A small voice, hushed and gentle

A small voice, hushed and gentle,

rises up from the earth and is carried

on the streams and the falling snow, on ocean waves

and the winds, gentle breezes or gales raging,

and it speaks of balance, steadfastness,

the triad of earth and man and the divine;

but in the busy-ness of our lives,

the pursuit of materials, wealth and power,

or merely the means to support our lives,

we fail to hear, fail to listen,

and are lost.

When I Was Six

The Russians hated me, when I was six,

those people from that big red space

ten inches from a yellow USA

mapped on my classroom wall,

a red space that meant so little to me

as we marched single file, quietly and

quickly, to the hall and took

our places, kneeling on the floor,

one child in front of, behind, next to

another, hands holding our heads tucked into

little human balls, practicing those drills

as we practiced our numbers and letters, art and music,

preparing for them, their bombs, their hatred

of us, our hatred of them ensuing,

just ten inches separating us, us from them,

and tucked there, at six, I wondered

if they were practicing, too, their numbers

and letters and drills as we were,

little human balls huddled, afraid, fearing each other,

across ten inches of blue on a classroom map,

and I wonder even now, has anything really changed?

A Celebration

It’s quiet after the summer folk have left

and the leaf peepers, too, gone, returned to their homes,

the leaves now muted and fallen, dry and brittle, scattered,

and out walking, walking freely,

satisfying our souls, the dog and I

breathe in the Sunday’s silence broken

only by our own footsteps’ plodding,

the dirt road’s gravel-crunch under our feet,

and the rustle of the leaves, lightly blown,

while across the lake an eagle sings out, unseen,

his chattering song celebrating life amid life’s turmoil,

echoing in the still air of this late autumn ramble;

so I, too, celebrate life, celebrate myself,

in these words penned across a page torn out

for moments like this, moments to share

in verse, in celebration of all that is good,

all that is life, as it should be, celebrated.

Sin

Ya know, back then, even Jesus would

have climbed the clock tower,

the steeple of the Elm Street

Church, much as we all did

in more youthful days, when it was forbidden,

sneaking up the back stairs

to the store room of

old chairs and hymn books,

perhaps a Bible or two,

laid open or tossed into a corner;

and finding the trap door and the ladder

up through the ceiling,

up through the clock works,

we climbed, Baptist boys, growing up,

up and out into the open, revealing

the river on one side going ocean-ward and away,

the shipyard and houses below, fixed, keeping us here;

but it was a sin, then,

to do what we had done, Jay and I,

sneaking up to that forbidden height,

forbidden place, and, worse yet, we sinners,

carving our names – desecration! Hell and Damnation! –

among the names of other

boys who’d sneaked up before us

as we did now, adding our names

to prove we’d done it,

done some forbidden act,

a sinful act of disobedience

blemishing that image we wore of “good boys,”

obedient boys, yet a blemish we wore in secret,

bearing our guilt alone, as a medal, a medal earned

with a name carved into the church clock tower,

the steeple of the Elm Street Church.

And ya know, though, I bet if we searched

long enough, hard enough,

we’d find Jesus’ name

carved there, too, His medal

earned, like ours, in this sin

of young boys sneaking, disobedient

Baptist boys, now tarnished and hell-bound,

seeking the forbidden life of sin.

Readied

Autumn is but half-way done,

half-way to winter’s scheduled date,

yet a winter wind comes early, blowing in

cold and strong, reconnoitering, perhaps,

our readiness for the season ahead:

corded wood cut and split and stacked

to stoke the hearth and stove

against the cold; and provisions laid in,

stored up, in case, just in case, the heavy snows

and storms forecast should strand us, cabin-bound;

and our spirits, too, readied, anticipatory and joyful

about the changes changing the landscape

and our lives, lives bound to the seasons here,

coming when they do, in their time, and leaving,

leaving us, like the seasons themselves, altered,

readied for the seasons ahead, the seasons

of our own lives, changed and changing.