There's a Path

There’s a path out behind the house,

following the power lines and the phone lines

in from the neighbor’s place, much grown over now

and swampy. It’s the original road, my wife tells me,

she who’s lived here her whole life, knows everyone,

the original road laid out long before anyone

felt a need for his own drive way, his own road

to camp, and built it, easier access now,

in and out, a private drive among the trees and not

a right of way shared with three others. And so . . .

we don’t know our neighbors anymore,

these new folks, three or four owners hence,

next door and beyond, rarely see them except

through the woods, investigating their noises,

and them, ours, I expect, little else in common.

The path is still there, passable in a single file,

and still goes both ways, but unimpeded by our feet

trudging here to there or theirs, there to here,

the grass grows high and the roots stick up, ready

to trip us, small seedlings take hold and dig in,

and water pools in the sunken shallows, growing stagnant, 

toppling trees to leave their branches obstructing passage,

ours and theirs. That path out behind the house, like time,

much grown over and still over growing, separates us,

strangers meant to travel the same path together

now seeking ease, convenience, and privacy,

a right of way unshared in our passing years.

On Sundays

On Sundays

we donned our church clothes,

white shirts and ties, dresses freshly pressed,

our shoes polished and paraded ourselves

into the sanctuary and to the pew on the left side,

half way down, where we’d always sat, Dad and Mom

and us, and our grandparents, too. This was our self-

assigned pew as was much of the church folks’ choosing,

each to his own place in the Baptist Church we grew up in.

It was a place of order and rigid rules to govern us,

to keep us out of the fiery pits of hell, a long

litany of “thou shalt nots,” though we wanted to,

perhaps even did, secretly holding hands with a girl

under a shared Bible, or a “damn” let faintly fly,

hoping our parents wouldn’t find out, wouldn’t see

through our angelic guilt and shame radiating,

or that God Himself was too busy to notice us,

Baptist bred and the least of His concerns

in an evil world. Our place in heaven was surely secured

by our attendance these Sunday mornings, suitably attired

and, hands folded in prayer, dutifully sitting quietly,

attentively, in the family pew, except for the snort

and wheezing coming from my grandfather, a saintly man

baptized and unafraid of an angry God passing judging

for the sin of hard work and a Sunday morning nap,

softly snoring in the good Lord’s house.

I Weep Now

I weep now for the trees

cut down for a rich man’s view

blocked, because he wanted them gone,

because he could, they an affront to him.

I weep for his callousness,

his rape of our lives slowed

down by the tree’s splendor on a Sunday

drive, replaced by glass and steel’s starkness.

I weep for my own loss,

and his gain, his power to take,

to have what is not his

to own, alone and selfish.

I weep for his power

over me, over us brushed

aside for his vision of himself,

his greatness at the cost of ours,

as I weep now for the young lives

to be lost in battle, like the trees

cut down for him who couldn’t

hear our voices, couldn’t hear our cries.

A Winter Stroll

In the Northern Hemisphere,

where I live, Poseidon’s earthborn

child strolls slowly, softly,

silently across the winter sky,

starlit on a clear cold night,

always headed toward the healing

light of the rising sun.