The Sex-Workers are Thrown a Christmas Party (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

It’s daytime and for now you’re safe with us.

We want nothing from you other than

to have you hear that you are precious and

more valuable than you believe. Please trust

this to be true. I know the cruel unjust

nights you must spend to send money home can

obscure this truth as fast as the nameless man

who uses you to feed his aimless lust.

And he is like the plastic Christmas tree

in the corner, its lime-green candy sheen

shines awkwardly, a patchwork of crowded

swirl-bunches of thin film sheets mounted

into a mound as unlike a fragrant noble fir

as he is from the young prince you deserve.

---

I have just returned from Cambodia where a team of us from our church had the privilege of reaching out to "entertainment workers" in Phnom Penh's red light district, hoping to be messengers of dignity and hope in the degrading and inhumane world of consumer sex. Young women are forced into this line of work due to a combination of factors:  extreme poverty, family expectations, cultural acceptance, limited economic options. Many are lured by false pretenses.  Many are trafficked and held against their will.  We were inspired by visionary organizations such as Precious Women, Daughters of Cambodia, and Hagar working with these women to provide income alternatives, education, counseling, trauma care, and community support.

Cake and Eating It Too

If you leave the light on in the bedroom,

you’ll diminish the dazzle of the super moon

out your window.

                                    See the fidgety bridegroom

                 unravel his bow tie in the bathroom mirror

                 and bring  both  limp ends near with weary  diffidence.

If you insist the porch light must stay on

you will miss the nascent rays of dawn.

When your eyes adjust they will be gone.

                 See the bride shift right in the hallway mirror

                 trying to zip up tight her clear ambivalence.

Not until we embrace our darkness can we see the light ahead.  Not until we truly believe that dying to our selfish selves and giving ourselves away is the key to being fully human can we experience the depth of joy in the thrill and risk of love.  

Images: CCO license, public domain, Pixabay.com.

The Collapse of Wall Arch

Nearby campers

thought it thunder

in the middle of the night.

Any wonder?

Thousand tons

of falling sandstone will awake

every fear

that everything

will break at last, will fall in time.

Gravity’s avid

unkind press,

the underdress of water and wind

never rest.

No rest again

for anyone in Devil’s Garden

peering up

or ducking down.

Wall Arch bore no signs of stress

like the crack

in Broken Arch.

Nor was it thin like Landscape’s stretch.

Just a Monday

like any other.

The sun had set. The bats at play.

No star later

said they saw

the moment when the Arch gave way.

---

Some time during the night of August 4, 2008, Wall Arch suddenly collapsed along the popular Devil's Garden Trail in Arches National Park.  Wall Arch was the 12th largest sandstone arch formation in the park at the time.  Later inspection showed microscopic cracks in the structure, but to the eye there was no sign of imminent collapse.

This poem is part of a series of poems reflecting on the nature of becoming, using famous sandstone structures in Arches National Park as the foil.  The Collapse of Wall Arch reminds us of the uncomfortable but unavoidable truth that failure is an essential feature of the process of becoming.  I would add that it is usually (and ironically) our failures more than our successes that more dramatically contribute to our transformation toward wholeness.

Let Me Be Born

Let me be born

morning-light against

this settling,

be the butterfly

dancing free

beyond the tattered chrysalis,

above my infamous

death, laying low

the old dark,

the gaping hole

from which I fly,

far, far beyond its grasp,

how high, how fast

these thermals rush

the Morning Star.

Photo Credit: Public Domain CCO License Pixabay.com

It Seems like God is Never in a Hurry

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we?

Breath comes short, my pounding chest, relentless.

It seems like God is never in a hurry.

After all He carved out valleys fully

using glaciers that count years with inches.

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we?

Did you know the granite boulder’s burly

surface can be cracked by lichen? In this

surely we see God’s not in a hurry!

The glimmering stars we saw last night so clearly

arrived after millions of light-year distance!

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we,

fuming in this traffic, wracked with worry,

while overhead clouds pass like idle princes?

Seems like God is never in a hurry,

never helter-skelter, frantic scurry—

arriving just in time for Caesar’s census.

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we?

Seems like God is never in a hurry.

