steam drift, stir
the surface of warmth
in a cup you hold;

fog follow the morning
river as it bends
before you;

cloud cling to the
summit of some mountain
you view from afar;

merely an observer,
you think as you lift
the cup in your hands
to drink

I saw a man walking in the cold.
Hood up. Pace brisk. Hands gloved.
Behind him, the sun was rising.
Yellow sky warmed orange and red.
I wanted to cry out
Turn around!
Unglove your hands.
Dehood your head.
Look.
The light that has already come.
Beauty that is, arriving across
distance we cannot fathom.
And yet you walk on.

Often when I pass the cemetery
the sprinklers are watering the graves.

Occasionally there is the sound of a mower.

‍

When you quiet there is so much.
The world swirls. You are in that now.  

Cars rush on the not distant road,
excited voices pass you by and
birds, there is more than one.
Even the wind ruffles leaves and grass.

Then you hear your feet.
Across gravel, or pavement?
Maybe it is a soft dirt path,
narrow but worn.

‍

I walked across the blacktop
and was surprised (again) at
a thousand sun-glimmering
rock fragments gathered
from places wild and free;
as if even in covering
we couldn't hide

Flock of white
above frozen lake,
birds in morning light
gliding like flakes
that fell overnight

eventually settling
surface blanketed.
I imagine
through the window
flapping squawking
followed by immense
stillness

for seemingly
eternity, but skyward
they rise again

a tree that grows
over generations
strong and prominent.
Great kings of the air
make their homes in it.

Attend the acorn;
some work, mostly waiting.

We who plant
rarely see the eagles
nest in high branch.
Our views are
sapling form.

A whole life waiting
for the yeast to rise,
hopeful for the bread
of life to come.

The air is cold today,
crisp inhale fills so
even my lungs feel it.

‍
Cool breath in and
a cloud of warm exhale,
visible by some science
now known to us,
a feature of the design
we encounter by attending
each rise and fall
new winds of His
Spirit born and reborn.

Be still. Remember
your true identity: 

created in the image

of a loving God.

Breathe - you are embodied,
designed and intimately known

by one who loves you

better than you

He knows what you need.

Open your eyes.
See a world you did not,

could not make- full 

of creatures, beauty, people

that delight your shared Creator.

Examine your heart and mind.
Let go of those

things you are

holding too tightly.

Go
Be salt and light.

moves too quickly to

capture the aspirational.
A long ascent of
Ventroux with Confessions

exhausts social feeds and

sends us skimming

Wikipedian paragraphs,

bare minimums constructed

by competing hands.

Yet I wonder

as perhaps Petrarch did:

what might we see 
if,
along with Augustine,

we climbed?

‍

Rain makes an auditory map.

If you close your eyes,

you’ll hear it better:

whole world awash in sound—
tinkling on the aluminum

then slapping the concrete
when it overflows the gutter,

each drop telling you something

about the depth of that puddle,

the shape of those leaves,

the gratitude of this grass.

‍

I am the first clue: You look around and you will find something, but you have to look.
-The beginning of a treasure hunt my eldest made for the younger children.
‍_____

Leaves change. Not so quickly that
you notice it in one sitting, but fast
enough, life on a scale of days.

Time is, but doesn’t seem linear.
We grasp moments; stop motion memory:
Green. Gold. Gone.

Daughter, my eyes are open now.
Help me to look expectantly for
the treasure buried in my field of vision.

‍

There are moments
the light goes sideways.
It happens at beginnings
and at endings.

Then we see things differently;
highlights - colored golden.
Night’s haze, dew’s glory,
more visible and shining.

Not that midday harshness.
Not that intensity.
But the same source,
the same recipient.

He could be that way.
Intense in focus,
but warm, genuinely laugh,
smile like he knew something.

What do we notice
when the light grows long?
There is contrast but
shadow is more than absence.

‍

For Harrison

Take these tiles of a life,
rearrange them as you like-
a glass, a vase, when broken down,
can become mosaiced ground.

A shell, a home, washed by wave,
leaves flesh behind, defies the grave,
brittle, crackling, falling, drown'd.
'til all be grains in sandy sound.

But take these grains, apply some fire,
the glassy eye reveals, inspires-
look through to see the beckoning
beauty needs no reckoning.

What sense can read the ripples on the pond,
the mountain ranges of a tree's bark,
or the electrocardiagraphic readout
of the earth's geologic strata?

Ink seems insufficient to capture
the wonders of the human fingerprint.
We think through these epidermal ridges
the signals of touch are amplified.

So if each person has a unique print
then each print uniquely amplifies
ripples moving across the world
both sense and emanate some source.

Clear
as water can be;
as air.
A vision of something
through
the other.

Crisp
as edges;
as contrast.
Delineation
between
more than one.

Concise
color of the sea
line of the trunk
roots reaching down
waves rising up
light pouring
over it all.

You might think
with a title like that
this should be
serious but it is
not really I
just read a word
I didn't know
and it was
rolling around
in my head.

I am cutting the grass
or fertilizing a garden bed or
perhaps futzing with the grill cover
when, from across the yard's expanse,
a child comes running with delight,
exclaiming - Did you see?! A worm...
or, Could you hear? A bird!
singing out from the tree
like a bell from a tall tower
calling

Rembrandt’s tulip, floral goddess,
is broken. Some virus
in the bulb. Yet Love,
look, streaks of red
on white like flames.
Imagine whole fields,
seas of overwhelming temporary
brightness that blinds
then sharpens.
This breaking is beauty—
some chord struck far deeper
in the fibers of life—
love drawn and redrawn
transcendent like self-portraits,
the Master across ages sincere.
Can you view yourself this way?

