Keep Trying

A woman and a man
Came together
To the church
To pray.

There were several others.

Children walked down the aisles
Dressed as angels and shepherds,
Reciting lines from
The Holy Book.

Many watched.

Who dressed these children?
Who wrote these lines?
Who are these children?
Who is watching?

-- 30 --

For thirty years you walked through dark alone,
In shadows of the dreams that haunt your nights,
Without a soul to walk you safely home,
Nor any loving arms to hold you tight.
For thirty-seven years I wandered, too,
Uncertain of the path that I should take,
Till in the darkness I bumped into you,
And from our fitful dream did both awake.
You took me by the hand and said, "This way!
The Lord has promised me that He will come
To save me from the maze I've traveled on."
To see your faith in Him, my fear allayed,
That in the black of night we aren't alone:
The Hand of Providence will guide us home.

Widow's Oil

I am enslaved by a piece of plastic
Point seven six millimeters thick,
Sears, Chase, American Express,
John Pierpont Morgan and the Federal Reserve.

Give me a jar of oil, Lord.
Set me free from these old debts.
I need no more credit than this:
Righteousness, faith.

37

Half 74,
I made it, Uncle Walt.
I ended and began,
Ceasing not.

There is only one thing left to accomplish,
This jug,
These verses,
Your company.

Hunger

You have placed words within us
To know as the wolf cannot.

The jackal will not turn its nose from meat,
But a fasting father will take no food but that which falls from Your lips.

In hunger hyenas rob bones from their yelping young,
But a milking mother will die shriveled on her bed in quiet contemplation.

Coyotes howl a chorus from the depths of their empty guts,
But a man dices the wind in sibilant whispers cut by the edge of his tongue.

What emptiness can be filled with flesh and blood?
What knowledge tasted in bread and wine?

Rock, Water, Moon, Jupiter, Sun

When I write, I feel it in the chest, near the beating of my heart.
It sounds trite, but it's true.
There are reasons for these descriptions.
I'm not the first to make it up.

And then it all comes out like this:
Rock, Water, Moon, Jupiter, Sun,
These other things that I use as metaphors
For the drumming in my chest.

Sometimes, it gets out of hand,
And before I know it, I'm a metaphor, too,
A chunk of stardust, a drop of water,
A spear of summer grass.

Not a man, with will or intention,
But a cluster of atoms moved by gravity
And other forces I cannot comprehend,
Invisible, outside the mind, and within.

But the beating keeps beating,
So I drum my fingers on these keys,
And repeat:
Rock, Water, Moon, Jupiter, Sun.

Soon, I'm held eternally in the cosmic melodrama,
Orbiting the Sun, billions of years old,
And I conjure eternity between heartbeats,
Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump . . .

I am no longer a man,
I am a rock upon which eternity is built,
The Kingdom of Heaven,
The hands and feet of Christ eterne,

I see water flow in a river and I say:
"That is me!"
I see the stars sprinkling the sky with light and declare,
"That is me, too!"

My capillaries fill with blood,
Pulsing near the surface of my skin,
I grow larger with every thrust
Of this aching muscle that torments me.

Live, live, live, live!
The rivers of blood do not end,
And my diaphragm plays accomplice with wind
As my brain testifies:

You are Rock, Water, Moon, Jupiter, Sun.
You are eternal.
You are life and death.
You do not die nor live.

The beating continues:
I am a drum, an empty shell,
A tent scaffolded over bones,
Hollow and empty.

Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump . . .

Come, beat on my skin,

I invite you into my emptiness,
To dwell with Rock, Water, Moon, Jupiter, Sun.

We are the same, us.
We are rock.

We are water.
We are empty shells.

Let's keep each other company, then,

Beating on each other like drums,

Thinking of blood and wind,
Mouths and tongues.

These thoughts turn quickly,
And we are in bed, not sleeping. 

But beating, beating, beating, beating,
In eternal moments of bliss.

. . .

If these lines seduce you, tread lightly,

There are no hollow drums.
I am less these things than a man with words,

Like rock, water, moon, jupiter, sun.

Natural Causes

On July 29, 1890,
Vincent Van Gogh died of natural causes
At the age of 37,
Just two days after shooting himself in the chest with a revolver
That was never located.
His ribs did a good job of bearing their duty,
Deflecting the bullet,
Protecting the innards,
But he died two score hours later
Of an infection in the wound.

It is said that Vincent also cut off his ear
And gave it to a prostitute named Rachel.
Act of a mad man, no doubt.

However, there are other madnesses behind these stories.
Some say that Van Gogh was protecting Gauguin,
A fencer,
Who had lopped the ear off his friend in the heat of a row.

Could it be that Van Gogh was not insane?
Could it be that he was not driven to lunacy by love of a woman named Rachel?
Could it be that he was protecting the honor of a friend?
Could it be that he died of natural causes,

An infection in the chest?

Alarm!

At 7:00 a.m. each morning
My alarm would sound,
But I would not notice it
For fifteen minutes or more.

Eventually, my father would yell up the stairs,
"Benny, wake up!"
"It's time for school!"
"Up and at 'em!"

And with great difficulty
I would rise from my bed,
Shake off the sleepiness of adolescence,
And march toward another day of school.

Hubris

It is convenient to kill the animals,
Who are not God's children,

As we are.

In the Beginning

I was just there, you know?
I didn't need to fight someone
Until somebody told somebody
To hate somebody.

Some debts can't be paid with money.

There was another time, you know,
When I was just being born,
But I do not remember it,
Though several were there to view the event, I have been told.

Axiom

Everything that people say is true is true.

The catch is, it is impossible to receive truth on your own terms. 

They say to you, "If you love something, you must set it free, and if it loves you, it will return to you."

And then, in the movies, they show you how it works.

But in real life, 

The New Constitution

Internet.

I submit to you, Internet, my true face. The people will decide if it is hot or not.

How Actually Reading the Bible Destroyed My Christian Worldview

As a teenager, I raised a holy fit when my Biology I teacher mentioned evolution in the classroom. But I really can't blame myself: I had been raised that way.

I wasn't a stupid child. In fact, I think that I had been trained very well in the arts of logic and persuasion as a result of attending church every Sunday of my childhood, not to mention the various revivals and weekly meetings I had suffered on countless nights. In those meetings, great emphasis was placed upon the logic of scripture. It was presumed, since scripture was God-breathed and inherently infallible, that anyone who attended to them with diligence would locate Truth. I also learned that translations, or "versions" of the text substantively influenced the meaning, and consequently, the Truth of the original, God-inspired scriptures. This served to increase my awareness of metalanguage in the study of scripture.

