The Stones Talk it Over

All was quiet
on the street 
and in the city hall.
Why are they silent?
a small rock asked
a boulder.
Why don’t the people
praise God?
Don’t they see
what we do?
Doesn’t the light
from the northern skies
strike wonder,
ignite fire
in their bones
as it does in ours?

Beats me,
said the boulder.
Let’s sing.

A grain of salt is too tiny
to be of use, but when joined
with other grains
an energy compounds,
a sharpness emerges.
Even so, salt doesn’t
draw attention to itself.
Sprinkled or poured out,
the focus shifts to the object
of its intention—the roast,
the potatoes and carrots,
even the chocolate cake.
No one relaxes after a good meal
and says, Wasn’t that salt delicious!
I am a hidden ingredient
for making this world
a sensually marvelous place.

bringing music down
from you, I

first ascend through the breaking 
of the day

and spend some time as we
work a melody

shape words until they sing with
holy resonance

then tiptoe to the edge of a
moving cloud

dive head-first back into this
chaos of brambles

we must walk each day, but now
with a song

Tekhelet was lost but not unknown, forty-nine
times it appears:  Exodus, Ezekiel, Numbers,
Chronicles, Jeremiah, it’s woven into holiness,

used to stitch the seams of David’s heart—
blue so translucent it could not be described,
mystery turned experiment of pigment and dye,

chemical reactions falling short of divine, falling
in approximation of prayer—     knotted
fringes of prayers shawls, holding prayer

knotted into words.  Unexplained
mounds of shells discarded, snail shells, 
exoskeletons of prayers, heaped on shores

by ruins of dying vats, the blood of snails, exposed
to light, inked prayers offered to the sun, turn biblical,
transform—    the history of blue comes to fruition,

to fruit, to bear unbearable blue so pure
it can only be lost in the mix of mudsweat
of devout prayers unequal to its magnanimous presence—

velvet of evening against sand that scrapes flakes
of tekhelet sky into its waiting, open mouth.

    
          Slogging through doubts
          standing naked & alone
          facing icy-hot rogue waves
          breaking against my soul,
          a fire in a deserted desert
          waiting on the night flower
          to bloom in darkest light,
          waiting on God to dispatch
          my atheistic & putrid ego 
          in its degenerative inertia
          spiritual gangrene & sloth,
          waiting for the revolution
          exploding old distractions
          in empty echoing tombs,
          waiting for the patient God
          who created & sustains me
          to revive my flailing faith
          immersed in a saving flood
          through a beautifully absurd
          resurrection of Christ’s blood.    

fugitive of summer
absconded to the damp 

of a cup holder under my hot tub lid. 
a tree frog

vulnerable as a membrane,
wary as a stowaway,

greening the grey of the tub.
as days pass and water

evaporates, I ladle drops
from the cup of my palm,

prolonging our communion.
afraid for a tiny frog so weak

in this season of heat waves,
seeking precisely what

it needs, attentive,
its eyes blinking under my watchfulness.

but this fugitive of summer
does not move from my wet cupholder.

At evening as my husband naps
I am drawn outside to walk through streaks 
of shadow or to seek the burnished fields,
or Eloise the Calico so I can carry home
her purring body, so I can fall asleep 
knowing she is safe within the walls 
of our farmhouse. That hour’s 

stillness makes me want to forget 
all that has gone wrong between neighbors,
all that threatens to annihilate bird
river whale, the fruiting the pollinating our bodies 
rely on, the goodness we are called to rise to—
as in, “rise to the occasion.” Rarely

can I even cry for the world. Instead, 
I weep for my friends—my cancer-ridden, 
cash-poor, heartbroken friends. Evil, that
enervating abstraction. Who
can abhor an abstraction? 
To stay in it, my heart must break 
precisely. My heart must know 
their name.

a muzzy blanket of dark gray clouds 
shrouds the world from horizon to horizon
as the leaden rain pounds against our windshield

the sun’s strength, its light diminished
hides behind the clouds, concealed and weak
while the wipers flip-flap, failing to clear our view

we are on a road trip from Florida to Minnesota
returning from the warmth of a southern summer 
to the biting winds of a northern spring

through the heart of Dixie and the land of Shilo
battlefields filled with ghosts of civil war and slavery
and the poor living in broken-down, shanty towns

and on the way, we waste our priceless time 
counting hundreds of white pickup trucks and church steeples
and cows and cemeteries on each side of our car

we drive through flooded streets
with crippled creeks overflowing their banks
and washing over the blacktop of backwater roads

and we journey past massive crosses
built of shining metal, 120 feet tall and higher
reflecting the ashen colors of the overcast sky

symbols signifying the power of faith and forgiveness
and a promise that we will be redeemed
regardless of our history or the sins of our ancestors

the weight of our soul cannot be measured
with bullets and stones or flesh and bones
it cannot be quantified or calculated 

or somehow discovered through scientific analysis 
it has no gravitational force or mass
yet it has significance, it has power and dominion

it feels heavy when we harbor the poison of anger and hate
and light when we bestow our love unto others
and like the clouds over the south, our souls

are sometimes filled with sadness and regret
but also, with the sustaining water of life
and the sure belief that on the other side we’ll find the vital sun

Above me is a great-winged bird
soaring listlessly across the sky
banking, catching the persistent drafts
that come up from the ocean bay

I am trying to swim in concert with it
an inferior imitation, a mockery
languishing on my back as I stroke weakly
towards the too distant shore

its striated feathers are long and spread
luminous black and tawny brown
with a white head too small for its immense body
and a curved beak like a Roman nose

I feel frail and fragile in the water below
as I watch it flying back and forth
for what seems like hours, without once 
flapping its wings or struggling to stay aloft

tilting and circling from beach to horizon
and back again, buoyed by the breeze
languidly, lazily
lifted by the faithful wind

while I wrestle with the current
wandering, adrift
grappling with the muscular water
that doesn’t fight back, but acquiesces

a predator that accepts its nature
giving way, turning aside
swallowing the weak and the feeble
drawing them down to the depths

is it the same for the flyer above
am I an old, white whale of prey in its eyes
splashing, kicking
spouting streams into the air

or am I lost in the white-capped background
of azure and teal and iridescent green
and I ask myself, as I look for direction, for deliverance 
is that a vulture that I see, or could it be a phoenix