Immersed in light beyond time,
variegated impression of the Divine
calling out to the Divine.

‍

Partial inspiration: Flora

‍

A cold Gallic campaign
attempts Capitoline Hill.
Heed, O bloated Patricius:
Numbers betray. You,
with leaf but no fruit,
symbol of the Fall,
under his scrutiny.
_____

A Response

Defy Peter. Rise
with widow’s mite
and mustard’s seed.
Rise with hope;
and Rise to be

Take up your place
lay down your life.
This forming role
restores you thrice.

‍

Peter Turchin's work was recently featured in the Atlantic.

The trees are laden,
bearing up
not that light, airy,
but a spring snow.

This isn’t retribution,
yet gravity,
Earth’s desire draws
despite these branches.

As sun’s melt works
a bird calls
and I have no answer but
to listen

At these powerful moments she recedes,
drawing attention to a pond miles away-
a deer drinking, a flower opening, a blackberry growing.
...
Yet there she appears, the berry
staining her teeth, its bush scraping her arm,
falling asleep in a field while observing the moon,
awakened by the soft nuzzle of the doe.
__
She offers the call of wild geese in a blue sky,
I wonder,
gathering up armfuls of blossoming swan feathers,

how her back, knees must ache from the stillness,
the waiting just for watching,
an entire night for a singular image,

a handful of lines! Or
perhaps they are kept lithe from the dancing
of her mind resting on the rock as the deer nears.

‍

Refers to Mary Oliver

Lucky the clover
if one can see
Triune God in leaves of three.

Green the soul
when four leaves found
knows with the three the fourth is bound.

The lone leaf shivers
anxious, anticipating
gravity, rebirth.

‍

a haiku.

I know that sweetness
(Which is promised, hoped)
Yet a point on the horizon
Someday lived up close.

Walking, sometimes dwelling
In this momentary land
I am come, upon such
Brokenness. Cannot stand.

Now, this moment, not
That one still far off,
A time of brambles,
Ashes, sign of the cross-

--

Here is truth
Echoed clear,
Winter’s spring
Cold but fair.

‍

Cell Division, Light/
Sound Travel - Beats Per Minute,
The Metronome Click.
Speed at Which One Comprehends
Life’s Rhythm, Key, Origin.

‍

a tanka

Along the Rapidan river
The trees are standing still
Yet running through your mind
And dancing with your will—

---

An eye beholds the detail
A heart to know the whole
You wander, wait, and watch
Trusting the beauty of the soul.

Easier to find truth when you know it to be
Simpler to awake beauty with a mind that truly sees
Wonder feeds attention, that great gift of life
That flows from tree to tree, drawing out our sight.

I wrote backwards
finding truth with
filled time

time filled
with truth finding
backwards wrote I

‍

The Jews have long believed
that day starts with night.

What begins in darkness
dwells in the conquering light.

From the peace of rest, creation.
The moon’s mere reflection, the sun.

We rise renewed each morning,
though through shadow and cloud we have come.

‍

A crown alights
on Lent’s bare branch,
nature’s gift of white.

Adornment born, some new skin
traces, smoothes bent lines.

they spoke of the harmony of the spheres,
assigning to beauty a noise appropriately
imperceptible. In sweetness, in love
so rare did they hear any notes play,
and treasured they were because of it. Today
we have sound without harmony,
cacophonous thought. Stand on Pythagoras’ 
legs, but we cannot see
for all our light, we still do not hear.

There is, in me, a longing 
to know

reach without grasp 
finding only hope.

Searching and signing, yet sighing.
Delving, dividing; defying. 

Some fact some where.
A bite of the apple.

In the depths I find the self
and there I find something else

I am known without 
fully knowing.

The tree dances without moving;
branches elegant, arched, beautiful.

Imagine the time-lapse:
see it shaped.
Moving as the light moves,
reaching out to the beloved giver
of that which you cannot quite see.
Taking into itself,
knowing the light.
Becoming.

The thick plastic melted slowly, the letters
lifting from the sign, curling and contorting in the heat.
“They must've been applied cheaply.” 
Is what an onlooker would've observed. 

A car running over the ashes
as they fell on Main Street.
Is how I imagined the episode ending. 

It was a stupid sign,
something about always shopping local.
Never should've hung in the first place.
Waste of someone's money as I said 

No officer, not an act of violence;
Yes neighbor, of course I shop local; 
But the word 
always
So needlessly and carelessly 
Impossible

Listen to someone
Try to explain
The dynamics of waves
                           of wind.

Rushing for thousands of miles
Across the
To the
Where

We experience these
So often
As chaos,

Yet even they
Obey the Word.

Our Lord is a poet.
Consider this
Over a meal with friends:
The wine is blood red,
Bread roughly flesh colored.

John calls
The Word
Him.

the road has risen to meet you,
the wind at times blown you back.
the sun's warmth has been blinding,
the rain's fall flooded your tract.

this path's steps are not even,
the weather not promised to hold.
for this is the way of the pilgrim,
and the progress is made in your soul.

so no matter the incline
or strength of the gale,
no matter the size of the rain,
may you find good ale,
warm bread, and companions
until we meet again.

This was written as a remix of the traditional Irish Blessing:
May the road rise to meet you
May the wind always be at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
The rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of his hand

now when you are not alone
you will see the world stop-
breathless onlookers frozen.

for even in our masks we are laid bare-
aware of exposure,
unsure of being closer.

we try to graph
something we've always known
on some higher cartesian plane

you breathe therefore you are
an echo of the I Am
and it is not fit that
you should be alone.

‍

2020