 2025

Disneyland

We missed the opening day,
but we were there two weeks later.
It was the most wonderful day
of our lives to that point.
Nothing we ever saw
came close to Disneyland!

At the end of our long day,
we pulled out of the parking lot
and entered the old Highway 101.
As we drove by the park one more time,
Mother pointed to the Matterhorn and said,
“I wonder how they keep the snow from melting.”

∞

September 24, 2025

Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth?

John 1:43-51

The students at Cana High School looked
askance at their boondocks rival, Nazareth High.
Cana was college prep all the way;
the Nazarenes studied the trades as well as books.
Cana derided the neighbors, and it was no surprise
they took to fleering and flaunting, deploying the epithet,
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
As it happened, Nazareth High won a coveted prize
as the best secondary school in the entire state
because it uplifted every student in town
and not just the affluent college bound.
How painful it was for Cana to bend the knee
to Nazareth! The lesson learned is do not denigrate
ignorantly, but follow the counsel, “Come and see.”

∞

October 1, 2025

Dad Has a Mistress

They got into it every night.
I was thirteen and befuddled about
girlfriend problems of my own.
This was my first careful look
at an unhappy marriage.
They were loud enough
for the whole family to hear,
and Mother,
already in her cups at sundown,
was always the instigator
accusing Dad of having an affair
though not with body and bone.
It was his obsession, she said,
with the damned ham radio
where he slipped away
to his radio room whenever he could.

It was safe to sit quietly
with a small tumbler of Jim Beam
in easy reach,
holding a thin Tiparillo cigar
in his left hand
and with his right send and receive
Morse code at 20 words per minute
back and forth
to an impersonal outside world
as far away as Balochistan
and Easter Island.
Such an interesting universe!

He willfully walled off
his own wife and children
for comfort and solace.
Being a ham gave him pleasure
from childhood to his middle years.
He was good at it
and obviously
preferred to spend his time
tapping the code key
than to suffer beyond the minimum
the scorn of a jealous termagant.

∞

October 8, 2025

Appointment with the Psychiatrist

It was over almost before it began.
I climbed into the back seat of Dad’s car,
and the three of us drove

to an office building
on the north side of Huntington Drive
where I was introduced to a psychiatrist.

He was a man in a dark suit
with thinning hair
about the same age as my parents.

As you might expect,
Mother kicked off the meeting
with words to the effect

that I was a truculent teenager
and she was wondering if he could help.
The man turned his impassive eyes to me.

In his most non-judgmental voice,
he asked me a series of questions.
We had a quiet conversation

for about twenty-five minutes.
The parents sat in silence on the couch.
Then he asked me to take a seat

in the lobby.
I flipped magazine pages,
waiting for whatever happens next.

After a half hour,
Mother, Dad, and the psychiatrist
emerged from the office.

They shook hands and said good-bye.
We got back into Dad’s car and drove home.
No one said a word in the car.

There was no follow-up
to the counseling session.
That was it.

∞

October 15, 2025

Simon, Andrew, James and John

Mark 1:14-20

Time is fulfilled; prepare for the dawn.
The Lord enlists his first followers—
Simon, Andrew, James and John.

The law and the prophets have reached an end
as John the Baptist is handed over.
Time is fulfilled; behold the dawn.

The first followers are ordinary men,
unlettered fishermen—two sets of brothers:
Simon and Andrew, and James and John.

The good news is now proclaimed
to a world weary of jot and tittle.
Time is fulfilled; welcome the dawn

as the hinge of history is about to turn.
The suffering servant is in the middle
as Simon, Andrew, James and John

are stunned by the gravity of the Lord’s command,
and drop everything to be his followers.
Time is fulfilled; embrace the dawn
with Simon, Andrew, James and John.

∞

October 22, 2025

[tanka]

on the signal bridge,
I caught myself
gawking at the full moon over Hue
for a moment
I forgot men were dying

∞

October 29, 2025

In the Ring

From the seventh grade until I left for Idaho,
I never heard him raise his voice—not once!

