2/12/2020

A Life in a Day

2/12/2020

I wonder at Indigo light glinting off 

the glass still Napa River at sunrise;

at the Caramel smooth depth

of a cup of coffee skillfully made;

at cool air perfumed by eucalyptus and wild licorice; 

at the peaceful expanse of 

San Francisco from 30,000 feet above it;

at the goddess whose velvet embrace

welcomes me home tonight.

Wonder has overawed me!

I wonder at the extravagance of God; 

to simply give all that one so helpless as I

could ever need, and then still more.

I wonder how it is that a simple sinful man

became a man of such true wealth. 

Above all I wonder at a truth—

that wonder of this kind

enlarges a man, expands his

universe, so that 

he is set free from the mad world of 

ambition and competition and puny envy,

and instead enters into 

an inexhaustible inheritance every morning.

This is no boast, for I did not seek it out.

No, a wild rush of wind

simply blew by

and carried me away.

And that is how this man in wonder is

paradoxically in motion towards the good,

and yet I remain utterly--praiselessly--passive.

Blood Legacy

“If you were buried with him in the likeness of his death, surely you will be with him in the likeness of his resurrection.” Romans 6:5

Blood Legacy


They found a man reviled for his effeminate kindness,
and they beat him,
spraying his cowards blood so that it became a viscous rain,
smearing it sadistically upon their smiling faces,
painting themselves war heroes with his inferior blood.

One said, “Should we laugh?”
Another answered “Should we not take pleasure in justice?”

The weaker he became at the ferocious flurry of pummeling fists,
the more intoxicated with power they became.

A synergy of sadistic hedonism moved them,
so that their voices became a crazed, incoherent symphony
of hatred.

Shrieks of pain
and waves of laughter
rose to cacophonous crescendo
until the broken man gave up his impotent soul.

Stillness settled over the scene, for even a just killing
can create a mood of contemplative dissatisfaction.

As they shuffled back to their homes, heads hung low,
the dead man called to them in love,
having risen from the dead.

Incensed that he was still alive,
and that he would dare address them again
with patronizing compassion,
they destroyed him again,
confirming their strength.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

Their anger grew into irrational, spitting vituperations
of malice until they killed him again,
this time hacking him to pieces with swords.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

But they kept killing him, because that is all they knew,
and that is all they knew to teach to their children.
Every generation killed him,
and with increasingly evolved methods.
They made it their destiny as descendents to destroy him
once and for all.
Killing him became their legacy.

But each time he rose and called to them in love,
only to be destroyed again,
and again and again.

One bright day after generations of this rabid bloodthirstiness;
after a river of this
one man’s blood had flowed,
a child of this murderous brood
in trembling empathy embraced him,
only to be destroyed with him.

But he raised them together

and proclaimed…
“Enough of my blood has flowed.”

November, 2007

Traffic

This poem was written before we moved into a much simpler life here in Bakersfield, CA. It was inspired by an all too common occurrence in our overcrowded harried lives when we lived in the big city. The "serpent" reference is significant because the devil is described as the great deceiver.

Traffic
Hollow faces turn their passionless gaze
Toward the crowded horizon…

Long ago, a liars voice beckoned and somewhere someone responded, the
rest herded after.

Generations following this path have cut a groove into our humanity.
we all spill into it, pressing upon
each other, competing for progress toward prosperity,
all energy of resistance to the voice
dissipated.
Sheer momentum has taken over.

No one questions the migration of this mob,
each assuming his place in the endless line,
each child of the scientific age mechanically clinging to his place, only
questioning relative position and not the destination.

It does not feel the sublime, this serpentine demigod.
Its poisonous breath stifles sensation.
It assimilates individuality, expanding its mass through augmentation.
It grows while the people shrink.
It converts the autonomous into automation.

Each looks to the other only for help in their movements toward
The unnamed, unknown and unworthy goal.

No one pauses.
No one thinks.
Individuality is swallowed up
as vermin before The Serpent…

But the traffic grows.



May, 2006

En Memoriam

A common refrain at funerals is that the grieved will "live on in our memories." For an atheist, this must be the only sense in which a person can live on. But is it true? This poem suggests that if we do not live on in reality, we do not live on at all.

En Memoriam

She slips from my grasp,
her image slowly
enveloped in darkness,
distorted by distance,
fading into the fathoms
of sinking separation.

She will not live
En Memoriam.
Her vibrant individuality
will also succumb to the strength of the abyss.
All our efforts to keep her alive in mind are futile,
for her image too will be subsumed into the vanishing depths
of human forgetfulness.


