Elegy Of Lemon Trees When Winter Ends

The pale white lemon blossoms jerk to life,
fooled by false promises of early spring,
all bright and brilliant, shimmering in white,
they spew lovely fragrance to dancing breeze.
Visions of sweet nectared fruit course their veins;
limbs, boughs, and twigs rush life giving juices,
fill cracks and crevices with faith filled hope,
the kind that does not think of tomorrow.

It is the next day when dull clouds roll in,
foreboding blanketers of dying sun,
stifling monsters exhaling frigid air.
Winter returns with all its latent lies.
Too late the blossoms understand their fate.
Too late they fight to save themselves the pain.
Too late they lose their helpless grasp of life.
One by one they drift dying to the ground.

The earth is covered with a sea of white,
a field of crosses on a thousand graves.
Like massive shrouds they whitewash barren roots,
a million dead with others yet to fall.
Resurrection seems little more than myth.
The whistling winter winds shout out the lie,
the vicious lie that this is all there is.
Behold those silly fools who disbelieve.

Such are the ways of resurrection days,
appearing after winter strikes its blow,
that final shock that ends all hope of life.
“How can it come again?” the scoffers ask,
“See, there is no fruit upon the branches.”
And, truth be told, we can’t imagine it,
for we know where all the flowers have gone,
decaying, decomposing in the muck.

A day goes by, then maybe two or three,
when hope becomes a fading memory,
a story’s end, where all just fades to black.
Then blasting brilliant comes a sunny day.
New blossoms burst and turn the tree to white,
a million tiny orbs quick turn to gold.
A tree, all weighted down with yellowed fruit
for after death, there’s rising up again.

Mountain Solitude - 02/15/09

Rock and stone bulging from hard packed core,
creating a pock marked, marble colored face,
stubbled grasses, bushes, trees clinging, clasping
to dirt filled pores forming patchwork aging skin.
Together we become a bluish globe viewed far away,
so my face would lift to you.

Inches from where I sit it is all bones and mass.
Further down all molten liquid core and fiery heat.
Places I imagine, but where I can not go
lest I set off cataclysmic storms beyond control,
like reaching into farmhouse stoves to grab at coals,
so my face would lift to you.

Squalling birds cry lonely mating calls to distant ears,
while creatures scurry past my shoes with determined
purposes known only to some great insistence.
The larger animals keep wary distance, their ears alert,
nervy messengers skittering impulses from a greater mind,
so my face would lift to you.

A tiny gathering of chipping birds flock 'round my table,
beggars searching for the crumbs they pray will drop,
needs and longings overcome their fear and dread,
one drops a seed pod on my book and briefly smiles,
I thank him for his little gift and the greater gift of Love,
so my face would bow to you.

Vision Never Had

I wish I had seen my birthday cake
when I was five and laughing
at the taste of frosting on my tongue,
but so very, very blind.
I wish I had seen Dad’s face
when he sat on the tractor
and held me on his lap,
I felt him smile then
through the warmth of his arms,
guessing he loved me
by the gentleness of his touch,
but I would have liked to see
the love in those deep set eyes,
that are foggy black in my memory.
I wish I had seen the tornado cloud
that swept the corn crib
from its concrete foundation,
wafting it away to Vandy’s farm,
landing it perfectly intact,
but a mile down the road.
I remember the sucking silence
just before it struck
and the hideous howl of the wind
that announced its devastating rage,
but I never saw it coming.
I remember smelling dark loaved bread
baking in the wood stove oven.
It lingers still in some long lost lobe,
racing to my memory at a moment’s call,
but I would love to have seen
the butter dripped slices
Mom placed on one of the saucers
she got from saving Green Stamps,
and looking through the S&H catalog.
I remember the piercing pain
when I touched the stove grating
she always told me not to touch,
but I would like to have seen
the blistered puffing redness
that became the whitened scar
I wear fifty years later.
I wish those blurry memories
would straighten up their act
and show themselves,
instead of hiding in the mist.

Four Corners

At the ever changing edge
where water, sand, air intersect,
I become the fourth dimension,
that redirects, reforms, refreshes
all the elements scattering
like when you were a kid at Four Corners,
you stood in all those states at once,
reached your hand to touch the wind,
back when you knew your real name,
everything made perfect sense,
except for bullies, sisters,
the truer purpose of things.
The ‘51 Ford had crossed the Great Divide,
so now the water flowed differently,
if there had been any in that corroded radiator,
or those scorched dry beds that zigzagged to the sea.
The spired rocks spoke of other connections,
but they were red stone deaf.
You could not see the brown sand from there
where the shells of life all crash and break
where tidal waves of spirit explode against the wind.
I stand fierce at the ragged edge
of water, wind, sand, time, space,
stick my big toe in and
change the course of planets,
the way the rivers run,
and, maybe, touch the hem of God.

The Wadi

As veiled ones cry out in the desert,
search the walls of the canyon inclines,
do they see in the death all around them,
the longing of well hidden signs?
The red rusted side of the iron,
the green glow of coppery ruth,
while the voice of a whispering wadi,
gives hints of a soft echoed truth.
The clefts in the rock lift the music,
join their tenor to vein fissured bass,
while the ribs of burned brown saguaro,
like tree rings, still murmur of grace.
Once the streams sang out in the Negev.
Torrents swirled and eddied and flowed.
Deep pools of refreshment once lingered,
where the weald and woodland would grow.
But now in the baked barren desert,
when it seems that all has gone dry,
the whispering words of the wadi
cry out that we don’t have to die.
For there comes a deluge to the desert,
springs again will cascade and renew.
Tears that once coursed down a mountain,
now gather in life giving dew.
Then the wadi will strain to contain it,
and the trees will all clap their hands.
The cacti will laugh their good fortune,
as the waters stream out on the sand.

Ro'sh Ruwm (Psalm 3:3)

With downcast eyes,
I steal the shame,
and live the lesser lie,
of who I should have been
in that moment
two lifetimes ago
when I was but a mouse
in lion’s paws.

I did not squeak then
or run to nest,
too scared to move,
but slid past
sharpened teeth
to the rotting acids
that eat me still,
devouring flesh and life.

And now,
with the eyes of distance,
curse myself
and do not hear,
through all the haze,
the timid squealing,
but just that terrorizing roar.

On darker days,
I still believe the lie of ‘if’,
the borrowed shame,
the unnamed sin,
that would hold me frozen
just out of reach
of the lifter of my face.

Rondeau For The Child God

When he began this great crusade
did he feel the blood course through his veins
as he slipped beneath the bright brocade
and crept into our human plane -
a holy child of virgin maid?

Was he startled by the sin of Cain -
our almost lifelike masquerade
when he first met what we profaned?
When he first met what we profaned?

Did he long just then to be unmade,
to feel no more our awful pain
and run to Abba’s serenade,
but chose instead to break the chain,
as child and God and unafraid?
Both child and God and unafraid!