Metanoia
Then when Judas, the betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned 
he changed his mind. . . 
Matthew 27:3

and that must have been all that changed—
he dropped the coins and ran, 
fleeing the regret lingering
in the same forest of gray matter 
that brewed the ruse 
of his deceit, buried remorse 
following his fated shadow 
to a field where it hung 
as a locked lump
in his defrauded throat, 
sorrow never swallowed— 

did he study mercy 
but understand it fallow 
in his mind’s folds, 
unable to loosen 
from the tangled mess 
of his wooded web, 
past mere guilt—

to that crossing, 
where one, though shameless, 
hung in his stead and bled 
to burst the damn 
of his knotted warp 
with blood that unties 
the twisted 

and clears a path 
to the heart . . .

My wails warble through the birdsong;
wept words flutter between flights
of lighter feathers that soar
as chorus over the grass--
               longings shriven to larks,
               chants of wrongs to wrens,
               bleeds of cardinal confessions,
               dripping heavy over distant creeks
               where herons rise in winds of groans
and I listen for the mocking:
               a cry sounded as reflection blown
               laughed through the leaves--
instead I hear the coo of my kind confessor,
the dove’s return to these trees
               where, together, our calls lift their song . . .
               a harmony of howls hovering
               as a strain of hope.

Finding a Van Gogh at the Garage Sale
a found poem 

It was the Fisherman						
who plucked threads						
scrawled from the deep 

a scouring 
of turbulent language
hung from his net

a breadcrumb trail 
of belief, words surged
from brushstrokes

of religious lines
compounded
into thick impastos 

of pages 
in painted oeuvre—
their written groundswell

a gallery of impressions
round for repairs  
when submitted

to the handwritten 
composition 
of revelation—

the cross 
of Master-piece
as windfall

beneath
the starry nights
of asylum. 

composed from “Was That a Real Van Gogh at the Garage Sale?”  by Kelly Crow
Wall Street Journal Feb. 1-2 Weekend Edition 2025. 

Caulked 

I am not safe—

for holiness 
crawls in the crevices

of my most hidden
nooks

between the cushions
butt cheeks, fingernails 
and floorboards

into friend-fractures
and clover-clefts 

ruptured junctures
of joy

into the cracked contrition
of my slit self.

I am not safe—

for if such holiness 
ferreted the filth
of one feeding trough

a crib shunned

rent from the clean
the comfortable
the sound—

then my heart-fissure
and fear-felled faith

will quake
wholly caulked
with a seal
seeping

of fullness.

The Advent of Hindsight
“not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar”  Hebrews 11

The candle burns
in why’s advent

when why-bloated 
clouds puff and dry  

and only tears
wet stills of windows

as we look back    
at the relentless road

each gritty  
and lopsided step

that sought to summon
a soak with its dance

or stumble on some 
slighted spring 

when our parched awaits
a watering 

the cataract
to drench all doubt—

so we put up trees, 
hang our wreaths 

sing the carols, 
prepare our feasts 

and listen 
for the tolls of thunder 

before what’s passed
and what’s next  

meet under 
berried mistletoe

beneath the bath
of sworn Light—

before we awaken
to divine

that promise is hindsight. 

Unlisted

One morning I wake and minutes have quit their hour and bronzed magnolia leaves float softly to the ground—vertical demands fall from the page to drift with the day’s current . . .  when gain (and love) aren't itemized, puzzled together with calculated prowess, meeting their maximums—they aren't bound to a single stem downward, when forgetting or suspending is measure of a root's growth, but instead life lives welled, spilling over from spirit twirling in timeless air—and the latest list, boasting in its own checked rows, succumbs instead to the gravity of prose—a faith-step forward, left to right, west to east, a shift with the sun’s shadows, a surrender to the winds. Today a friend is sick and I make dinner and what the time could have been never mattered and is not remembered, so as leaves fall and are swept into some untraveled nook, the roar of a new river, or the mystery of a pageless book, I run the plains.   

It may not be an exodus, but what if . . . 

on Tuesday’s date with socks and sheets and pains,  
its musts and mounds of duty-filling daze . . . 
she saw her same ole dryer light in flames,  
what seemed a box of steel broke into blaze!  

And if she’d mocked its cheap utility,
til from a fire the glowing dryer spoke—
would blasted burn send her to bended knee
within a clouded voice of holy smoke? 

Would then she see herself on sacred ground,
and every concrete labor stained as hallow;
if humdrum is what spins this world around
and mystery will find her wearied shadow?

Then how could Wednesday still remain so slight 
when what is dull and dry might still blaze bright?  

Untilled 
Mark 4:27

Our trowels hang from heavy belts 
and we stoop to scoop
for untilled dirt, 
some turn of root
to excavate hints 
of a whispered where,
pilfer a glimpse of the soil’s blueprint,
prepare for now, shovel the when,
spade plunged below, 
grovel to our know 
on mud-caked knees, bent
for why 
this fate, this flood unleashing 
the wail 
against our wait—we’re asked 
to scatter seed
and sleep, uncurl our bodies 
to the skies,
unbelt our burdens from time’s waist— 
for what is underground, we know not how
nor could imagine that en-earthed glory—
germination of buried story.

A Box to Go with You
     for Nathan
“. . . talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise . . .” Deuteronomy 6:7

So what has filled this old phylactery?
What will you remember rested between
the frames of your mother’s rueful forehead,
photos, doors, and dreams? Have I left unvoiced
all that was boxed inside this shy heart, trussed,
what should have been hallowed from our rooftop . . . 
Love the Lord your God, penned on fragile skin?
Oh, that what I felt, the want of my words 
might still speak for Him—all my I love yous, 
unrolled with what should be taut, will they wrap
around the good that will pass and later 
unfold with those papered promises sought— 
my words wound around all of your within 
so that my love lives as reminder of Him.    