In retrospect, it really was a grossly effective manner of training a child in the arts of language. Many American protestant churches of the late 20th century were great melting pots of ideology in which expatriates of various faiths intermingled to share ideas in the wake of the institutional scandals of the late 60s through the early 80s. From Richard Nixon to Jimmy Swaggart, a distrust of any authority had forced individuals into a corner, armed with their own interpretations of scripture as a guide through the complexities of faith.

One immediate effect of this was the intermingling of the various versions of the holy book that were used in churches that were becoming increasingly interdenominational. It was common that a preacher would read scripture from a text that did not match the language of the text from which I was reading--and from which I was encouraged both to read and to take notes. The pastor of my church most often read from the New King James Version of the Bible. In elementary school, the Bible that I most often carried was a New International Version, but I did own copies of the NKJV and the Living translation from which I read at various times. In high school I was introduced to the Revised Standard Version, and in college I graduated to become a reader of the English Standard Version, of which a leather-bound copy now sits on my bedside table just inches from where I type these words (not that I ever actually read the thing).

Despite the particular translation that was used, there was always an understanding that the particular version used by a reader mattered little if the student were attendant to the fact that all versions were attempts at making the meaning of the original texts accessible to modern audience without losing the grist of the God-breathed message within Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew words. To a serious student of the Bible, it mattered little that the NIV was a thought-for-thought translation while the KJV was a word-for-word translation, so long as the student was constantly aware that these difficulties of translation were exigent, and that grappling with words such as elohim and logos was part and parcel to biblical study.

Where else are these skills demanded from 12-year-olds if not in churches? Where else do children learn to use reference such as biblical concordances to uncover the meaning of a translated word?

All of a sudden, the English teacher inside of me is getting a little frustrated.

I remember reading a passage in the Bible and--for whatever reason--taking notice that a particular word was used in a particular verse. If I had been reading an NIV translation, I would pull a KJV translation from the shelf to see if the same word had been used. If not, I really got excited and began looking at all sorts of translations to consider the various words that had been chosen as I considered what biases informed the choices of the various translators. Then, I would turn to my hefty concordance  to locate the word of the original text, studying where this word was used in other contexts in the Bible in order to achieve a fully circumspect understanding of the shades of meaning that must have been available to the writer who in his native tongue chose the word to express the thoughts of God. It really was a fantastically exciting activity for a child who was seeking nothing more than an understanding of the eternal truth of God.

But the people that were teaching me were also teaching me that God most certainly created the universe in six, twenty-four hour days, and on the seventh day He rested.

This fact (and many others) were presented so frequently and so dogmatically that I never was given opportunity to consider that any other possibility could exist, and that anyone who presented another possibility was almost certainly deluded by Satan, at least.

Then, at about the age of 17 or so, I decided to read the Bible from the beginning to the end for myself. But don't get excited: I didn't hardly make it through the Pentateuch before I had become distracted by less tedious inducements. However, it little mattered that I never made it though the Major Prophets because the damage had already been done in Genesis chapter two:

For the uninitiated, I will be brief: Genesis 1, the "Creation Story" that clearly outlines the anti-evolution, six-day creative process that culminates with the creation of mankind on the sixth day, very explicitly states that God had already created vegetation three days earlier (Genesis 1:11--13). Meanwhile, Chapter 2 of Genesis tells a completely contradictory tale. Either my training in the literal interpretation of the Bible had been misguided, or the Bible had turned out to be a crock of skubalon. In either case, my logical framework required straightening.

Here is the problem: The people who had trained me to believe that the universe had been created in six, twenty-four hour days also believed that any other interpretation of Genesis 1 would undermine other doctrines in scripture as well. And they were right.

It took a really long time (about 15 years), but gradually, and after many conversations with my brother David, I came to understand certain and objective truths about the universe. The universe is billions of years old. The Grand Canyon was not created by a massive, world-wide flood. Dinosaurs and mankind did not coexist. Homo sapiens very likely do have non-homo sapien ancestors. Despite the compelling notion that  fact that Nessie might really be proof for Creationism, unfortunately, I have finally come to face the sad reality that science actually works.

Once I was forced to confront the facts of science in contrast to the willful ignorance of religious dogma, I did have to question everything else. Why, for example, do Roman Catholics call their priests father? (Don't worry, they have a really long answer to that question, but I will not mention the grave similarities between the Roman Catholic priesthood and the Jewish rabbinical culture of Jesus' day). Why did John the Baptist baptize Jesus Christ for salvation before Christ shed his blood on Calvary? And puhLEASE don't give me any crap about perfected salvation that occurred for those who were baptized after Christ fulfilled his calling, because that really drives me into a state of confusion that I haven't experienced for a really long time.

Empty and Filled, Empty and Filled, Empty and Filled

It’s Monday morning, and I have returned to the hallways of the high school where I teach English. I am walking in, as I always do, carrying a ceramic mug of coffee with my leather computer satchel hung over my shoulder. The bag was a gift from my wife. She is very concerned that I look good. It’s May, Cinco de Mayo. The sun is bright and the sky is blue. The humidity is low. It is 60 degrees already. The trees have dropped their petals and pollen. There are still some splotches of magenta in the understory, but the tips of trees are turning chartreuse, and the lawns, mown twice now, are a thickening carpet of kelly green. The wind is still.  The sparrows are singing as they flit behind the brown gutters of the yellow brick building where I work.

I have returned to Illinois after visiting Ohio over the weekend, where I had taken communion with a body of believers at Kent State. I was there for to read poems I had written and to listen to poems that others had written. They call it Jawbone. It’s a bone for speaking and chewing. It’s a human bone and an animal bone. It’s a bone that feeds us, and it’s a bone we use to feed each other. 

I did not know any of the people that I had driven 500 miles to share my life with. There is a man at the center of this community, a man in a wheel chair, a man who had been knocked down by polio at seven or eight years old. But he learned to walk without legs. He used his hands instead. He left my hometown before I was born to chase angels in Kent. He was there when the students died. I walked through through memory of the tragedy this weekend, May 4, the 44th anniversary of the shooting. Anniversary is horrible word for remembering death. 