She lacked finesse; aggression was all she knew.
When she attacked, he tracked rhetorical flaws.

His counter-punching style would fake retreat,
if not defeat. He set such subtle traps.

She flailed away until her strength was sapped,
until she dropped her guard and showed the chin.

With viper quickness, he decked her with a mot
and hid a smirk behind Jim Beam on ice.

Then bouncing back, she poured another drink,
each drink another round, each fight a draw.

∞

November 5, 2025

[haiku]

night winds
ruffle the lake
moon shards

∞

November 12, 2025

Money Man

Finance was Dad’s superpower.
He earned all the money in the family
and he was the gatekeeper.
All of us had to justify
a withdrawal from Dad’s Bank.

Dad was a misogynist.
It was easy for me as a boy to win him over,
but he had little interest in
and less understanding of
girls and their needs.
For my sisters,
every request for money became
a quiet-voice humiliation ritual.
He would say, “The only time you come to me
is when you ask for money.”

Mother said it’s a man’s job
to make all the money decisions in the family
and women and girls were not to question him.
But they had disputes all the time!
Mother was a free spender of Dad’s money.
She would spend;
he would complain;
she would question why he was such a cheapskate.

Dad was a money man.
For all his good qualities,
he was greedy in getting money
and stingy in giving it away.

∞

November 19, 2025

Don’t Worry About Tomorrow

Ephesians 2:1-10

Look at the birds of the air
who neither sow nor reap
nor gather goods into barns.
Birds don’t worry at all.
The Lord provides their food.
Don’t worry about tomorrow.

Look at the lilies of the field
who neither toil nor spin.
They dress in costly attire
more elegant than that of a king.
The Lord provides their clothes.
Don’t worry about tomorrow.

Birds give glory in song;
flowers give glory in beauty;
If you will strive for righteousness
and give to God the glory,
The Lord will always provide.
Don’t worry about tomorrow.

∞

November 26, 2025

Last Laugh

Your lips pulled back to bare your crooked teeth
and laughter soared, an honest belly laugh.

I saw you grip your sides from quivering joy
and soon your eyes were tearful happy slits,
and you, my father, were such a mess from laughing!

You let me see this mess when I was fifteen,
but after that you never laughed again.
Never again an honest belly laugh.

∞

December 3, 2025

Adults Sitting Around Drinking

Friends and relatives joined us
for barbeque on our patio.
The weather was mild
and some of the kids
were still in the pool.
I was not in a good mood.

It was just after I broke up
with my first serious girlfriend.
I was brooding in the shadows
quietly observing the adults
sitting in their folding chairs
with drinks in hand.

This was not a beer and wine crowd.
The martini was Mother’s favorite
and, also, it was the favorite
with a plurality of the gathering,
but there were mixed drinks
with gin, vodka, and bourbon.

Dad was drinking Jim Beam
with ice and a splash of water.
There was a large bottle of Seagram’s 7
blended whiskey on the kitchen counter.
There was plenty of alcohol
and my parents made sure

everyone had a full glass
at all times.
I was used to seeing adults
sitting around drinking,
but for the first time in my life
I asked the question:

What is the point of all this drinking?
I knew the standard explanation—
when people work hard,
they need to relax
at the end of the week
and alcohol helps them do that.

But in that moment, it occurred to me
my parents and their friends
might be seeking a kind of numbness
to life itself,
and I failed to understand
how that made them feel

better about themselves.
Meanwhile, I kept thinking
about my own failed love life.
Like most fifteen-year-old boys,
I assumed marriage would be wonderful
because you could have sex every night.

But when I looked at Dad and Mother
and the other couples
on our brick patio,
it seemed that train left the station
many years ago
and was no longer a factor at all.

If it wasn’t a factor,
why were some of the couples
at the barbeque still happy together
when others, like my parents,
were determined to blur their expectations
in a fog of alcohol?

∞

December 10, 2025

Norman and Virginia

They were drinking companions,
Mary and Bud and the Serigstads.
Norman could hold his liquor.

