Poetry & prose

Some Soil

January 17, 2014 — 8 Comments

He spoke in a parable. He said

Some soil is just about dead

Walked over and worn out

Impervious to seeds,

A feeding trough for birds.

 

Some soil is stony:

Seeds sprout quickly,

Sprouts stretch to sun,

Sun scorches leaves,

Plant withers and dies.

No roots, he explained.

 

Some soil is preoccupied

Crowded with seeds of stubborn stock

That choke anything fresh

Before it can flower.

 

Some soil is just right

(To quote a golden-haired girl),

A dark loamy bed

Where seed bursts open in eager love,

Dying with life-force;

And soil honors seed’s sacrifice

Faithfully nurturing newborn sprout.

 

The seeds

I have gathered

Don’t come in uniform packets

Stamped with precise planting instructions.

They are scattered grains of life

Sown from everywhere:

Love letters and report cards, ocean waves and office buildings,

Toddlers’ tantrums, neighbors’ gossip,

Even radio talk shows and preachers’ sermons.

 

I have also

Discovered the soil

Doesn’t come in a bag

Purchased with indulgences and poured into the soul.

The best soil is made of wasted moments:

The garbage and leftovers of everyday life,

Piled in the back of the mind to rot,

Food for tiny creeping thoughts who give it back changed

Breaking up stony places

Crumbling softening

Light loose reborn

Hungry and thirsty for righteousness

A good place to put down roots.

Rock me to Sleep Mother

December 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

Here is a rough, incomplete recording of a new song – an old poem I just set to music. Couldn’t sing it all the way through without crying the first five or ten times. See how well you can do! The words seem super-sentimental unless you are nearing forty and find them connecting with some deep primal mother-ache that just might have something to do with only ever seeing God as father all your life, because no one ever gave you words like this before.

Backwards Eye

November 21, 2013 — 2 Comments

I was born with a backwards eye which

Stares severely into my skull

Sifts every grain harvested by the frontwards eye

the two ears, nostrils, skin and tongue

Pokes and prods the quiet nervous brain

where those grains are piled in no particular order

Feverishly endeavors

to catalog everything

to make some semblance of sense

to prove a grand unified theory

 

When you’re born with a backwards eye

you only see half as well

you know much too much

Maybe you’re a ponderous pirate

hiding the truth behind a patch

Some days you feel like Cyclops

monstrous, underground, grunting in the dark.

Bread of Life

September 26, 2013 — Leave a comment

God’s fingers were floury from kneading the bread dough.

She wiped them on her apron

Then stooped to pick up the baby

(He had been crying and pulled himself up by her pant leg, his snot and

tears spotting her jeans at the thigh)

She kissed his cushy cheek

Hoisted him on her hip

Smoothed a stray strand of hair

And laughed when he sneezed unexpectedly.

On the radio the band struck up a tune

So she took his chubby hand in her callused one

And they danced around the kitchen

Afternoon sun dappling the linoleum

School buses whooshing by outside

Neighborhood children chattering down the sidewalk

And there in the middle of it all,

Bread dough rising quietly.

Compulsory Education

September 4, 2013 — 3 Comments

Leaving the DMV today I passed two women

Passing words while passing time.

“He’s incarcerated.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. It was his fourteenth . . .”

And I was out the door.

Last time I was there

(You go a lot when you first move to Colorado because the paperwork demands superhuman precision and so your signatures and documents are never in order the first and maybe even the second and third time for each vehicle you are registering),

They were giving out cookies

And I left at the same time as a young man

Wearing a motorcycle helmet

Who assured me he had the money to pay the fees,

Exorbitant as they were,

Misinformed as the first agent he dealt with

Had been about them.

I’m finished now.

Our car, our utility trailer, our motorcycle

All have proper Colorado plates and titles.

Somebody give me a degree

Or at least another cookie.