Right now, my students are writing essays, so I have a little time to write this. I want to record what I experienced in Kent. But a student of mine just interrupted me. She asked to see the guidance counselor. She is fourteen and lives with her grandfather and his wife. I don’t know where her mother and father are. I don’t think she does, either. She tells me that she walked into a room this weekend and saw her grandfather’s girlfriend performing CPR on his dead body, and she wants to talk to someone about it. She tells me, matter of factly, that she thought that she could make it through the school day, but people are pissing her off already. It’s 8:30.

I went to Kent because I sensed that I was there already, and I wanted to meet myself, to find out who I am. I was right. I was there. I saw myself like I was looking in a mirror, and I learned that I am who I am. I learned to stop seeking the person I wanted to be. To instead, live within myself. Be here. Be present. 

On Saturday night in Kent, forty of us were reading our poems to each other in the back of a bookstore. The man whose legs won't work looked at me and told his family that I had driven 500 miles to share my poems, calling me the thousand-mile man. He asked if I had a final poem to read. I did, and I was ready to rad it. I had chosen this one:

Audience

This skin's stretched across these bones,

Like a canopy in the middle of wilderness,

Sheltering a stirring inside,

Where I dwell, god-like, till the curtain is drawn and folded,

And I am placed in a box to be carried to another place,

Set up and torn down.

Inhabited by generations, borne through deserts,

Wrinkled and creased, torn and repaired.

There is holiness inside, where I invite you to dwell,

To dine upon shewbread and take visitation with me.

I am within. Enter, you who are without,

We two will witness holiness.

You will I hear with intention, breathe into my lungs,

We will bear each other forever forward

Into the promised land.

But I didn’t read it. Instead, I asked if he had a request, which I knew was an unfair question. He had read some of my poems on the Internet a month or so ago, and he had given me some encouraging words about them. I wondered if he might have remembered one. I wanted to know what poems I had written that were still in his memory. He said he had no request, but he asked me to read a poem that would turn back the devil if he walked into the room where we were sharing life together, and I suddenly knew the poem that I wanted to read, which was not the one I had already chosen, and I had to shuffle through pages of printed poems that I had brought with me to read, but I couldn’t find it. Another poet offered to read one while I looked, and I was happy for the opportunity to search for it. But by the end of his recitation, I still had not found the poem to turn back the devil, so a young girl read another poem, probably about something beautiful, but I did not listen to it because I was still too busy searching for a stone to kill the devil with so that people would celebrate how brave a man I was. As her voice fell on my ears like background music, I saw, at last, the poem that I was searching for, and I read it bravely in the emptying room:

White Man

God knew better

Than to send the Messiah

Through your vas deferens.

In the belly of Madonna

The Savior grew strong

Without your help.

She was a better teacher,

Who never taught him

To speak with his fists.

Instead, he loved those

You paid to have sex with you

Before you stoned them.

He took nothing from them,

So they washed his feet

With perfume and with tears.

How their hearts must have ached

To see him in the Temple

Wrestling you.

How they must have known

The bruises he would carry

Defending them.

How they must have cried

As they prepared his body

For the grave.

White man, step aside.

White man, open your hands.

White man, put down your sticks and stones.

The Savior returns

Again and again

In every act of love.

The Resurrection continues

Day after day

In every act of kindness and of grace.

Christ has returned

As a thief in the night,

Without your noticing,

Imprisoned with the oppressed,

Suffering with orphans and with widows,

Building his kingdom quietly,

Without your help.

As I finished, people looked at me and smiled just as I had looked at them and smiled at the poems I, too, had tolerated, and I knew that I had not slayed the devil. He has been my best friend since I first took memory, and I want him to live inside me still.

I returned the piece of paper to my folder, and a woman sitting behind me yawned. 

“Are we filled?” the polio man asked. I noticed a boy sitting behind him who had been holding a piece of paper, waiting for an opportunity to be heard. He was young, and he had a beautiful face and long, curly locks of brown hair. “There is someone behind you who has something,” I said.

The boy read his poem, but I didn’t listen. I was still wrestling the bright angel that lives inside my heart.

After the boy finished his poem, the man from Olney pressed his hands together and bowed to us. I left the room without saying goodbye. I did not sleep all night. Instead, I spent the night in prison with orphans and widows, and at five o'clock in the morning I drove 500 miles home, without sleep. 

As I walked to my classroom this morning, I saw the many faces in the hallways that I see each day. I saw one of my students sitting alone in the stairwell where I see her each day as I climb to the second story classroom where I read boys and girls the old stories and teach them to write the new ones. She is trouble and doesn't pay attention, but I cannot help but to love her.

At the top of the stairs I see the empty seats where the history department has set up an informal office in the middle of the hallway. They had complained to our building principal that they were the only department without an office, so our principal, as a joke, taped off a section of the hallway outside their classrooms and placed four chairs and a coffee table inside the tiny office without walls or doorway. I thought I should write them a poem to hang on their wall. 

I unlocked my classroom door and went to my computer where I saw the card that I had left on the keyboard in order to remind myself to give it to the construction teacher who is retiring at the end of the school year. I did not buy the card for him. It was from the teacher union, of which I am president this year. He had not come to our end-of-the-year luncheon because he was busy making preparations for the high school prom, as he does every year. So I left my room with the card in my hand and delivered it to him. I shook his hand and told him thank you for his years of service.

I have given and received much since seven o'clock this morning. I hope to give more before the day's end.

The sun is still shining,
The sky is still blue,
The birds are still singing,
There is still work to do.

Bending Spoons

To learn, you must forget.

To grow rich, you must become poor.

To be filled, you must be emptied.

To know joy, you must know sorrow.

To live, you must die.

Take a Hike, Gibran

Love:

Will not wound you.
Will not shatter your dreams.
Will not lay waste to your garden.
Will not crucify you.
Will not prune you.
Will not rip your roots from the earth.

There is laughter love will not allow.
There are tears from which love will protect you.

Love does not assess your worthiness.
Love leads you when you are lost.
Love desires to fulfill you.
Love will never ask you to bleed for him.

He will yield to you.

Twenty-Five

There's a twenty-five-year-old lump in my throat,
A clog in my tear ducts.
And while there's something that doesn't love a wall,
No ground swell has toppled the invisible bulwark
Nor relieved the sleepless sentinels of their duty,
Which is this:
To keep captive pain,
To retain misery,
To hoard hurt like Jews in a Warsaw ghetto,
With no food nor clothing,
No warm fire nor hot soup,
No embrace nor hello,
Just twenty-five years of prisoners,
Trapped by consciousness,
Heaped upon with fresh table scraps of injury,
And at the bottom,
Dirt from which weeds of new experience grow,
Fed by stale memory repressed.