This is a villanelle inspired by a nature walk up at Donner's Pass last Friday.  Informative signs along the path explained how glaciers had formed the topography around us.  One sign in front of a large granite boulder explained how acid from lichen forms cracks in the granite allowing water (and thence ice) to penetrate the surface and break down the granite, eventually returning its mineral riches to the soil.  When I read that I thought, "Man, God is really OK with slow processes."  My next thought was that maybe I could slow down a little myself.

Photo credit: Pixabay.com: CCO Public Domain

Balanced Rock

Teeter-totter

teetering, tottering

always toward the

slightly weighted edge.

Constant attention

to the correction,

teasing out the

resistant middle,

and Moses’ arms

grow brittle

over the fickle

battlefield of

give and take

rest and run

break and mend

this and that

more and less

press, release

war and peace

again, again.

“When, when, Peace, will you, Peace?”

I am the small ball

juggler careening

atop the beach ball

in the pool.

And now that

I have fallen again

and shown myself

the charlatan

glum in wet

clinging clothes,

I have no will,

heaven knows,

to chase after flotsam.

           -----------

Whittle me with wind,

with rain that planes

flat the grooves

and cuts

the neck away

until I am

what I have so long

sought to become:

an impossibility!

A held-together

defying whether

it’s either-or.

Anomaly in

the world of precise

manufacturing

and more economy.

Carve into me

angles more alarming

than the circus

contortionist,

out of proportion

to the grade

of today’s

immaculate mode!

May Aaron

and Hur hold

each other in

fierce orbit,

each listing

over the ledge

with the recklessness

of falling

were it not for

the mass of the other:

Love rescuing each minute

My Truth

even as Truth fills

My Love with

such weight as

will crush

the shadow it casts

beneath its perilous lean

if ever it should break

and fall so far.

I have conceived of a longer work that features various rock formations inside Arches National Monument in Moab, Utah, and uses each rock formation as a catalyst for musing on the nature of becoming. This is the first draft of the first poem in the project.  In Balanced Rock I am wrestling with the idea that attempting to achieve balance in life through the effort and discipline of "finding the resistant middle" and holding it in place will only create fatigue and eventual failure.  In contrast to that "manufacturing" approach, I instead in the poem pray for a miracle of transformation, effected externally by divine power, which creates in me "balance" by a radical inclusion and embrace of the edges (Truth and Love, Aaron and Hur) over against a compromise of having just the right amount of each.  Healthy life-balance  turns out not so much a heroic act of careful juggling, but a faith-jump into the messy mix of the way different values  shape one another when they are  fully present and allowed to play.  The italicized quote in the middle of the poem is taken from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Peace.

Photo credit:  Pixabay.com:  CCO Public Domain.

Never Outnumbered

Brandish the leaf as a weapon!

Behind you an army of wind.

Spears of sunlight break open

the formidable pass, and thin

wisps of cloud, whatever happens

next, witness the impossible again.

Photo Credit: by Unsplash: Pixabay.com: CCO license

Early Blood

The bloated moon in early rise

scowls an angry orange,

menacing the as yet vacant sky.

But only wait a little while.

Climbing on its arc,

accompanied by the slowly emboldened  stars,

see it soften into yellow,

welcoming once again

the wonder of all at-the-window children.

Is not every worthwhile start

marked by early blood,

the sting of faltering hope and failing heart?

Before Yorktown must not there

come the dismal midnight

crossing of the icy Delaware?

Photo Credit: Skeeze: Pixabay.com Public Domain CCO License

Scoreless

O that a soundtrack

were always playing

at my back. The swelling

strings and sad oboe

would turn poignant

my ordinary moments,

and even I, after

awhile, might begin

to believe that even

this mattered, this

dull aimless stroll

beneath a silent heaven.

Photo Credit: Unsplash: Pixabay.com: CCO Public Domain

In the Mid-Afternoon

Over the hills

slow and shallow

roll the dark clouds,

pregnant with sweet rain,

dragging heavy shadows.

Photo Credit: David Kasich: CCO Public domain: pixabay.com

Thin Line Between

Ocean waves stay

shy behind the gentle

rising beach.

Fire, in your stone ring

dance, flame fingers

held by each.

Bomb, be locked by

guard and code

and double fingerprint.

Mountain molten

magma free your steam

through crust-veined vents.

Vaccine, with demure

deploy your

tiny coterie.

Oh, Desire, bind

your power

to this golden ring.

