Sorrow in Love

No brush stroke captures the lighting stroke,
Chords nor song express the strongest bonds,
And words stumble in an anguished heart.
When neurons and soul barely perceive,
When deep unto deep breathes and grieves,
A sage, or a child, lost amid the breakers,
No fathoming the depth of the churning sea,
All flaying and failing in desire to evoke,
Love.

She is the rising sun and she is the setting,
She is the first and last icon in my soul,
Yet all such blather is only so much noise,
Oh for a heart to howl honestly at the moon,
For pangs and pain that find no worthy runes,
Instead, a cub, with pitiful moanful whimpers,
Heart cries sealed in a cage of bone and flesh,
Born stumbling of a deep love ever begetting,
My troth.

In truth, but one tear in her emerald eyes,
Or a simple tremble upon her coral lips,
Then I, penitent before the throne of God,
Barefoot, and ready to walk upon the coals,
Passion's purgation extracts a weighty toll,
These fires overtake this stumbling jester,
Refining his ore, knighting him champion,
One man awakens to loving that bids him die,
For Her.

Billow

Wind like the water, sculpts, or sculpted,
Ruffling the fauna, combed by the flora,
Pollen or plankton, swirl and dusts all.
Trees, corals swayed swaying in vaulted
Display.

Zephyrs' breathe deeply Aurora's first dew,
As waters consume silt in foraging depths,
Cool condensation paints every leaf and life,
As stirred sands living elements eschews,
Renews.

Tempests churn cumulus, brawl breakers,
Branches bend, and bow, like laundry lilts,
Ferns and kelp more firmly shift and sway,
Naiads and sylphs, in pas de deux, o'er acres,
Prevail.

Wind,
Water,
Flora,
Enchant.

Presence

Air infused white prisms, imprisons,
The weary daylight lingers ethereal,
And Sol himself, diffused through air,
Stills all things in mystical liaisons,
Inweaved.

Mist fall, dissolve mount, mountain,
Dusk delays the burning of the skies.
Birds, beasts, and trees, and you and I,
Boundless of bark, fur, feather and skin,
Commune.

Heavens sickly falter, pales as impaled,
The sun, o'er horizons' sword unsheathed,
Mists cede to love's sacred crimson dying,
Sliver at world's edge, seeing beyond the vale,
Transcend.

Out of Pott

In all of God’s worlds, in the whole of creation,

Never has there been, nor will be, such a being,

Philosopher, editor, sharp-witted contrarian,

Endless communication, not once a key keying.

The son of a preacher would reform the tradition,

Climbing Calvin’s Ladder above the theological fray,

Yet grounded by Gwen’s unexpected expectation,

Blazing terminal inertia with Eerdmans did he stay.

Stay he did, through Presidents Johnson through Obama,

Authors, colleagues bettered, as iron sharpens stone,

Able to better any author, from Calvin to the Dalai Lama,

Would they have listened to him loquaciously intone. 

His craft extends from books to persons unaware,

A desk for a boat, time for friends, for grandchildren,

Wishes and prayers, as he fares where he will fare,

Many will miss the wise steps of our fellow pilgrim.

Grace for the days ahead,

Gratitude for the days behind,

Bittersweet the moment,

Until we fellowship,

Again.

Mwanzo (1)

Our days are measured in suns or moons,

Rising and falling o'er the dome of the sky,

A friendship, unexpected, echoes the miles,

A canticle resonates as our chasmal sigh,

Crescendos, hearts read like ancient runes,

Kueleweka. (2)

Calendar pages, like rose pedals, bloom,
Wilt in potpourri balm, and bloom again,
A love, precipitous, overtakes defenses,
Grace imparts, release, and oh, I ascend,
On Spirit breath, ethereal as a plume,
Ukombozi. (3)

 Kenya-called, my muse found me still,
The orange flame rose and fell o'er Africa,
Seeing and being seen, while yet unseen,
Divine, upendo(4) ushers twain in a Basilica,
Both school and church, woven in twill,
Adahi.(5)


Now, a cycle of seasons in the path of Sol,
Promises and pronouncement hearth fire,
Which burns and warms my life and yours,
'Though days may bring woe amid desire,
In faith, Renita, our fellowship is whole.
Milele.(6)

************************

1. "Beginning" in Swahili

2. "Understood" in Swahili

3. "Deliverance" in Swahili

4. "Love" in Swahili

5. "Covenant" in Swahili

6. "Forever" in Swahili

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Easter

And how did God in mortal frame,
Broken, bloodied, crumpled flesh,
The will that sustains each orbital,
Worlds, stars, galaxies, or particles.
One moment weakened in a creche,
Then upon the cross of our infamy,
His last breath spares us the blame.

