Fie on you

Fie on you

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Fie on you craven chieftains
Who send young folk to war
Your fevered dreams and ignorant schemes
Mock the wisdom that held before
Your silvery tongues keep wagging
As you unleash the awful roar
Of myriad murdering missiles
Leaving hell only wanting more.

Fie on you flattered fools
Your choices rash and imperious
Heedless of law and gleefully smug
Your motives murky and odious
The bodies of graybeards and gay little girls
Lie shattered amid the detritus
The world you thrust into turmoil untold
Our common fate precarious.

Fie on you belligerent bullies
Boastful and bloated and vain
May history judge you rightly
Though now its lessons you disdain
The bitter cost in bodies and blood
And trust we’ll toil to regain
Is borne with unflagging hope
That one day we’ll shed this bane.

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a drop of water

a drop of water

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It coalesces on the glistening icicle,
halved ovoid
tiny and translucent
but formed of myriad melting molecules
more in number than the stars in the sky

It clings tenuously to the slender stalactite
resisting gravity’s irresistible pull
gently pulsating
as it slides millimeter by millimeter
down the shimmering ice

It pauses at the sparkling spear’s tip
gathering its now swelling self
waning winter
suspended tantalizingly
before falling through the still frigid air

It falls and is gone
disappeared into the trampled snow
that single drop of water
dazzling in its rapturous descent
now unseen but ever remembered

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Just sing

Just sing

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sing
let all that lives in your heart break forth
sing joy and sorrow and yearning
sing hope and horror and believing
sing love and loss and longing
sing triumph and tragedy and trusting
just sing

sing
let all that lives in your heart break forth
let your song paint with clarion colors
let your song dance with shimmering swirls
let your song persuade with spellbinding speech
let your song delight with mellifluous music
just sing

sing
let all that lives in your heart break forth
so that creation will not be left empty and void
so that truth will not be left unspoken
so that divides will not be left uncrossed
so that God will not be left unpraised
just sing

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Feeling purple

Feeling purple

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I woke up this morning feeling purple.

No, actually that is not true. Because purple is complex, many-layered, profound, even mysterious. No one still emerging from sleep can feel purple. Feeling purple requires a consciousness fully awake and fully aware.

But even that observation falls short of the truth. Full consciousness is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for feeling purple. I cannot produce a purple mood from within myself. Feeling purple happens in relationship, under the influence of or in reaction to, something outside myself, something compelling, consequential, unignorable, captivating.

Purple is the color of Lent, a season often misunderstood. Lent is a solemn season, but not somber or grim. Lent is not about deprivation or self-denial, but about raised attentiveness, about a purposeful focussing on matters, not of grave importance, but of breathtaking importance, about reflecting on the very nature of what it means to be human, to live in sync with the heartbeat of creation, to live in harmony with the song God sings.

Feeling purple is a wondrous state of being, bringing awareness of my place, my role, as part of a much larger whole. It is not that the petty, mundane, quotidian duties and routines and appointments of my everyday life are superseded, shown to be of little or no consequence. On the contrary, it is these very things, the little things, the prosaic things, that are revealed to have eternal significance, literal eternal significance.

A purple mood subsumes me, envelops me in a rich and velvety and boundaryless aura, draws me, not out of myself, because I never leave myself behind, but draws me into the world, into this world, into the layers and essences and beauties of this world of which I am not commonly aware. A purple mood makes me feel whole. A purple mood makes me feel that my life matters. A purple mood brings peace.

May you know too the extraordinary blessing of feeling purple.

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Lucretia Laing Ensworth

Lucretia Laing Ensworth

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I will call you Lucy, my grandmother, mother of my father. Your blood runs in mine, but you are entirely a cypher to me.

You died three years before I was born. I do not know the color of your eyes or the color of your favorite dress. I do not know the things that bring you joy or the things that cause you pain. I do not know timbre of your voice or the cadence of your laugh. I do not know if you do laugh, but surely hope that you do, that the landscape of your life does bring you some delight.

You knew your grandmother. You were married seven months before she died. You know that she made sugar cookies, that she bore great grief with resilience and grace, that her grey hair was once raven black, that she danced a fine Highland fling. I know these things, too, because your cousin wrote of her and told her stories. I have met her in my imagination and she has become a part of my remembered family.

But no one has told me your stories. No one has told me if you bake or sew or paint or dance. No one has told me of the hardships you have endured or of the graces you have offered. Oh, Lucy! What kind of mother were you? Was my father a surprise when he came out from you when you were beginning your fifth decade? A good surprise? Did he try you? Did he exhaust you? Did he make you laugh? Did he make you proud?

Are you quiet like me, a person of few words, of words carefully chosen and always meant? Do you love, as I do, a bracing morning and ice on the pond, a tumbling brook or a faint trail through deep woods, the magic of poetry or the enchantment of music? Do you love God? Do you understand that all you are and all you have is an extraordinary gift to be treasured, to be received with gratitude and shared with joy?

I call you Lucy now, of my own whim, because I do not know you. But when I do know you, when you too become part of my remembered family, when your body and your spirit take shape in my imagination and in my heart, I will know what to call you.

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November Winds

November Winds

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November winds flail slender grey branches
glittering umber leaves tenaciously hanging on
arms of the hoary birch swirling
in a frenetic autumn dance

November winds roil turgid blue green waters
flecked foam frolicking down the bay
rhythmic eruptions of brilliant white
under a steel-grey sky

November winds drive the ebbing tide
battering sun-bleached boulders unflinching
as surging splashes of splendiferous spray
caress their sea-worn shoulders

November winds rouse my listless spirit
shouting the glories of an untameable world
wild and wonderful beautiful and holy
still and ever my home

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The Kick

The Kick

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smash crash shatter crinkle
o glorious sound
plate glass
exploding splintering scattering
into seven thousand
sparkling shards

it came from my foot
the doer of the deed
beloved soccer ball
hexagonal panels black and white
launched in a graceful arc
off the scrubby green grass

it was a beautiful boot
consummate corner kick
soaring from sidewalk’s edge
past the cherry tree and
his stretched out arms
into the doomed window

he was there of course
my sao paulo buddy
constant companion
doing our best
to best each other
in math or football

Mrs. Kocsis
called him “Dick”
called me “Tater”
telling us that one day
we would rule the world
or. at least, her sixth-grade classroom

it was our fathers
who brought us together
grad students they in
psychology and microbiology
planting their families
in married students’ housing

bound by love
of the beautiful game
of quadratic equations and binomials
we bridged divides of
language and culture
the very best of friends

so we were there
that fateful afternoon
sharing the joy
if not the shame
(that was all mine)
of that most magnificent kick

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True unity

True unity

Hegseth: “An entire generation of admirals and liberals were told to parrot the insane fallacy our diversity is our strength. We know that unity is our strength.”

If you read your Bible, Pete, you will understand that true unity is borne out of diversity, not uniformity.

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