Virginia was a three-martini drunk.
They both had Hollywood good looks.
Norman was a Douglas engineer

with a quiet, poised demeanor,
always handsome and charming.
Virginia was knock-out beautiful.

She was the life of every party—
not quite La Dolce Vita,
but close,

and her best pal Mary
did her best to keep up.
Also like Mother,

Virginia had a horrible temper
when she was drunk.
I saw her go off on Norman once

in front of everyone.
He smiled as if it was nothing.
He was the Norwegian coastline

shrugging off another North Sea storm.
This too will pass;
it always does.

They took a Lurline cruise to Hawaii,
the four of them,
and it was time for us kids

to sit through a slide presentation
about their trip.
Dad loaded up the projector

with 40 slides or more.
It was interesting at first,
but soon enough it was repetitive,
especially seeing the foursome
holding up their drinks
to the camera.

More of the Hawaiian landscape
and less of the partying, please.
It was about this time I learned

the Serigstads were my godparents.
I was baptized when I was five
and they were there,

but that was the last time
the three of us had anything to do
with religion.

I had no idea.
“You’re kidding.
Norman and Virginia are my godparents?”

∞

December 17, 2025

The Anthropologist

We broke up in the spring
and could not put it back together again
in the summer.

I did not have a steady girl
for the next four years.
Suddenly, I was an old soul

looking for a love built to last.
I did not know the word at the time,
but I began to play anthropologist,

studying my parents
and their married friends
to see what worked

and what did not.
Dad and Mother had their problems
to be sure,

and I was curious to learn
what went wrong
from 1939 to 1958.

One thing I knew for certain:
they were faking it
when they went out in public.

Given my cynicism,
I looked hard at their friends
like Tom and Helen,

Paul and Joan,
Norman and Virginia,
and Uncle John and Aunt Margie.

All these couples hung together
until the end.
But to my anthropologist eye,

only one couple—John and Margie—
was comfortable together
one hundred percent of the time.

∞

December 24, 2025

[haiku]

The waterfall slows
to icy silence…
no family ever comes

∞

December 31, 2025

The Parable of the Growing Seed

The kingdom of God is like a seed
the farmer pushes into the soil.
Seed and soil produce themselves,
but growth quickens through the farmer’s toil.

After the planting, the farmer waits.
He sleeps and rises night and day.
The seed will grow; he knows not how.
He watches and waits for the wakening day.

First the stalk, and then the head,
and then the full grain at the top.
When the grain is full, the farmer goes
in with his sickle to harvest the crop.

Seed and soil produce themselves.
The patient farmer may water and weed
for myriad days without a sign.
It is just this way when you plant the Word.

Planting the Word is never enough.
You cannot plant and walk away.
While the Word and Faith produce themselves,
our work goes on to the wakening day.

Be patient, be strong: Do not lose heart.
Wait for the rains, early and late.
We are God’s servants, working together.
Let us rejoice on the harvest date.

∞

January 7, 2026

Oberlin College

She had her pick
of several top-rated schools.
My sister decided Oberlin College
was the best fit for her.

During the summer,
she received a letter
from Oberlin’s Dean of Women
asking her if she would “accept”
a Negro girl as a roommate.
The letter said the parents
would also have to accept
the arrangement.

Well, why not? She was ready
to explore an exciting new world
beyond our white-bread community
in suburban Los Angeles.

She took the Dean’s letter
and showed it to the parents.
Mother said, “Absolutely not!”
A week-long battle ensued
that put pro wrestling to shame.

Sister:
It’s my life.
I should make my own decisions.
Having a Negro roommate
would expose me to another world—
a world of inclusion,
not a world of separation
based on race, class,
the haves and the have-nots.

Mother:
No, it is not your life.
As the letter makes clear,
your parents must agree,
and we don’t.
Having a Negro roommate
would ruin your life at Oberlin
because no one would want
to associate with you.