The Smile of the Murderer-Poet

The eyes do not change
As much as the face.
Muscles tighten, lines appear,
Like valleys of skin
Through which rivers of tears have flowed.
I see your teeth,
White, all in a row,
As crescent dimples pull pink lips thin
While the wrinkles of your nose stand sentinels
To dilating circles of black
Veiled by long lashes on lids
At whose corners crow's feet announce
Love you feel unfeigned.

Which do I love most:
The almonds of your eyelids,
The blue ice of your irises,
The quiver of your lower lip,
Or the direction of your gaze?

Why?

When there is nothing left to believe in,
Why do I believe in you?

When there is nothing left to comfort me,
Why do I ask for you?

When there is nothing left that makes sense,
Why do I ask you for answers?

When there is nothing left to hope for,
Why do I give you one last opportunity?

When there is nothing,
Why do I look for something?

You are something.

I am looking for something.

I wrote this hoping for a reply.

Another Cut

From nothing:
A scratch.

It pricks the skin,
Repeatedly,

Like a sewing machine,
Bouncing a needle,

Breaking blood, sometimes,
Flaking skin, sometimes,

And tickle and itch
Marry each other in pain,

Not slice:
That's different,

Worse,
More serious.

Excuses

Ain't good for nothing:
Write for that girl.

What?

The LORD too busy running the program to show you a sunset,
Or blow His breath through the breeze in your hair?

It's okay, Precious.

Ain't got no more excuses than that the LORD has,
Trying to be beautiful for you, is all.

Read it for yourself.

Atman

Do not be angry,
At man.

A shadow of You,
I am.

In him, Thy King,
Dom comes.

Through him, Thy Will,
Is done.

Messy Leslie

Messy Leslie, cute and dressy, kissed a little boy.

When she did, she poked his rib, and took away his toy. 

He ran away and would not stay because he knew her ploy. 

But Leslie cried to see him fly, because he gave her joy.

Leslie fessed to a priestess that she had robbed her friend,

And told her how the boy allowed her kiss on him to send

Him running off without a thought to how their love would end,

And asked the nun, “God’s will be done, could He their love amend?”

The nun replied the boy had died as he had run away.

Tripped on a rock and knocked his block, and breathed his last that day.

He bled the ground and made no sound, for death on him did weigh.

Alone and dead, his spirit fled, to heaven was conveyed.

But Leslie cried when the boy died, because he’d gave her joy.

And no more kissed, the boy she missed, although she kept his toy.

She prayed all day that God allay her grief for the lost boy

That she had kissed, but now she missed, and found her love destroyed.

Then God did send an angel wind to bless the crying girl,

And moving air blew through her hair, and tossed her tressing curls.

She looked above and saw that love had not passed from this world,

But entered down into the ground, and up from death unfurled.

And love from doubt began to sprout, though grief for her was hard.

For love and loss had heavy cost, and left her heart deep scarred.

But up her eyes, to her surprise, at once regard

That God had placed her lover’s face among eternal stars.

“Oh thank you, God, that from the sod where now his body lies,

“Did you upspring, on angels’ wings, his spirit to the skies,

“For all was lost, at heavy cost, and from my weeping eyes,

“The rains did fall, and death did call, but now to my surprise,

“The Lord has called, my grief has stalled, for now my heart does sing

“And now through death, I notice breath, and rise on heaven’s wing.

“To sing in praise through all my days, and to my Savior cling

“For I repent, His love’s been sent, and soothed death’s painful sting.”

So Messy Leslie, cute and dressy, kissed the stolen toy.

And cried a tear once every year when she recalled the boy

Who from her fled, then bled and dead, but life was not destroyed.

For even death, though robbing breath, can never conquer joy. 

Abigail

If David had slaughtered the Calebite--

Not to be stopped by fairest Abigail,

Discerning that God wanted faithfulness

From his servant, not hands stained with blood,

But instead had pursued his enemy

To wreak the revenge of a worldly king

Who felt the disdain of a selfish lord,

Refusing to feed the army of God--

Would David have been found obedient,

Free from the blood guilt of self-righteousness,

Unable to quicken the dead he'd killed,

Or set his glory in eternal stars?

His wrath was stayed by faithful Abigail,

Who fed him from the storehouse of her self.

To the Girl

To the girl who thinks that her life will end Before she has chanced to see it begin, Forgetting that pain, suffering, and strife Are only small parts of her infinite life:

When fears of how her long days will end Overshadow the grace of how it begins, As sunlight and wind dance through her hair, When Jehovah announces a new day, so fair

That sparrows do sing to announce its arrival, And remind us that life is more than survival, But Grace, too, that nourishes, accepted as bread Sustaining the living, and resurrect the dead.

Who considers life is a quest for the end Neglects that today's when her journey begins.

Sad

Means sated,
Filled up,
Well fed,
Drunk.

It comes not
From emptiness,
Loneliness,
Or absence.

Rather,
Sadness comes
When much delight
Meets fear.

One must avoid,
Evacuate,
Empty,
To unsad oneself.

Sadness is the end of feasting,
The beginning of fasting,
And the long waiting
For another taste.

Blessing the Liar-Thief

You stole from me
Words That I had hoped to use.

Now, I have nothing left
To communicate with
But actions.

Thank you, Liar, For this blessing.
Thank you, Thief, For this gift.

Where There Is Hope There Is Life

Waiting,
Breathing,
Noticing,
Time passes,
In a dungeon,
An attic,
Or in a field of wild grasses,
Sitting on a bench beside a pond.

Spirit move inside my lungs,
Where wind mixes with blood.
Wind blow through time,
As through her hair,
With my fingers.

O, Vine

O, vine that bears good fruit,
Stretched upward toward the sun,
Emerging from the ground,
And branching into two

Different vines that branch
Again into two vines,
Again into two vines,
Again into two vines.

At the eastern end
Of this branching path
Lies a yellow flower
That waits for yellow bee

To eat its honeyed juice
And step onto its womb
With its pollened feet
To bring forth a new seed.

But at the westward side
Of this branching path
Lies another flower
That waits for purple wasp

To eat its honeyed juice
And step onto its womb
With its pollened feet
To bring forth a new seed.