Dusted
May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi . . . 
first century Jewish blessing

so sifted in the soot of his sandals
that you’re close enough to talc your trailing 
feet in the whirling specks of each step’s tread,
wrapping your tarry in a russet mist, 
the powdery cloud in which you stumble 
blind, learning to abide the murkiness 
of his spurned shadow on an untraveled 
byway, a prepared high-way . . . when it is dust  

that forms you, and you are free to follow,
to catch the fallen crumbs, to breathe the rot 
of lepers, to rub the muddied sorrow,  
to live as his—to carry your own cross 
in wake of his rivened flesh, so throwing
aside your sandals and kicking up dust. 

I try to learn jam band

It’s that we’re unsure 
of the fifteen minute song,
such wait between
the leaving 
and returning—
we join with the first lyric
the poetic ache
each versed wish
before it gives way 
to the meanwhile, 
the slow slide 
to wilderness, 
the fear of what’s wordless—
and yet what we hear
is a beat percussing,
holding the groove 
of furied fingers
running across the taut
of threads, 
some scissored shreds 
that spawn 
the unleashing of keys
in its wild un-theme,
yet somehow in sync
with each plucked string—
before tension builds 
and the crowd leans 
for the unfold, 
the waking from a dream, 
a thump 
across the threshold—

and instead we’re tuned, 
to a story un-told,
when parts are lost
beneath chords
to song-raveled soul 
and what’s major 
becomes minor
as we succumb
to the jam

and find what matters 
is simply
the dance. 

Windthrow 

We paddle our grief   
past

and sigh at the savagery
of tree toppling

the uproot
from primordial soil 

cloud blather,
breeze brush

perpetual rinse 
and reflection

rings can’t count 
such loss—

when a ruthless gust 
razes the oak’s boast

in its cradled nest,
uttered leaves, branch-dance

the peak of gallantry 
rend in the unearthing 

of lattice, when 
brokenness mines 

a root labyrinthe 
uncloaked

as miry temple 
whose beneath 

teems with the living,
the vulnerable—

when it forgets 
its reflection

in its plunge  
to humble sanctum—

as resurrected umbra,
life for the fallen.

I share the shadow

I share the shadow
of a leper—

side by side
in grotesque guise
we grovel 
after the sun;

the pale splotches 
of scarred skins
and curled limbs
hide in the umbra
of our numb;

darkness reddens 
our flush
into broken blush,
no one sees
nor would touch

our ghostly soul—

until . . . the shadow cast 
and plaguing past 
graze the shade
of a forgotten hour

when love was lifted
with mending power
and skinned, 
hammered, 

crossed   
on that eclipsed plateau—

where we share
in the dusk
of its winged shadow.

Small Talk

Today let’s just chat 
about the weather—

you peer up at me
with polite formality

trimmed in the clean-cut
lines of your refinery

and grin into the feign 
of my curtsy . . . 

when I tell you again 
where I’m from 

that kids keep me busy, 
and work’s to be done;

yes, I write some,
if it wants to be said

and you ask me to dance
and I say yes

and we waltz,
pen whirling the pad— 

but now my unruled 
hands are still

and we need rain 
is all I have.

 Now and Then
“If things are real, then they are there all the time.” 
from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe 

. . . so at the wardrobe she stretched
her hands into the thick 
of fluffed fur, 
and buried her face 
in its endless layers, 
where warmth hung 
and she believed 
in the snug 
of deep-timbered 
darkness,
every limb,
breathing 
the songs 
of wooded worlds

while at this wood desk I reach 
for what is hung
above what I pen, 
a lily
painted
in oyster white
wrapping me in limb,
a robe of petals 
unfurling
its golden heart 
within the whimsy 
of grassland wind
  
beneath the same skies

trusting light 
to throw wide 
today’s leaves

with tomorrow’s 
then . . . 

                Unraveling

When we let go of ours horizons—
the ropes we tug from east to west
            the cords riving 		
the fall 				 and rise
            of our day’s sun—

what we keep taut in the panorama 
      of left 	            and right,
the line of sky	over which sight 
              will never peek

         when our safe lines
	     roll into skeins—
   to unframe a day’s familiar
                     fabric

          our grips loosening 			   
            the thin thread
                 that splits
our earth          from our heaven—

               joy unwinds 

and the point of our vanishing
             loses its sting

      in the seamless merge
                with all
                unseen.    

A New Moon
The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, and expressionless. 
Ray Bradbury  

Before, she only slept eastward

so dawn’s foreseen light flickered 
through the leaves freckling her face 

and what lay behind, the past,
and all that followed, lolled 

suspended in the hollow of nightfall—
despite the day, shadows hid 

her open pores, cell-bound graves 
unsteamed, clogged in oily stores

of rotated hours, her joy buried 
in the waning— until one day’s dusk

the new moon’s gentle ghost
whispered in evening’s clouds,

its breath dampening her skin,
loosening the fissures of dried flakes

in a wash of warmth—

and she rolled over, smoothing her cratered bed
and faced the phases of all that followed

from the east 

and the west. 

Raindrop Stories

Every raindrop 
bears a story
incubated—

moss blankets hug
timid tears 
loosed in silence

beads glide
like terns, brushing
stone-stillness

drizzle buffs 
the skins of branches,
and tickles 

the plump drips
to crack crisp
the sleepy leaves

tossed in ripples 
above dancing rivers 
and blooming heaves—

these opened wombs
shoot droplets skyward,
as liquid offspring
 
bursting heavenward 
in love-lept offering
to pregnant clouds 

who birth the sodden— 
when the drama of dew
awaits the opus
of falling.