Dusty roads take me out
To the furthest reaches -
To places not thought of
Way off highway stretches -
To the rocky vales where
A lonely thrasher calls
And scarcely people hear
His excitable songs -
To where a streamlet flows -
Whatever it be named -
Where a line of hoodoos
See the course slowly change -
To the canyon shadows
I find laudable
To marvel at the rows
Of piñon for a while -
My lover – he feels blank –
His personality shows through
Those shades of love and kindness
And fears held in check by curfew –
Neither brown nor yellow nor black
But blank with diamond edges
That detect Truth and what
I give back that simply is –
Neither opaque nor translucent
Nor what spectroscopy in between
But fashioned by the eye of God –
Made whole in splendid being.
I have lived a hundred different lives -
Each as different as water is to stone.
I have dreamed a few far-away dreams
To discover that they were mine alone.
I have felt at times a trace of love
But was shown again that theirs was untrue.
I have often tried to bury the past
To find that it rarely stays inhumed.
I gave life to undeserving powers
But I was too late in retaking it.
I have seen the glory of success
But it was not my own to celebrate.
I have thrown my rage at the hailstorm
Then retreated quickly to a burrow.
They tell me that I perished
But I've never felt more alive
And the warmth of your presence
Still lingers in my mind.
I ventured longer than an arm -
Beyond the dim horizon -
Further than a murky quasar
Yet less than a prayer's span.
When you stop to think of me -
When tears can't help but fall -
Know that it's okay to grieve
And let them wash your soul
Faith - it is a journey
And I bear the scattering wind
That steers abroad my dinghy
To the edge of some horizon -
'Though it be peculiar to me.
Faith - it is also an epiphany -
One that hung in darkness
And had been waiting for me.
I am one who groped for it -
Pulled and did its unraveling ...
A brook trickled easily down
As poetry running unbound
And I stood on a rock
To hear the steady stream
Of foreign words gurgled.
A hazy shaft of light beamed down -
Laser-pointing through piney boughs -
And where it gently struck -
Columbine shined and teemed
The floor with emeralds.
By the way a rock pigeon cooed
Deliberately out of sight
And moved me to rise from bed
With my own jingle in heart
And July's breath stills the pond
In its disarming manner
And robs the chimes of their song
And warms the oleander
And the way a cottontail
Sits and stirs among the grass
And a quail stands atop the wall
And doesn't mind my presence
Is something calling again
From the distant hills outbound?
Is it a small voice within
Or something hidden without?
What awaits you down the road
Once you cross the valley bridge?
Should you find it and take hold
Will it satiate a wish?
Will you bring just a trace home
To keep like you've never left?
Would you soon divulge of some
Memories upon your breath?
Meet me at the freshet
Where there is a gathering -
A swath of pilgrims wait
For to find eternity -
Where there flows an old hope
And God's love is evergreen -
Where His deeds are retold
Of which move our hearts to sing.
Bind His words to your mind;
Let them be our canopy.
We will uphold in time
These truths to the enemy
And then Christ will steal us
To a place of victory -
Forever loved and thus
Forevermore we will be!
Hope only seems fallen
At the end of battles;
After the dust settles -
It reappears erelong.
Hope carries a spark -
An internal light -
A fire for life
That eschews the dark.
Hope sings an anthem -
Once fear is put out
And despair is bound -
Its song is heard again.