Skittish

I remember green pastures and still waters,

Days of delight in the maplewood,
Evening swims in the lifegiving deep,
Flametongues at the campfire singalong,
One eyeopened soulpiercing afternoon
Alone with my savior on a lakeside hill.

But I got older and worldwise and skittish,
Thought about Bible school, decided against it.

My English degrees will teach me to read
The Bible plus Marx,
The Bible plus Butler,
The Bible plus Sartre.
After all, context is everything.
Right?

I learned the maplewood was infested
With mosquitoes and poison ivy,
The pool wasn’t as clean as it looked,
And while it’s ok to observe from a distance,
The campfire itself is much too powerful, 

Too unpredictable to approach.
That lakeside hill?
Just a lake. Just a hill.

My spirit came to believe there never were 

green pastures, still waters.

This world is a wasteland

Where wanderers seek… what?

The Good Life?
True Love?
The American Dream?
A Dignified Death?

We are strangers in the desert,
Each trying not to be the sucker,
Dying of thirst in a dry and weary land.
We form hollow alliances, 

Celebrate hollow victories,
Lament hollow defeats, 

Hunt for some meaning —

Any meaning —
In this dead and deathly place.

So that’s how you catch 

A skittish English major:
I’m a deer panting for water;
you’re the only drink around.
I left the green pastures, and you followed,
Cloaked in clouds on my dark days,
Robed in fire through my infernos,
Always here, always gently calling.

When at last I hear
And fall ashamed,

Depleted at your feet,
You help me up
And hold my head
And give me 

A very long drink.

humility

ten-speed, twelve years old,
too late: downhill, brakes out.

stomach-twisting, wheel-churning freefall
gravel wipeout, then roll into the thistle ditch.

this is humility: humus, the dirt in my mouth, 

the dirt of which I’m formed,

and I don’t have a girlfriend or anything,
but it feels like someone just removed a rib.

 
my mouthdirt is bloodmuddy
my palms are thistleful 
and my mortality has never been sharper, 

never cut deeper than here in this ditch.

but as I try sitting up,
try to assess what’s broken
besides my bike’s brakes,

I discover unforeseen grace.

 
yes, my glasses are twisted,
yes, my blood mingles with manure
on the Kansas gravel,
yes, the shock is past and the sting has started

but I missed the barbwire fence
and meadowlarks are singing
and the horses are running for joy
out in the pasture.

in short, despite all evidence to the contrary,
I find it is still good –
very good –
to be alive.

Veils

You tore the thick and ancient veil
Even as the last pneuma
Was torn from your lungs.
You tore it top to bottom,
Reached what I couldn’t,
Rent the barrier first hung
By my damned rebellion.

You were not veiled
To the pagan executioner
When he heard you shout
At the finish,
And he confessed
The undeniable truth.

I will journey through your meat-veil,
Torn and bloody, 
To reach the holiest of holies –
Attain the unattainable –
Entering by a way unimaginably expensive,
Unimaginably ingenious.

So nail me up beside you,
Drag me deep into icy death,
That I may awaken with you
To new-returned pneuma,
Unveiled and unwrapped,
Exploding from the tomb into life.

To Vincent

I’m so sorry.
We shared much:
Love of God and man,
Wheat fields,
Crows,
Sunflowers,
Self-taught dissatisfaction.
I hope I meet you one day.
(p.s. the tree roots are beautiful
and so alive)

Springbud

Let me bud
Then burst forth
Like a pink treeblossom
In just-spring
When the sky is warming
And the days are lengthening
And the ground is thawed
And the birds eager and amorous
When the old story replays
And all creation gasps
Because it’s shocking
To see death
Spring forth
Into life

Winter

Winter was a surprise,
Arriving suddenly
In the coldest week I can remember,
So cold our basement toilet froze
And the water treatment plant broke
And Andy Reed’s mustache at Arrowhead
Looked like a cluster of bite-sized snotsicles
As Taylor Swift watched from a fogged-up box.

But inside with Winter,
We had abundant snuggles,

Cozy blankets,

Warm baths in the kitchen sink
And clean-boiled water for tea and bottles.

It did not matter that the roads were slick

Or that the courthouse was closed all week;

Winter warmed us all.