Which vine bears good fruit,
O, vine?
Which vine is not the vine,
O, vine?

White sheep is sheared of wool,
White milk squeezed from black goat,
Each offers what must offer,
To the jealous farmer,

Who divides his flock
At the end of day,
White sheep to the east,
Black goat to the west,

Grey Ram stands on mountain,
Looking down.

Jerusalem

The Morning Star and the Evening Star
     Are the same star,
Dawn and dusk, the same twilight.
There passes between Light and Dark
     A space where Venus shines,
In the early morning, as birds sing,
In the late evening, as crickets chirp,
As you close your eyes, lover,
     And dream of Eternal Rest
In the House of Peace.

Morning Sonnet for the Full Moon over August 10, 2014

It rained for four days straight this week, and grey
Clouds hid the sun and moon from earth, while we
Continued on with our melodrama
Of love and sin and and grace and death and fear.
Somewhere between the laundry and the eighth
Blue Moon, you opened up the door to show
Me that the clouds had finally sailed into
The east, and lo, the moon was rising up,
So bright and white and big and beautiful,
Ascending as a solitary pearl
Over the rain soaked plains we walk upon,
Reminding us that though these rains do come,
They pass, and still the universe eternal
Marches on, if we notice or not.

Choking Down the Burrito

That night when we put the kid to bed,
You microwaved a burrito for yourself,
And you put it on a paper plate.
I was disgusted that you had only put one burrito in the microwave,
So I popped another into the little white space machine
That my mother bought us
That sits on top of the refrigerator,
And I turned the dial to two minutes,
Long enough to heat the plastic bag
POP!
To tell me that all the ice had melted.

So I took the burrito from the microwave
And placed it next to yours on the paper plate
That you had taken from the cabinet
And set it beside your burrito,
All lathered in sour cream,
Covered in black bean salsa,
And garnished with crumbled tortilla chips,

And I said to you,
"I'm invading your personal space.
"Do you mind?"

And you said,
"No."

Then we asked each other how this was all going to work out,
With your problems and mine keeping each other company.
And I think, maybe, I asked too much of you.

I spoke of your problems while you ate,
Watching you eat,
Bite by bite,
Every last bit of sour cream,
Tomato-covered bell peppers,
Tortilla shell,
Refried bean,
And shredded beef,
While you listened to me speak
Of our tragic love,
Fateful and majestic,
Like Romeo and Juliet,
Othello and Desdemona,
Adam and Eve,
Harry and Sally,
Ozzie and Harriet,
Bonnie and Clyde,
Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote,
Fire and Powder,
Heaven and Hell.

And when I was finished speaking,
I looked at your burrito,
Which was nearly eaten, entirely,
And then I looked at my burrito,
Which was still untouched by my fork,
And I thought that maybe I was the problem.

So,

I put my fork to that fucking burrito,
And ate every last bite.

Heaven's Divorce from Hell

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Is not the marriage of them both
But the conq'ring of dark Hell,
O'er the peaceful light of God.

The song is not in liberty
Sung to set the captives free
Nor take your suffering from thee,
Oh girl I love.

May the girl I love know that she's blessed,
Not for my love, but for Him who's kept
Her safe thus far, though travel-weary,
And tempest-tossed through many storms.

May she lay her head on a pillowed bed
To dream a dream of gentler shores,
When all the waves are stilled and He
Calls out to her to walk to Him.

May her feet not sink beneath the waves
When she steps across the ferryman's bow
To walk o'er Jordan on top the waters
In faith toward He who calls to her.

May faith lift her brave heart above
The storms of life, though thunder clouds
Do gather black, and lightning crash
Like fearsome tiger growl doth roar.

May she with courage walk toward He
Who calls to her on glassy sea,
In peace proclaiming, "Come to Me."
          Walk to Him, oh girl I love.

May she with love burst' from her heart
For Him alone, see clouds do part,
When she her trust to Him imparts.
          Look to Him, oh girl I love.

May she today rise from her bed
To see the sun above her head,
Remembering He who rose the dead.
          Live for Him, oh girl I love.

May she awake from restful sleep,
Unconquered by the waves o'er deep
Waters, and eyes no more to weep.
          Call to Him, oh girl I love.

Let not Heaven and Hell be wed,
Let not the demons rule your head,
Let not the living be ruled by dead.
Let not the snake his skin not shed.

Embrace the light and walk toward Love,
Walk away from Death and Fear. 
Trust your spirit, gentle dove.
Live for Him who brought you here

Trust this: Your God loves you and speaks in thee.
Trust this: Your heart knows Truth and sets you free.
Trust this: Compassion, Grace, Humility.
Trust this: Resting, still and peacefully.

Intimacy

Abide in Me,
Wait, hope, expect.
I am within.

In time,
You will hear my voice.
I am within.

There are intimations
You will feel
In the ear of your mind,

Where sound manifests soundlessly,
Where sight manifests without light,
Where life lives without breath.

Be still,
Know.
I am God.

Within,
Without,
With.

May the Circle Be Unbroken

When Joshua crossed the Jordan,
He commanded that the children warriors be circumcised
Where the twelve standing stones stood.

Their fathers had wandered in the wilderness,
Disobedient and faithless,
Unable to enter the Promised Land.

But, as the LORD commanded,
They died,
And their children warriors planted wheat.

The manna no longer fell from the sky,
From the breast of the Holy Ghost,
Feeding the infant kingdom.

Fruit was harvested
From the garden to which the people returned
After Adam and Eve had left.

I am this or that.
I am not this or that.
I am good or evil.

Who shall I say sent me?
I am that I am, says the LORD,
He told Moses.

And they believed,
And they walked through the parted waters of the Red Sea,
And they walked into the wilderness,

With the staff that Moses held in his hands,
The waters were parted,
With the snake that ate the snakes.

But the way grew hard.
But the wilderness never ended.
The people grew weary.

They complained, saying,
Why have you led us into the wilderness to die of thirst?
It would have been better for us to die on the swords of our enemies.

The LORD heard them and spoke to Moses, saying,
Speak to the rock at Meribah,
Where the people quarreled with their God.

But Moses raised his staff into the air
And struck the rock, twice.
He disobeyed. He disobeyed again.

Because you did not believe me,
Because you did not uphold me as wholly unbroken,
Because you did not trust this circle would not end,

You will not enter the Promised Land,
Where milk and honey flow,
Where gardens grow.

