Falling Leaves

All coiled up by a story
of one Adam and one Eve
seen one way, a story to you

of people like leaves,
lost greens to brittle browns
floating to the ground

to be piled up, thrown away
or set afire. You cay say,
“God loves you,” so you

don’t have to. Much easier
to see others as leaves, falling,
while you’re the tree, cutting

them off. Many trees are
broken by strong winds.
And the fallen leaves were

beautiful reds and yellows
while dying so that other
leaves could, after the winter,

arise and live. Not one way
to read.

Behemoth and Leviathan, Good Ol’ Boys Raising Cain

Leviathan belches. He’s been eating
too much. The industry nurses
his gluttonous hunger.

And Behemoth farts. Smokestacks
in our green house. The beast smells.
A whiff of Kingsport’s chemicals, Nairobi’s

Kibera, impostor nutrients for soil poison
and quick yields, and plastics and cleaning
agents. They’re extracting a thick

chaos from beneath the dry sands,
an oily chaos for an anointing
of annihilation. God is letting it happen.

But God shouldn’t. And the gods
are making it happen. Mammon,
Leviathan’s master, peddling

the goods and desires. Now, I must
slow my cursing. (I’m a part of it.)
Slow like the rise of tides,

the submerging of islands. No man is.
Man and woman and woman and man
are conjuring Behemoth,

the dragon’s froth on crests of waves,
blackened rainbows rippling
on the seas’ faces, and dead fish

come belly up. The contradictions
of progress whirl quickly to the blue
heaven firmament. And Leviathan

belches, Behemoth farts, we yawn
and scratch a passing itch, and
chaos sprays and burns.

And God should stop it. And we
should stop it. And we should
still and quiet ourselves, praying

as the chaos continues, for God
stills our chaos so we will create
it no more.

God’s Green Fingers

Would it be so wrong to think of God,
again, in physical terms,
like of old?

Today, a little girl
with still new steps pranced with a
confident unassured gait back and forth

between a concrete sidewalk and
grass. And though those hired to
try to tame Earth’s green growth

to appropriate a contrived commercial
scape had obviously recently been there,
the freedom in the child drew her

to God’s small, manicured, fingers,
even as her cultured mother tried to keep her
on a fabricated foundation.

But God’s hands were still reaching,
even if they would leave a reminding
itch upon her knees should she have

fallen, even though the green grass
drew the girl into the sun, its burning
light, threatening to blemish,

as her worried mother feared, her
smooth, pale skin, plump cheeks,
with the heat of red life.

A Now Still Chorus

To the living, no one
has greater authority
than the corpse. Try

arguing with her
stubborn silence. She
will not bother

revealing the instrument
of her final stillness;
monosaturated, processed

snacks out of a bag,
stray one-hundred-
fifty-five millimeter,

white phosphorus,
defrauded funds. The
poisons need not

be made. But the living,
they refuse to live.
And so, others fall.

And all will fall.
Some will rise from
the silence, having

not sounded since
their final groan, or
cry, or exhalation,

and will sing with
some ineffable musing,
some appropriate

judgment, some ceaseless
prayer. And the once
profiteer living, no longer

profiting, will have
no more arguments
to attempt to bring

to bear. But they will
bear the chorus of
new breath. And she

might bring them up
with her. And she
may not. For now,

she will dwell
in her unchosen
silence, her blank-

eyed reproof. And
we must listen for
her.

Honest as a Ram

Be honest before attractive,
truthful before apologetic,
like the old sheep I pass
on the days I run. Gnarly

horns. The wisest of gray hair,
locks upon locks of timely
curls, even over his eyes.
But he sees through that time,

and he gnaws on grass.
Unconcerned as to what I
think of him, he follows
my stride, observing my

movements, as if to say,
You are running. I see you.
I am laying here, on my
rock. Perhaps we are

going to the same place.
(The younger, shorn sheep
bleat at my passing.)
He has nothing to lie

about. All he does is lay
about and meander his small
domain, in silence, receiving
the earth’s bounty of green

grass. And he has nothing
to apologize for, no drawn
out arguments to account
for the sureness of his impassive

scrutiny. We are here, my human
friend. We are here. Our hair
continues to grow, as does
the grass. Here we are.

Finitude unto the Infinite

God may be infinite,
uncontained by some building,
some border, some country

or pastureland, some sickened
sea or river. God may be
uncontained. But we are not

uncontained. Our invocations
will probably prove finite. All things
are possible within

the confines of the infinite God
who created finitude. A national
leader appealing to some infinite

god many think they follow,
in service to unhindered
expansion; false worship,

propaganda. A geneticist of seeds
in collusion with financiers,
capital investors, delusional greed,

stripping the earth’s fertility, for
temporal, unending yields. The grass,
trees, onions, chickens would

grow in their cycles without
laboratories. To praise
the truly infinite God, recognize

your end. We only go so far.
And in this realization
we somehow step over to

the infinite God, to that beyond bounds,
that loves what is outside us,
that knows what is inside us,

that does not seek to capture,
but releases all unto the infinite.

Prepared Air

There is good reason to speak
in short, prepared, plain words
and considered address. Few listen

to talkers. Listeners, though, listen
to listeners and join in phrasings
and glean from thoughts, share

in conversation, elucidate
a palatable air for prayer.

Measure

Words are good for nothing
unless they too can be spoken
with hands. Hands are good

when they touch with
mindfulness and concern,
responsibility. A loaf of bread

with too much water is
likely to not rise as much as
one hoped it would. So too

words unmeasured are flat
and depreciating, mere empty
phrasings to pass some time

on the way to dispassionate
gain. And if I do not seek to
reach out after this consideration,

again another has said nothing
with as many words.

(Credit to Wendell Berry’s essays in Standing By Words for the thought being worked out here.)

Skin Papering

The skin papers with years,
saddenings and elatings written
with wrinkles and colorations
and scabs, scribed as
childlike wisdom or
curmudgeoned gloom.

And my skin is only now
papering. How will it narrate
when one day weathered?

Some would have us only be
records, fragmented,
statements, bank or lack of bank,
numbered for monitoring, statistics.
For us to never be literary, they
construct daily lived lessons.
Don’t listen to the curriculum.

But what is written, or unwritten,
in our eyes? Do they erase and
look to future stories, remembered
failures meaning coming triumphs
and second, third failures? Can they
write futures and pasts beyond
mere filed entries?

Or the changing hue or thinning
of our hairs?

Paper skin refuses to be effaced. Clad,
we can attempt to cover; underneath
we are nude, dank or dry.
Our faces always recite our years first.
And the curve of our spines.

Transfiguration

Was there not preparation that could
be accomplished? I am unprepared.

Temporal, tempted, readily
forgetful, feasting on lurid
moments, noticing not the feast’s

coming, its silent cycle
and calming panic, melting away
towers of inadvertent advents

and departures from focus. Alas,
no focus. Light a lamp once more
at dusk until the sky purples,

the light on the mountain again
burns bright.