I have been thinking how good powerful things, if they should breach their boundaries, can turn deadly and wreak havoc.  How thin the line can be between life and death, all depending on whether boundary lines are drawn appropriately, and if those boundaries hold. 

Photo Credit: Albatros67, CCO Public Domain.  www.pixabay.com

Running Things

The family in

the one-bedroom

flat has neither

internet

nor Dish TV.

Their little children

will one day

be running things.

The contralto

in another

breeches role

yields to

the tiny limbed

soprano born

the heroine

of running things.

My Chevy needs

another jump.

Battery

or solenoid

or something else—

one failing cog

in the world

of running things.

Panty hose,

children’s noses,

world wide web,

melting butter,

dirty rivers,

guilty thieves,

the clock the king

of running things.

Photo credit: hpgruesen: CCO Public Domain: pixabay.com

Gun Lap for the Mile

No race is ever a steady deed,

no gradual slackening from first to last;

the large store of energy

cannot be freed in a careful pour.

The worst of it is actually

toward the first lap turn

when the flush of fresh adrenaline

abruptly pulls up short,

or finishing the second round

when the half feels like a whole,

with a whole half yet to go,

and who knows how much more

grit is left to shake the obstinate bear.

With joints seizing, jaw clenched,

lung cages like old jails

are wrenched open at lap four,

when the mesmerizing spell splits

at the sudden report, and through the crack

rushes a gust, a shove,  a love that turns

weightless heavy feet and sets coarse

gray hair waving wild in wind,

and wheelchair wheels to their spin

and glint in slanted sun;

and everyone is leaning forward!

Back straight now, muscles

screaming their defiant

delight at the quickening

impossible pace, and more

of the world is taken in

and breathed out

that moment the lap gun

fires its shattering roar

remaking the race into

a brazen grace that runs

the lane like it has never

run the lane before.

Gun Lap for the Mile is a metaphor for those entering into the season of retirement.  I am indebted to my friend Jay Grover whose idea this is.  He is seeing his own recent retirement as the gun lap, that final lap where, instead of things slowing down toward a tepid finish, the race is enlivened with drama and energy, the gun breaking the spell of "tiredness" and infusing urgency and life and the will to win into the final lap of the race.  What a beautiful picture of the last season of life!  As Boomers edge past the 65 year mark at a rate of 12,000 a day, may this idea inspire:  run the lane like you have never run the lane before!

Photo credit: Geralt; Pixabay.com CCO Public Domain

Such and Such

And if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.  2 Samuel 12:8 (KJV)

 Some say you are a miser,

that you dole out in pinches and specks,

that your storehouses are double-locked

and inventory checked by the grain.

But how would one explain my backyard ivy,

plush and wildly overtaking the fence?

And how to account for the allocation

of more birds here than my space deserves,

so many songs crowding this tiny parcel of world?

Because the leaves are waving at me

in unrationed lavish bunches,

I dare pray for some of that extravagance today,

for some of that profligate touch.

O to be awash in the spillage of your mercies,

in the flood of your such and such.

Last night I had the privilege to participate in a worship service at the Garden Chapel in San Quentin State Prison.  After the service I was praying with one of the inmates, a wonderful joyful elderly man named Walter, who prayed over me asking God to pour His "such and such" into my life. I was so touched, I had to try and capture it in a poem!  This is my attempt.

Photo credit: Cocoparisienne, Pixabay.com, CC public domain.

Mother's Day

Your cloistered womb, my sanctuary.

Your waves of pain, my launch to light.

Your milk, my perfect nourishment.

Your songs, my lullaby dreams at night.

Your time, my freedom; your sweat, my peace.

Your aching heart, my road to somewhere

stretching far beyond your reach.

And what of anything have I left you,

having taken everything

(while hardly knowing it was so,

and saying so, hardly know it still)?

This morning talking on the phone

your voice was strong. I could have sworn

I was listening to an emperor,

or an orchestra, or a field of corn,

or a new moon tide swelling from the day

I emptied you by being born.

This poem is dedicated to my mom, Lil Reed, whom I "emptied" on August 26, 1963, and who today is an emperor and an orchestra and a thick corn field waving in the wind!

Too Small to Say

The minute fragment spume cannot tell

if it lies on placid seas, or then

if it rides the side of a mounting wave;

all its wide world— water end to end.