When Joshua crossed the Jordan,
He commanded twelve stones to be raised
To remind the people of God's faithfulness.

Not one stone, but twelve.
I have brought your children out of the wilderness,
And by the standing stones the warrior children were circumcised,

When Joshua saw a man holding a drawn sword,
And asked him,
Are you for us, or are you for our adversaries?

The Angel of the Lord said to Joshua,
Take off your sandals,
For the ground upon which you stand is holy.

Water

There is an illusion before me:

A lake.
A tree.
Wind.

There is water in the lake.
There is water in the tree.
There is water in the wind.

I ran, once, through a Dust Devil.
There is water in the dust.
There is water in me, too.

God, take all this water away,
And let me see what's left.

Erosion

By Geoff Hughes

I make my way along the rugged trail

Descending easily over rocks and roots,

A steep descent but legs and lungs prevail

Strapped into loaded pack and sturdy boots.

This canyon offers up no welcome mat,

No crews to keep the trail in top repair

But, here by choice, I never aimed for that.

I simply seek the joy of open air.

Yes, that and proof that at the big seven-O

I still have what it takes to climb the slope.

So down two thousand feet I aim to go.

To climb back out intact my only hope.

Switchbacks steep and perilous do greet

My every step, but right and left huge walls

Rise up and up, as if the clouds to meet

And leave me gazing humbly out in awe.

My pride in what I’m doing at my stage

Of life is held in check by nature’s realm.

These rocks, their stature, their unfathomable age

Have at the least the power to overwhelm.

They mock my seventy years.  “You’re old?” they say,

“Can you believe two billion since our birth?

So if one-up’s the game you want to play

I fear you’ll find out what your pride is worth.”

Descending still I reach a level field

And pause to contemplate the canyon walls,

See countless boulders that the cliffs still yield

And taluses that somehow break their fall.

They perch like statues on those littered slopes

Not moving now but clearly having moved

And moved again, as if belying hopes

Of tumbling to the bottom of this groove.

But clearly that’s ten million years away.

I stand and honor what I see today.

My pride’s eroded like these rocks.  My age

A trifle seen on God’s eternal stage.

The Long Way

When you drive a long distance,
As when you're taking a family vacation
In your dad's station wagon,
The one with faux wooden panel sides,
Cream colored on the top,
A wide Buick,
Rack-and-pinion steering,
And a fold-up seat facing backwards out the rear window,
The drive is often long,
Especially when dad turns off the air conditioner,
Driving with the window down
At fifty-five miles per hour,
As the wind blows through the windows,
Roaring over the AM radio,
Jack Buck, Cardinals versus Phillies.

You might spend dark hours in roots of Appalachia,
Driving through Western Kentucky.
The sun may rise over Lake Superior's North Shore in Minnesota,
Or set among the mesas in Santa Fe.
Storms may throw down their spears in Central Indiana,
A single white cloud may follow you all the way across the blue skies of Kansas.

If you stop to see the Corn Palace in South Dakota,
Or the Mug Tree south of Yale on Illinois 49,
Remember that the road you travel is as much the destination
As the place you arrive,
Wrinkled and stiff-necked,
Stretching arms to the sky,
To shout, Hallelujah! I'm home!

I write these things to express that I do not like to travel
When I travel to arrive.
Accepting that the traveling is the lesson,
Though the Grand Canyon is deep,
And the Mississippi River wide at the mouth of New Orleans,
There is much more to learn in conversation with you,
Twenty-eight hours straight,
Stopping only for gas, coffee, and pee.
I'm in no rush.

The Pacific will stay.

Grace

I have experienced Grace.
What I can tell you about it is this:

You will never know it until it touches you.
Just as you will never know Love until it loves you.
How can an Eskimo understand the heat of the Sahara?
How can a Bedouin know the cold of the Arctic?

Where Grace is
Is different from
Where Grace is not.
The difference is overwhelming.

Dispense with metaphors.
Dispense with uncertainty.
Dispense with knowing without tasting.
Dispense with protecting your life.

Grace is treasure that is lies at the end of this map:

Confess.
Apologize.
Humiliate.
Repent.
Suffer.
Receive.

Grace does not come to the strong.
Grace requires immense weakness.

It can only be found on your knees.
In a blade that slices through the back of your neck,
Passing like swift judgment,
Severing the cord of willfulness,
When all power is laid down,
And your head falls from your body,
Tumbling downward,
With no control to move,
With no ability to see what you want to see,
Nor taste what you want to taste,
Nor hear what you want to hear,
Nor touch what you want to touch,
Nor smell what you want to smell,
But surrender all knowing to the will of gravity,
As your lips kiss dust,
And your eyes look up to see what you thought you were:
Shoulders, torso, arms, and legs,
While the last drops of life-giving blood fall from
The hole in the bottom of your throat,
And your brain moves from sense to senselessness,
And you consider that you had misunderstood the situation
From the start,

In this twilight you face the Truth
That what you thought you were is not what you are,
But more,
And you become happy
For the first time in your life.

HalleluJah

The Hebrew words mean praise God.
Hal'lú means praise.
Jah means God.
Together, they are a confession of adoration.

You can say, "Hal'lú, Jah" to speak to God,
To say, "Praise, God,"
As if you are reminding the LORD
That He has value.

Praise and Prize come from the same root:
To appraise something is to consider its value.
How should God be appraised?
How shall we consider His value?

One way is to consider the value of homeless boy,
With dirty skin and matted hair,
Who smells of street and unwashed clothes.
The Light of God sparkles from his eyes.

Another way is to consider the value of an ancient woman,
With deep creases in the skin of her neck,
And thin, white hair, like a cotton ball set out in the sun for 80 years.
What treasure lies within her heart?

When I look in the mirror, will I, too, see worthiness?
When I look at my face, will my lips declare praise?
Shall I consider the work my hands do and declare, Hallelujah?
Love God. Love your neighbor. Love Yourself.

Who is my neighbor?
The beaten and oppressed, Christ says.
Who is my neighbor?
The widow and the orphan.

How shall I appraise you, God?
I value you as One who brings water to my lips in a dry desert.
I value you as One who lifts me from the pit where my brothers have buried me.
I value you as One who delivered me from the army of a mighty king who has encircled me.

I value you as one who gave me a gift in my despair,
Though I had robbed the temple,
Though I had eaten sacrifices made to Baal,
Though I had darkened the eyes of Uriah,

You offered me wine from a cup of gold,
You offered me bread from your table,
You offered me light from seven silver candlesticks
To illumine my path.