And how did death hold him near,
Organs and organelles pulse none,
The love that sustains each love,
Loveless in Hades icy fire burns.
One moment the universe embraced,
Then into a tomb entombed remains,
The light put out with nail and spear.

And why did the gaping maw surrender,
The fire that fires all stars and loves,
The burning soul rights each equation,
Beauty and  truth, fearful in symmetry,
Emerges in this One son of a woman,
Scarred by human life and death, forever,
Humanity in Divinity in lasting splendor.

And how this longing is ever kindled,
That all ever be life unto love unto life,
Beloved, though bones and hearts break,
Sip wine, eat bread, plunge below waters,
Blood, body, burial; sacraments of salvation,
Gifts that foretaste the divine fellowship.
In joy, eyes watered; in fear, limbs trembled.

Revere, 
Silence,
Adoration,

Hers

As each day is born as auroral fires,
Cascade crimson o'er horizon's line,
And dawn's glow seeps through lids,
The world --as if rising through liquid,
In view and suddenly fully entwines,
You and I, our dreams and our desires.


As each day embarks on its own story,
Sol arises, this day lost in ashen shroud,
Machines and mitosis plot time's trails,
Our world -- affixed,  towed along rails,
Oft  inert -- though like gods endowed,
To reach and touch the realms of glory.

As each day pales as shadows overtake,
Spreading colorless paint o'er every hue,
Touch benumbed through words misspoken,
This world of loving shoots stiffens oaken,
Eschew that this love born to me and you,
Grieves that raptures' embers' cool or slake.

As each day to night's dark cedes the stage,
And lunar light hearkens howls and bays,
Limbs enfold and faces face and breathe,
The air where embrace will gently wreathe,
Covenant kiss: I will lay where you will lay,
This day, this night, into the coming age.

She is mine,
I am hers.

Greatest Good

And when my wandering wanderings end,
When my foot-stepping feet cannot turn back,
The great light has rolled over the orb's bend,
Skies don red robes they soon shed for black.

A woman somewhere, she is my very home,
And the closing of my eyes her eyes will own.

When auroral lights escape their box and beam,
My feet will seek out that very shortest route,
Returning to her, leaving the world of dream,
Renita my Grace, of this there is no doubt.

She,
My love,
My delight,
My home.

And A Lion, And A Lamb

This the time of blindness and barbarity,
History awash in numberless pixels,
Pallid lights overtake the greater lights,
Our little greeds nourish titanic powers,
That flatten peoples in their gory axles,
Grinding in plastic wheels all  our charity.
Mars.

Disciples at the feet of the angel of death,
Young warriors burn cold as wintry steel,
Neon incense to gods void of one another,
Ascent to powers that numb a bloody resolve,
Machines kill in collateral and do not feel,
The weight of the taking of the last breath.

Like the wheel of Samsara, endless returns,
On this investment in the coffers of war,
Children yet born, groomed for sacrifice,
Tomorrow,  Karma will forge new enemies,
The kin of the killed, for honor and for lore,
The fuel for  revenge that endlessly burns.
Hades.

Where the voice crying in this wilderness?
Who the prophet stepping into the crossfire?
Whose the last blood, whose the last body?
Whence the cup of peace, the broken bread?
Of the digging of graves, each of us does tire!
And praying as kneeling in blood we distress.
Lament.

And a Lion roars o'er the noise of battles,
And a lamb accepts the wounds we inflict,
And a hush blows over the killing fields,
And a longing for the first blossoms.
Amen.