March, 2007

A Vision

Here is a poem written during the days after our daughters were born 13 weeks prematurely. At the time, the question of their survival was very much an open question. I wrote this to express my personal struggle with the fragility and scarcity of the good in this dangerous world.

A Vision

Stumbling toward the empty horizon over vast
tracks of scorched and bitter earth,
I could faintly see a single rose ascending
boldly among acres of twisted thorns.

Vain ambition
and futile hope
compelled me to press through
the dense forest of cruel thorns;
to approach the solitary remains of the good.

Drawn powerfully onward by the
the irresistible call of fragile fading beauty,
that I might
with extinguishing eyes behold,
and with trembling hands embrace,
the single glory,
the single justification,
for all my sublime suffering.

Pressing on,
thorns ripping my flesh,
blood mingling with the parched earth,
so that in the instant my sinful blood met
the thirsty sand,
out sprung new, more vigorous vines,
entangling me motionless in the piercing truth.

At last, and from a distance,
imprisoned within myself,
all vain energy and vain hope
dissipated,

It was mine
merely to
catch the diluted fragrance of that solitary rose
as it wafted by on a vanishing breeze,

and then to expire.


May, 2008

Depression

depression comes,

when hope blurs opaque,

and you wake up from your dreams to

an unrelenting ache.

for some depression

becomes their genius, their muse--

until history shows, like with Poe, that

she does nothing but abuse.

still I listen to her

in the morning when the rain descends,

unable to resist her melancholy

song, nor ascend again.

do I take comfort?

knowing that not long after the storm

the earth erupts in fertile majesty,

and beauty is reborn.

perhaps I am mystified

by this world of futile contrasts--

another cycle of joy and pain,

neither of which will last.

1997

Polytheism

This poem was inspired by the court case in which the phrase, "under God," was deemed unconstitutional. It speaks to the expectation from many evangelicals that the state conduct its business according to God's revelation in Scripture.

One Nation Under Gods

They say polytheism is dead,
but I am too American to believe it.

We call it diversity, pluralism,
the eclectic spirit—an enlightened land
where disagreement is our only agreement.

But this is the land of many gods,
each dutifully worshipped in congress
by those too clever to worship any one
exclusively.

Deferential homage is paid to our
celebrities, politicians, religious leaders and their gods,
like Lincoln in his majestic Parthenon.
And each in his proper turn.

We Americans look back on prior civilizations
with haughty eyes,
in the manner a modern physician looks
upon the barbarism of bloodletting.

Who can compete with the sophistication
of the American Pantheon?
We offer no Messiah!
We offer a thousand Messiahs—each
dancing for our amusement, and,
more importantly, each subject to our approval.

The American spirit abhors the
Theocratic tyranny of a single Deity!
No solitary god will enjoy a monopoly here!
In America, the best Jesus can hope
for is to be one of our many representatives,
like Ted Kennedy.

Americans demand their options!
Our options define us. Without them we
are controlled, but this freedom must
extend to our gods as well.
Our gods must be subject to fluctuating
market conditions and the complex
variety of our appetites.

We must be free to find the god that suits us!

And the prophet says,
“Perhaps it is we who must be transformed to suit God.”

November, 2001

Pearls

A poem written after my 3rd or 4th year of teaching.

“Do not cast pearls before swine”
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl of great price”
~The Words of Jesus

Pearls

While the teacher stood and expounded the ancient truths of God
heaven opened,

and a shower of pearls rained down upon the students,
clacking and dancing upon the tile floor,
bouncing off petrified hearts
like hail on concrete.

The sound was deafening, but no one heard,
no one reacted, grasped the priceless pearls,
no one noticed their presence.

Seeing they could not see and hearing they could not hear.

Stillness settled over the room. The dance of the pearls was over.
An insolent student asked,
“When does this class end?”

Whereupon the bell rang
and the students herded for the door
like suffocating desperate animals pressing for air,
trampling and kicking the pearls
now scattered aimlessly about the antiseptic tile.

A few tripped over them and cursed them,
incensed that they had impeded progress to the exit.

But at last they were free of the classroom.

Later that evening,
the night janitor was puzzled to see that thousands of pearls were left behind.
He assumed they were worthless, having been so abandoned.

And so, these pearls,
the sublime treasure of God,
the fruit of God’s mind,
offered freely in order to be treasured as ornaments of the human mind,
were both regarded as trash and discarded as trash.

May, 2005