How shall I sing, now, Jehovah Jireh?
What value is there in you,
Who preserves me at every wicked turn of my heart?
What value in He who breathes into my lungs,

As he did in Adam,
When he formed his body from red clay,
Dust from the ground,
And pulled a companion from the cage of his beating heart?

Belial

Darkness, Dragon,
Enslaver of Souls,
Go back to where you came from.

Liar, Deceiver,
King of Despair,
Return to your dark dungeon.

What communion does light have with darkness?
What fellowship has the Temple of God with idols?

Tear this body down, Demon.
Make it bleed.
The temple will be rebuilt.

Hide in your pit,
Cover your dark heart with mirrors.
Reflect all light back to its source.
It will not penetrate your heart,

Dark dragon,
Fire breather,
Cannibal,
Destroyer,
Shame.

The King of Kings has returned to His kingdom.
The Lord of Lords has come to survey his fields.
The Master of Masters has arrived to pay wages to his workers.

Run, thief.
He has returned.

Knowing

Some, like Thomas, doubt.
Doubt is from doubleness, dubiousness, duplicity.
There are two truths on the end of a dragon's tongue.

Some, like agnostics, doubt, too.
Agnostics are without knowing.
There are many things they choose not to know.

Some, like me, turn from doubt to faith.
Faith is being commanded, persuaded to trust.
There is only Truth, durable, like a tree, like stone.

What we choose to doubt,
What we choose to know or not know,
Makes little difference to Truth.

It remains, like a stone that rests high on a mountaintop.
The rain will not wash it away.
It is older than the hills.

God

In an open heart,
He places grace.

In an open mind,
He places wisdom.

In an open hand,
He places love.

Minnow

Small and dangerousless,
With cobalt finless dorsal that fades to Honolulu blue
And white belly with coral pink under chin,
The plastic minnow swims through shallow water,
Wide, yellow eyes, a spot of black,
Unblinking gaze through murk
As spoon under lip moves body side to side
While fisherman spools thread
With hand on fishing rod crank,
Standing still upon a dock by quiet lake.

Tool of illusion,
Tiny, delicate, demure,
In open water feigning death,
Injury, easy prey,
Dangling hooks under her body,
Two sets in clusters of three,
Sharp, like thorns darkly hidden beneath shadow cast
In the emptiness of space
As light from the sun is reflected brilliantly,
Dazzlingly from her shining, hollow shell and sparkling eyes.

What pulls you, minnow?
Wide-mouthed monster will eat you in one gulp,
Swallowing deeply, full-throated,
And in the belly of that leviathan,
Who waited beneath moss and weed,
Hiding from the purview of the sun,
Resting in darkness and hunger,
Did pounce and swallow you deep in his belly,
Where your hooks were set in his gut,
Ripping the bowels from inside out.

The fisherman firmed his will and pulled the monster
Up from the abyss, exposing it to the light of the sun,
Where it could be considered, rightfully,
Known for what it is,
Camouflage revealed,
Black on top, striped and green beside,
Sharp spined,
White and soft bellied,
Helpless in the hands of the master of reels,
Though it thrashes against his strong grip.

The wound is deep.
The striped bass will not recover.
But the fisher will have his minnow out,
Unmindful of the fish.
Tossed back into the lake,
Grendel will return to his watery lair,
Vomiting blood, sinking to the nest where he was born,
Hoping not to float, belly up,
Swallowing rocks to hide himself in hell.

What young, strong bass will regard you, now,
Nibbling at your dark hooks?
Will he swallow so deeply,
Or will you only cut his chin?
Considered by the fisherman only for a moment in the sun,
Who will dip him in the water,
Holding thumb and finger upon his lower lip,
Swaying him side to side,
The waters of life moving across red gills,
Offering breath to revive him from certain death.

The fish will return to his brothers,
Spawning thousands of eggs for thousands of generations,
Swimming cautiously in open water beneath the full light of the sun
That shines even to the bottom of the muddy floor of the shallow pond,
Where he will learn, wisely,
To ignore hunger,
To move slowly,
To eat gently,
And to know the difference between the taste of plastic and brass
And that of body and blood.

Lines

They separate.
They tell us which side.
They are invisible.
They are not real.
They are illusory connections between this point and that.

This point you are.
This point I am.
This line is between us.
This leftness is leftness when you turn from me.
This leftness is rightness when you turn to me.

There is a point to your left.
There is a point to your not-so-left.
There is a point before you and behind you.
There are infinite points.
There are infinite lines.

Polaris will not move.
The Dipper dances around it.
Find me in that space
As we spin dervishly through eternity,
Looking for something to fix upon.

Sometimes It Takes a Goal of Eight

I'll begin here with T. S. Eliot,
And I will contemplate the situation,
Noting that the interference of a sneeze
Was a moment wasted of concentration,
A centering,
Reminding me that to concentrate
Is to not concentrate,
But to hear instead the undulating whizzing of faraway cicadas
Beneath the twitterchips of songbirds
That slice the sky,
Unbothered less by division of hours
Than they are by me.

Here's another confusing interruption:
My death,
Which comes upon me as a sneeze,
A centering,
Reminding me that to concentrate
Is to not concentrate,
But to hear instead,
The breathing of air through my nostrils,
The rise and fall of my belly,
The black starling hacking at me,
Cockeyed in the red maple tree
Where my treehouse once lofted above my childhood sandbox.

And itch from mosquito bite,
Cold vapor in cumulous clouds
A thousand feet above me,
Down here, near the grass is more humid,
And welcoming for situation of blood and proboscis
Than in the bowels of Kilauea
Or at the bottom of Mariana Trench
Where the strange creatures dwell unseen,
Like they do, too, in the cold damp caves
Beneath the grass
As they have for ten thousands of years.

Oye! Oye! The court is in session!
We will make sense of these words!
We will have confession!
We will know as it is!
We will see the bottom!
We will declare what is!
With sound uttered!
With speaking and declaring!
So help us, God!
So help us, Goblin Shark!
So help us, Long-Haired Yak!

The lawn mower also makes a sound,
Without intention,
Or perhaps with.
How could I know?
There is a trampoline in front of me where my daughters sometimes jump.
They push against it, and it pushes back against them.
Every time!
Is this a will?
Is this intentional?
It is tensional.
These are the same roots that dig deeper than the redwood tree.