I jumped into the conversation
and reminded my mother
how passionate she was about the plight
of the Little Rock Nine
in September of the previous year.
Stunned, she got into my grill
and told me to shut up.
This wasn’t my business.
I raised my voice: “You are such a hypocrite.”

Mother turned to my sister
and accused her of corrupting me.
We laughed.

Without the parents’ permission,
the project failed,
and my sister never knew for sure
which Negro girl
was offered up for acceptance.

∞

January 14, 2026

Spring

2 Samuel 11:1-15

In the spring of the year,
kings go out to battle.
Summers are too hot
and no one likes to fight
in the ice and rain.
Good weather
is the best time for killing
don’t you agree?

∞

January 21, 2026

High Jumper

The changing years extend, but still I shine
above the crossbar straddling six foot three
at the quarter finals in May of ’59.

My father’s grainy photo caught the victory;
I share with him the moment’s immutability.
Time cannot erase the singular joy

of jumping—the illusory release from gravity.
I keep the gold and the aura of a perfect day,
but changing years took the boy away.

∞

January 28, 2026

Wisdom

Ask what I should give you. As the king,
Solomon could have asked for anything—

wealth, fame, palatial splendors,
death to all the royal pretenders.

He looked beyond the trappings of court,
and asked instead for a listening heart

and an understanding mind. For the people of Israel,
he wanted to know good from evil.

The Lord puts this question to everyone.
When queried, how will you respond?

∞

February 4, 2026

I Want to Be Like That Guy

There were times when I said,
I want to be like that guy.
When I was a child,
athletes were in the frame.
I admired Mickey Mantle
and taught myself to be a switch hitter.
I was equally inept
from both sides of the plate.
I admired Frank Gifford,
a two-way star at USC,
but football dreams died
in the ninth grade
when I tipped the scales
at one hundred five pounds.

I admired Mr. Bradford,
my twelfth-grade history teacher.
We called him General Jack
for his stories of World War II
when he personally led the Allies
across the continent of Europe!
Would teaching history
be the Way for me?

It was different when I looked at Uncle John.
He was in the frame,
but not for his vocation.
John was a construction worker
and I was all thumbs with tools.
He was a practical man.
I was a dreamer,
destined, as it happened, to be a writer.

He helped to build the house
on Nichols Canyon Road
when he was seventeen
and from that apprenticeship
John found his calling—
to spend his life in construction.

And that is what he did
for five years until
Uncle Sam said, “I Want You,”
for service in the Army.
He returned to the construction business
at war’s end and never left.

John was happy in his work
and because of that
never went to college.
But to be a contractor in California
required a mastery
of a bewildering array of tests
and recertifications
for home construction,
home remodeling,
construction of professional buildings
and parking structures;
and for brickwork,
concrete,
steel work,
and masonry.
It was like earning
a B.S. degree in construction.

John seemed to be genuinely content
with his personal life.
That’s what caught my eye
more than anything.
No one knows what really goes on
behind the walls of someone’s home,
but over a period of many years
I could see
there was nothing fake about it.

I was around him a lot when I was young.
There was never a moment
when he did something
or said something
that made me think, “That’s not right.”
And, yes, there were moments
when I made a mental note:
I want to be like that guy.

∞

February 11, 2026

Arise, My Love

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Let’s be honest. The moon does not think
of itself as an agent of love, nor the tower
a phallus. They are what they are and nothing more.
The lovers in the Song of Songs are not actors
in allegories of Israel and God or Christ and the church
in the mind of the randy poet who wrote the lines.
Theologians of temple and church ignore signs
so obvious: the absolute joy of monogamous sex.

∞

February 18, 2026

House Rules for Gender

Fathers raise their sons;
mothers raise their daughters.
Fathers provide for the family;
mothers take care of the home.

Mentoring daughters was not his job.
I don’t know how else to say it.
That was women’s work.
Compared to me,
my sisters were overlooked
except at family functions.

Sadly, for my sisters,
Mother was a harsh mentor,
even jealous at times.
If one of them
was in the center ring too long,
Mother made a point
to knock her down a peg.