So the spider mite that makes its stake

along the ruts of the redwood’s cavernous skin

cannot tell if the tree lies on its side

or stands sentry beneath the moon again.

So it is I cannot tell if You—

You Who shouted out the star-flung night—

have come around to bend down, if this wind

is Your healing robe hem brushing by;

just as I cannot now feel the turning

of the earth beneath my feet, nor sight,

though standing on these coastal cliffs, to trace

the curve of the horizon with my eye.

Photograph PhilGDS CCO Public Domain from Pixabay.com

In Remembrance of Me

Tonight the light of a faint star meets my eye

having traveled thousands of years through space,

and makes its presence present (though it might

no longer exist since the light is eons old).

In my now its ancient then is now again

as it was this morning at the rail when

I took into myself the sacred bread and wine

(long ago first broken and poured out—

my tongue still catching it in the very act).

Ten Leaves Springing Sunward

Backyard Birch, I had assumed you dead.

The blossoming weeks had come and passed you by

and you were embarrassingly barren against the sky,

frail branches, dry and of life bled

out, bleak-brown, your disappointing bud beds

sterile.  How mocked the morning doves that would fly

through your wreck toward birdseed hanging nearby.

The neighbor’s sticky plum trees stared. Enough said—

until yesterday, at a glance, on a barren twig

I spotted one burst of green, one sprightly sprig

with ten leaves pushing through the sapwood clogs,

ten leaves springing sunward as if to set

the record straight that this Birch, against all odds,

breathes life, bears dogged life within her yet.

The picture above is the birch in my backyard. The little sprig of leaves broke forth recently in the middle of all the dead branches and inspired this sonnet.  Last night I attended a dinner event put on by the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, an organization that is fighting gallantly to preserve the dignity of being human against economic, philosophical, and technological forces that are ushering in the age of the commodification of the human body,  the exploitation of human reproduction, and the threatening the inviolability of human life in its most vulnerable contexts.  I dedicate this poem to their extraordinary work. For more on CBC, see their website: www.cbc-network.org.

Evening Stroll with You

"We get it poets. Things are like other things." (tweet by Mike Ginn)  

This apple is the red heart of the world,

world of weave and leaf lace knitted wool.

My Mint Chocolate Chip scarf becomes swirled

with your Raspberry Ripple in the cool

evening breezes, cotton sheets on skin;

skin, a manuscript in hieroglyphs,

windows into worlds beyond the bend

of time. And time itself is Sisyphus,

every morning once again the hill.

And hills are heights, are mind, are memory,

are widths in which the spinning world stills

and hangs ripe, a red apple in its tree.

 A friend sent me an email this week containing the quote of the tweet above.  I laughed on reading it and thought, yep, that pretty much sums up the machinery of poetry.  This poem is a playful response in which I tried to create a "metaphor loop", a sequence of metaphors in which A=B, B=C, C=D and so on.  My goal was to see if I could end up where I began, a kind of poetic transitive relation.  It was fun to see how it all came together.  As to meaning, I certainly did not start out with a message in mind, but I see all sorts of gems that can be teased out of poem that emerged (and that is the fun of poetry!)

Upon Encountering An Other

Up against your strangeness

fear I feel, fear rising

as your rearing horse holds

high against the dark teal west.

Your mounted silhouette

in all its details indeterminate,

what mass, what shadow, and of it

I know nothing.  What dust

you bear from where I cannot say,

or tell where you must go from here.

In the strained lag between

slowing second-hand hammerings

time is mine for flight or fight,

to feign a truce, or face

to face you, face or flee to

freeze you once forever as a glance.

Or perchance to stay, to stand

straight-backed, unflinching as a rod,

my strange still inchoate form

a pivot for your turn. And in

the passing by, a split-second eye to eye,

a noble imperceptible nod.

---

How should it be, these encounters with others that are so different from us? With those who sharply disagree with us, who see the world in an entirely different way?  Should we each lay down our convictions of what is true at the altar of tepid tolerance?  Should we fight in order to convince and convert? Should we avoid the other to keep the illusion of peace?  Or, how about this? With each one confident in settled convictions, each one humble, we engage -- not to conquer but to listen, to learn, to seize opportunity to show respect, to dignify the other's right to think and choose and be.  To be different and still together, unafraid, unshaken.