Uck! Put it off!
These poems about language are tiresome.
Write about blue eyes instead.
Write about the smell of perfume.
Write about something to make the ladies feel good about themselves instead.
These are more interesting things.
Your words are tiresome.
Taco.
Limerick.
Doodle Dandees. Fur and Minecraft.
(Study hard this stanza! There is meaning within!)
Guilty!

Seven. Wordsworth.
Yes, the girl is dead.
We began with those sentiments.
Let's move on.
There are other studies.
There is also not death.
There is also bratwurst and honeysuckle.
There is also sunshine and freckle.
But yes, yes . . .
Death is something to think about from time to time.
How to think about it without words, though?
You must first learn about echolalia.

Put this here.
Put that there.
A tree grows in a garden.
It creates a space.
The mind orders it.
Here is a bird.
There is a bird.
One sings.
Two sing.
An egg is laid in a nest,
And the song continues.
There is no tomorrow.

Jesus Was Never Jesus

What happens
When Jesus is not Jesus?
What effect
When the cross is not borne for me?
What result
When I am crucified for my own sins?
What, Jesus?
When will you die for me?

Love Song for Mr. & Mrs. Atkins

Between two rooms stands a wall, and a door
That opens to allow something to pass
From one side to the other when it must,
And closes when something must be shut out.
The work is labored by the simple hinge,
Unnoticed until under weight and use
Begins to loosen from the force it feels,
And squeaking hinge is blamed for unclosed door.
But hinge is not the hinge without the screw
That fastens polished brass to solid oak,
And will not let the hinge fall from its place.
Sharp and long, she digs her fingers down
To keep the hinge from failing in its use.
Screw it tightly, hold it into wood.

Summer

It is the last day of spring
As I lay beside this lake.
Three clouds drift like frayed cotton balls
Over trees on the distant shore,
While children ply the waves on skis,
Holding fiercely to ropes pulled by speedboats
That rustle up the water and send it hurtling toward me
In splash and glurp and plunk
Against the dirt shoreline where I sit
With ants and mosquitoes
In the dying light of afternoon.
I move now into the summer,
Leaving behind the planting season
That burrowed me into the soil where I took nourishment and water,
There growing through rock and clay to rise up from the ground
Where stink bugs crawl among aphids
Across scanty grasses and flat weeds that cover the soil.
I rise up now to face the sun,
In full, unflinching oppressive heat of summer
To feel its warmth and take life from it,
Feeding myself,
Storing life from its rays in my strong, hard bones,
To stand tall and bring shelter to those who lay here beneath my shadow
And rest upon my roots
That curve downward into earth like a solid recliner
Into whose lap they may find rest,
Who sleep beneath me in my hard embrace,
As I grow food for autumn,
Thinking not of winter so soon.

Solstice Beneath Waning Gibbous

Tonight my first-born niece will begin her twenty-second year of life.
Tomorrow my brother will begin his forty-first.
Today I will continue from thirty-seven onward,
And none of us will cease.

Memory

I can't remember everything,
Just everything that I love,
Which is why I remember everything
About you.

I can't remember anything
That I knew before I first laid my eyes upon you,
Except for everything I saw
That filled my heart with love.

I won't remember anything
From this day forward to eternity,
Without remembering you as well,
My love.

I will remember everything
From this day forward to eternity,
So long as you stand before me
To remind.

June

At midnight in June,
Two days before the summer solstice,
In a damp creek bottom that winds
Through a twenty-acre wood,
Surrounded by tilled fields in which grow
Knee high corn and ankle deep beans,
As crickets chirp and oil pumps chug and chump
In rhythm of modern voodoo music
That fills the nighttime air with counterpoint to silence,
Lightning bugs dance among the treetops
In splendid celebration of love and loneliness,
Calling out to each other in luminescence
Of yellow-green flash of discreteness,
Being in moment, here, now,
An opportunity to continue the spectacle
Of love and dance and continuation
Beneath the stars in a cloudless sky
That continue, too, to sparkle for a moment,
A billion billion solstices
Dazzling infinitely forward in time and space,
While red Mars sinks into darkness of light,
Melting into the pale black horizon of earth,
As I stand, facing westward,
Big Dipper, circling Polaris,
Declaring the futility
Of impersistence.

A Heavy Curriculum

For in much wisdom is much grief:

and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. 

Ecclesiastes 1:18

I often ask myself what would have happened to me
If when my Sunday School teacher encouraged my class
To ask God for a gift,
I had not asked for wisdom.

Instead, let me have asked for favor.
Or let me have asked for peace.
Wisdom is a heavy burden,
That should never be pursued.

The wise man knows why to avoid the tiger.
The wise man knows why pain is good for the soul.
The wise man knows why every choice he has made
Has been the wrong one.

It is better to ask for love, and never to understand why.
Or let me have asked for nothing.

The Good Shepherd

A Sestina

Beyond the field there lay a little lamb,
Who'd stumbled as she walked a path of stone.
And lay her body down beside a well
Whose water was too deep for her to drink.
She waited to be awakened by Love.
As she fell asleep and dreamed of fear.

In darkness long she slept alone in fear,
Who lay alone, this solitary lamb,
Untouched by grace and abandoned by love.
Her bed the ground, her pillow a hard stone,
Tears she wept that wet her lips with drink,
Though none was offered from the nearby well.

Alone she'd die beside the helpless well,
Surrounded only by shadow and fear.
With bleating throat she called aloud for drink,
Though none could hear the crying of this lamb,
Who'd stumbled as she walked a path of stone,
Though hoping that she would be found by Love.

But many miles across the valley, Love
Was tending to his flock beside the well
That he had built from ancient fathers' stone.
He did not know his lamb was lost in fear,
Who'd strayed far from the path, this lonely lamb,
In search of fresher water she could drink.

After all the flock had taken drink,
The shepherd touched each woolen head with love,
But worried when he did not see his lamb,
Who'd stumbled on the path beside the well,
Asleep beneath the stars, alone in fear,
Cradled in her lonely bed of stone.

He journeyed down the weary path of stone,
Taking neither food nor bed nor drink,
Undaunted neither by dark night nor fear,
He lit his way with glowing heart of love
To seek the lost one sleeping by deep well,
The lost and lonely, bleating, dreaming lamb.

He searched from stone to stone to find his lamb,
And when he found her, gave her drink from well,
Awakening her from fear in arms of love.