These were the house rules
from when the oldest was born
until the youngest was married.

From four tightly wrapped chrysalises,
butterflies flew away happy to be free.

∞

February 25, 2026

Chapel of the Transfiguration

The first thing I saw was the constellation of houseflies
on the Chapel of the Transfiguration window blocking the
grandeur
of the Cathedral Group with Grand Teton in the center.
The fly was the filthiest of creatures to my fastidious eye.
I was offended at first: the sacred was marred by the
profane.
So I stepped outside the log church to see
the majesty of the mountains beneath the blue canopy
without the pious interference of human hands.

That was sixty-two years ago. I’ve had a rethink.
God is not captured, domesticated, and confined
to churches, but is alive in every created thing.
Without a nature-based spirituality, the word profane
means outside the temple. Are we fish looking for water?
And why do we argue about who owns the water.

∞

March 4, 2026

Stress

Dad is hauled away
to Huntington Hospital
in a blue and white meat wagon.
Everything is up in the air
with the sole breadwinner
out of action.

Daughter’s wedding is coming soon.
Things are shaky at the office
for reasons he won’t talk about.
There are screaming matches at home.
The younger girls duck and cover.

Dad is forty-five.
The marriage is on the rocks
by all appearances
and the happy family of six
is anything but.
Emphysema waits stage left
thanks to 30 years of smoking.
Dad is drinking early and often.

The official story
is a possible heart attack,
but it isn’t.

∞

March 11, 2026

He Called a Little Child

Mark 9:30-37

When little children play their games,
they mix the brown, the black, and the white.
Foreign accents and alien speech
are muted by squeals of pure delight.

The little children aren’t wise enough
to tell the girls apart from boys.
They greet their playmates with open hearts.
Without guile, they share their toys.

The little children do not compete.
In time, they’ll learn to lose and win.
Knowing nothing of money and fame,
they look to parents for everything.

As a little child depends on parents,
we must be humble and trust in God.
Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
The very opposite of the way of the world!

Jesus called a little child.
He set the child among the crowd.
How can a person enter the kingdom?
You must unlearn the way of the proud.

Give up your claims to power and status.
Become a child once again.
Unless you change and be like children,
you cannot gain the kingdom of heaven.

∞

March 18, 2026

Dad Explains Supply and Demand

The parents were at services
on Christmas Eve where I read
a Bible passage from Luke.

On the afternoon of Christmas day,
Dad asked me why I wanted to go
into the ministry.

Wow, I thought.
He actually wants to talk about it.
“I’m considering it.

Nothing is decided.
I may end up teaching high school history.
I have a long way to go.”

This kicked off a gentlemen’s debate
about the comparative importance
of different professions.

“Either way, are you prepared
to live a life of poverty?”
There was a hint of a smile.

“I’ll be paid enough to get by.”
“Yes,” he said, “but I assume you will have
a wife and children to support.

What about them?”
I tried to score a debating point.
“I know in some countries

teachers get more respect
and are paid better than in America.
Maybe we should do that here.”

“Assuming you go into teaching,
who is going to subsidize your salary?
The government?

That’s socialism—we don’t do that here.
People are paid what they are worth.”
I said, “Teachers do a lot of good
for a lot of people.
You make it sound like being a businessman
is the highest form of service.

You are equating wealth with value.”
Instead of taking umbrage,
he chuckled at my naiveté.

“We live in a capitalistic society.
Accountants are important.
Why should people work hard to acquire wealth

only to pay the highest tax rates?
My job is to help my clients keep
as much of their earnings as they can.”

He turned the discussion back
to the ministry.
“Speaking as your father,

I don’t want to see you spend your life
in a low-wage profession.”
“It’s not as bad as you say,

but I agree with you.
I could spend four years of college
and three years of grad school

studying something else
and make more money.”
He drove his point home.

“It’s a matter of supply and demand.
The public is willing pay more
for business services

than for the service
by a Protestant minister.
Each one of us is selling something.

