grace

A kindness given from a prostitute
blackberries plucked off a cold roadside
winter winds that drive the well-prepared
inside warm homes, where sleep is.
A touch from a stranger
someone else's beautiful tattoo
a scab that forms over a wound
where evil has cut through soft skin.
This touch of divine order
causeless, effectless
this cup is the unlikely key
and this wine
is the breaking out of false time
for the rejected.
this window has a scarlet cord
that drips blackberry juice
off chins and bird-beaks

old walls

in these old walls
everything a routine
a normalcy
i know i am in neutral
we visit burbank's gardens
a million plants
growing on the soft land
but my ground is hardened
when does the plow harrow a line?
how long to wait
till the neighbors say
that this earth is ready to plant in?
in these old walls
i am germinating
full with anticipation
bored with travel
in these old walls

Wedding Poem #2

Put seeds in the ground
to die
and you pull in the harvest
Put love in every life
you meet
and your barns beg for rest
Open up the barn doors!
Where the harvest is stored
And let's dance on the floor
at sunset, at dusk,
dancing where the harvest is held.

You vowed your lives with the sun in the sky
You looked at each other and cried.
After sun went down, we saw you in the barn
and we--all your friends from years and years,
the fields you plowed, where you went down to die--
And we danced holes in our shoes
to the rotating lights in the sky
to the full moon.
And to star-time,
we pulled in the harvest to the overflowing barn.

big love

My feet are dripping
with big love.
You knelt in the sand
and dirt of
the unswept floor.
You took in your hands
my secrets
you did not speak out
my regrets
or the lopsided score.
Standing in the mud made
when you washed
I am mercy's child.
We are not lost
to ourselves anymore.
Mud on darkened eyes
we can see.
We let down hair, cry
the eyes, feet clean.
And, feet in hand,
walk through God's Door.

Train

Rolling over little lines drawn
on the world, the hills
is being known by the dusk and dawn
that lie over the plains.
Dawn and dusk are parallel rails
holding a chugging train
and being alone here quickly pales
the frenzied life.
It hardens the muscles and sets the jaw
callouses the hands in the sun,
burning one side through the window,
crystallizing a road consciousness.
Broken down to the bare pieces
trying to find the way home
The loneliness of these old desert trees
is perfect, perfectly whole.