My Faith
My faith is different from most,
Whose faith is believing God exists.
I know He is real—I have known
Since I almost died by my own hands,
As I have known that hell is real, and
Far more terrible than any imagined.
I have seen its utter blackness while
My soul—which I had denied like
I had God Himself—was drenched
In torment, that pain beyond pain
Perhaps I had been there before,
For my soul called out, in words
or thought I cannot say—
“How long will it last?”
And then God released my soul
From hell, returned it to my
Near drowned body lying on
The bank of a Vermont river,
Pulled from its spring-gorged
Torrents by a fearless soldier.
So my faith is different, for
Unlike intellectuals wont
To scorn the possibility of
A Being immeasurably
More intelligent than
Their triple-digit IQ’s,
A knowing on a scale
Unfathomable to those
Capable of only one
Thought at a time and
Unable to occupy more
Than a solitary space.
And my faith differs from
Those sure of God’s love,
Certain they are among
The chosen and Heaven’s
Gate will swing wide open
For their kind of believer
While shutting tight for
Those of a different ilk.
A Catholic heaven, or
Hindu heaven, or
A Muslim paradise?
Perhaps the Buddha’s
Nirvana, or the Tao
Promised Land?
Unlike those faiths,
I cannot exclude,
For I have felt
God’s power both
In terror and love,
And so must feel,
Must believe all
Who long for
Heaven’s love
Will one day
Arrive….
MY DREAMS ARE LIKE POEMS
My dreams are like poems,
They come to me
Through that unseen door
To the unknown mind.
Why and when they come
I know not—in my youth
They came as child’s play
First, then later as poems
Of soft love and hard lust,
Some written, some lived.
As my youth aged,
The poemdreams faded,
Until one forgotten day
The great door slammed
Shut without a sound.
For half a life-time
It was sealed tight,
Forever I believed—
Until some small wonder
Chanced to pry it open.
(What I do not know-
Perhaps the memory
Of a tangible dream
Of a long lost love.)
Now the dreams come
In platoons, the poems
Oft with them—two sides
Of the same golden coin?
MY NEIGHBOURS
My neighbours are charming,
An old couple in love through
Sixty some years and six kids.
Phil had been an engineer,
Doubtless with formidable mind
But he was usually reticent,
While Nancy loved conversation.
Her wit I strove to match when
We met by chance at the café
Where the Pie Lady made her
Treats of muffins and pie and
Quiche with cups of rich coffee.
Nancy could turn a pun with a
Flick of her tongue, and always
I was so amazed—they’re nearly
Ninety and so engaged with life,
One would think getting old,
Really old was not so bad—and
Their love has lasted so long,
Undiminished, unblemished….
But now Phil sleeps most of the day
While Nancy wears his coat by mistake
And thinks she is going to the doctor
When her friend is driving her just
For a haircut—THIS is not what we
Think, a second childhood-- a child
Has its own world but it is freedom
Itself Phil and Nancy are now losing.
They are losing their minds,
he slowly, she a bit sooner.
But when they sleep at night,
she still pulls the blanket o’er
his thin old body, an act of
love and a proof Nancy is
yet there…
She passed before him--
(my secret prayer filled)
their love still whole,
but oh I miss her wit
every time I bite into
a slice of cherry pie.
Musings…
Could the words have come?
Could I have made whole worlds
Peopled with the good and bad,
And all the happy and all the sad?
Could I have dared to eat a peach,
And boldly painted outside the lines?
What might I have made of my life
If I had only tried to fly without wings?
But life is always as it wills itself,
Forever as it should be, as it must be.
Metal and Wood
Wood and metal,
Metal and wood.
One is warm, of fire,
Its beauty carved
From the tree of life.
The other near ice,
Hard, forever dead,
Strong as death too—
Never to burn, but
Also never to feel.
Music's Magic
They all speak to me:
Sometimes alone, like
A solo cello with its
Sad, plaintive voice
Tugging at my soul
Like a magnet of
Life's deep mystery.
Or maybe a small
Group will gang up
Into a quartet or
Sextet or even a
Tough octet, eight
Musicians as one
In both fury and
Gentle softness.
But sometimes I
Go all out—I take
On a hundred or
More at once as
They breathe life
Into a vast bold
Symphony by
Mahler, Brahms,
Or scores of souls
Reborn in music,
Music that makes
Magic, coming in
My ears while
Putting a taste
Of eternity on
My tongue….
MEASURING GOD
How are you going to do it?
How do you weigh the Infinite?
How do you measure the Absolute?
How do you test the IQ of Omniscience?
Would you measure God for a suit?
Would you ask His age, or how much
money He has in the Bank of Heaven?
What about race, or His education?
What are His interests, likes or dislikes,
pet peeves, political opinions? ...Or
maybe you want to just ask one thing
only—what are His dreams, his loves?
Only you would ask God such,
only you would try to scale divinity,
only you can breed such arrogance--
the tiger burning bright asks for no
accounting, nor does the deer as it’s
slain, not the eagle as it soars nor
the reptile as it slithers—but you
do, you creature of singular gifts.
You want to take the measure of
your Creator, though you’ve been
told you’re made in His image,
something not told to the lion
or the grizzly bear or the butterfly,
and still you want to measure Him--
But why?
Why must you always try to
put God in a box?
You made untold numbers of idols,
all reflecting your vanity, not His.
And then when he came to you as
one of you, a human being, what did
you do? You could not understand how
God could speak to you so simple and
true, you could not grasp what He gave,
and so, you killed him.
A few of the wisest of you knew, knew
it was never God you wanted to test,
never God you wanted to take hold of,
never God you wanted to understand--
it was you all along you wanted to see,
that thing called a soul which you both
doubted and longed for, that thing even
death could not harm, that Being of air
and light you saw in the man crucified.
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