If there was more demand
for preaching and church work,
the public would pay more for it.”

∞

March 25, 2026

The Ballad of Constituency Service

Mark 10:35-45

Joshua declared his run for office.
He hired James and John
to craft a compelling media message
and manage a clean campaign.

James and John planned their game
to star on Joshua’s team,
to get themselves rank and fame
by building Joshua’s dream.

On the day the boss won election,
the two hatched a scheme.
Now was the time to raise the option:
to manage the political team

and stand with him on his left and right.
Joshua had a hunch
they really wanted the media lights
and the three-martini lunch.

Joshua said: “I have plans for you.
I cannot grant your ask.
Instead,” he said, “I am giving you
the most important task.

Constituency service is the top of the list
of all Congressional affairs
and you are the best equipped to assist
those with urgent cares.”

James and John earned preferment—
they got what they deserved.
Redemption comes from being a servant
and not from being served.

∞

April 1, 2026

Love at First Sight

My parents walked through the front door
of the sprawling rambler on Oxford Road
and my mother immediately saw
myriad ways of spending my Dad’s money
on interior decorating,
and the realtor helped her out
by making her own expensive suggestions,
but Dad didn’t really mind
because he knew he could afford it
and he enjoyed the pose that money worries
were for the little people.

After a half hour of wasting his time
as the women co-decorated
the insignificant rooms,
they finally came to the opposite end
of the house, the rec room,
and for Dad it was love at first sight.
This was the den of his dreams
with a large corner desk
for his ham radio equipment,
his beloved Morse code key,
and his conversation logs.
There was ample space on the wall
for his large Mercator map of the world
with multicolored, rounded-head push pins
showing where his radio contacts lived.
Now add his own big-boss chair
and the scene was perfect.

Until this moment, Dad was silent,
and the women assumed he was bored.
The realtor was in mid-sentence,
describing all the possibilities
of the room having nothing to do
with an old-fashioned radio shack
when Dad opened his mouth
and announced, “We’ll take the house.”

∞

April 8, 2026

Dad’s Politics

Dad was a Herbert Hoover Republican.
Not the Hoover who rode the wave
of the Coolidge economy for a year and a half,
but the Hoover who spent
the last 30 years of his life
opposed to the New Deal.

For all his intellect,
Dad viewed Big Government
through the prism of accountancy.

He despised the Navy.
Why?
Because government accounting principles
differed from what he learned
as a CPA in California.

He hated the ever-changing tax code.
Why?
Because, he said, tax laws were written
by lawyers who knew nothing about accounting.
And yet he made a good living
decoding the code for his clients.

He preferred the unfettered capitalism
of the distant past, before the New Deal.

Dad was a conservative Republican
on race, gender, social change,
and government oversight.

He was the autocrat of the dinner table
calmly spinning out his harsh political views
for the captive audience.
We listened with half-interest,
even when he tried to be provocative.

As adults, each Baldwin child rejected
his love for the Hooverian hellscape.

∞

April 15, 2026

Imago Dei

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

When the kinsman of Boaz learned he had to take
Naomi’s daughter-in-law Ruth as part
of the deal for the land once belonging to Elimelech,
he balked. “I will have nothing to do with her,”
he hissed with scorn. Boaz asked, “Why?”
“Moabites do not belong in Judah.”
Boaz was not displeased to hear these words.
He desired the land and Ruth for himself.

But Boaz braced his kinsman in front of the elders
with a quote from scripture: “God created mankind
in his own image; male and female he created them.
Who are you to say a woman of Moab
is different from you and me? Unlike the animals,
each person on earth resembles God,
with reason and moral choices. You cannot claim
to love God and despise a child of God.”

∞

April 22, 2026

The Recovering Racist

Cocooned wholly in whiteness
from infancy through high school,
racist assertions passed on to me
by my parents
settled in for a lifetime
never to be extinguished.
They cannot be un-remembered
no matter how hard I try,
but they can be heated
in the crucible of reason
so the impurities of prejudice
roll away like slag
and tempered truth remains.
I am a recovering racist,
but sad to say,
I will never be recovered.

∞

April 29, 2026

The Surgeon General’s Report

I asked Dad if he was ready to quit.
He was 48 and had been smoking
since age 16,
two-thirds of his life.

It wasn’t long before Mother gave it up,
but for Dad, it was hard to admit
he was owned by an addiction.

Using his critical thinking skills
and motivated reasoning,
he looked for and found
inconclusive recommendations.

The report hedged on nicotine addiction.
The writers of the report
(all smokers themselves)
called it habituation—
a habit that can be broken
by strength of will
and that was Dad’s fallback plan.
No one had more strength of will than he
or so he thought.

Habituation was corrected
to addiction in 1989,
four years after he died of emphysema.

∞

May 6, 2026

Checkpoint

Two days earlier,
on August 2, 1964,
torpedo boats fired on the USS Maddox.
There was a single bullet hole
on the ship
and one aircraft was slightly damaged.
All the top commanders were on edge.

It was late at night on August 4th.
The seas were rough.
Radarmen and jumpy commanders
saw images on the radar screen
that may or may not be torpedo boats.
The Maddox reported this
to the brass in Washington:
possibly there was another attack
by North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Captain Herrick of the Maddox
clarified his first cable
three hours later:
never mind—nothing happened.

His second cable was brushed aside.

The president was spoiling for a fight,
and this was going to be the excuse
to get the ball rolling.

From slight damage on the 2nd.
and no damage at all on the 4th.,
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
passed Congress on August 7, 1964,
and we were at war
for the next nine years.

The Resolution was a pivotal checkpoint
in the middle of the 60s
separating my older sister and me
and our FDR-born generation
from our two younger sisters.
The war was popular at first,
but soon the nation turned sour.
Americans were fed up
long before we left.

The Boomers weren’t convinced
those who fought the Good War
knew what they doing.
Vietnam is half a world away.
Why are we there?
Is this in our national interest?

The younger sisters and their friends
were still in their teens.
If there is a war to fight,
they are the ones to suffer.
Young men will die.
The war will be a widowmaker.

The domino theory—
the last domino to fall, the theory.

Translated from the Latin:
How sweet it is to die for a theory.

∞

May 13, 2026

She Loves You

The Kennedy assassination stunned the nation
like nothing else since the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We all remember what we were doing
when we heard the news.

This was our release—
we were done with enforced solemnity.

∞

May 20, 2026

[tanka]

divorce…
with nervous hands
she folds unfolds
folds unfolds
her accordion skirt

∞

May 27, 2026

Skywaves

After living with roommate Jim
and his country music for three months,
I was ready to go home to Top-40 L.A.

To my surprise, I liked the music
on KSNN radio, the market leader
for youth in southern Idaho.

The most popular disk jockey
was afternoon host Tumbleweed Tom,
an Englishman from County Durham.

Relentlessly up-beat country rhythms
accompanied the so-sad stories:
I lost my job, my girlfriend moved out,

the dog died, and my truck broke down—
all before lunch!
But I reached my 90-day limit.

Time for a change.
I loaded my ’52 Olds and headed south,
passing the glorious Wasatch Range

snow-glinting in the afternoon sun,
and entered the teal-tinted sagebrush
and red-rock country of southern Utah.

Another three hours to St. George.
Dusk. Spinning the dial on the car radio,
searching for something—anything—

that might be interesting,
I landed on 1520, a rock & roll station
in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City?

How is that possible?
It was a mix of Top-40 tunes and oldies,
a new term at the time.

I recall “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,”
and “Runaway” by Del Shannon.
Tunes by Gene Pitney and Elvis, too.
But the oldies were the best part.
I sang along with the doo-wop classics
never heard in Idaho or Utah.

Danny and the Juniors. The Drifters,
The Penguins. The Platters.
The best moments of middle school

and high school flooded back
in a three-hour concert,
a fabulous rock & roll Götterdämmerung.

∞

June 3, 2026

Celebrating Peace