The magnificent red-tailed

hawk sat on

the branch of the red pine

surveying the situation.

It looked around and decided

to fly away but a movement

caught his peripheral vision

and he reconsidered his mission.

A chipmunk sat on his haunches

seemingly daring the bird

not to hold back any punches.

Then the rodent rushed for cover

down the hole

glad to have survived a-okay,

but the hawk, while flying away,

thought, you’ll be the chump,

Mr. Chipmunk,

because, in the words of

a movie star, the hawk

said “I’ll be bawk…

another day.”

He got slammed hard, really hard.

He is a really hard

guy, well past even post

prime but really resilient,

more than most.

He’s Burt Lancaster in From Here to

Eternity, tough but fair, standing up

to the power.

He was a star back in the day

in college football and a minister

who didn’t take fake

off anyone

and he never put on the brake

when others dropped out of the race.

He called it as he saw it.

He survived denominational

attacks for standing up for his

principles and then he got the slam

that would have flattened even Sergeant

Milton Warden. He defied fate,

but how would he survive

the tragic death of his soul mate?

How would he now survive?

We can only surmise

and be thankful that for now he is

still alive

and pray, Oh, Lord,

be with that one tough guy,

a lamb who, for all, has held

open your eternal gate.

For my 800th post, I proudly feature a poem by friend Vicki Van Eck Hill:

WINTERLUDE

Some years you cannot escape winter’s reach

At least weren’t shivering on a Florida beach,

At the inception days ago of the season, spring,

Winter dropped in, but temperature did a low swing

In a week we’ll depart, car laden with art treasures

Hoping to extend some to our community, share the pleasures.

Luckily our long johns weren’t given away

We’ll wear them back, since winter conditions wish to stay.

Experienced “mitters” who hail from the U.P.

Carry winter wear 11 months: our season lasts more than three.

We won’t go home by a different route, wise woman and man,

Because for 5 weeks we monitored the Mackinac Bridge cam

Saw blizzards with only a few cars, just days ago

Know that even in April it could shut down for snow.

So here we come, Badgers, who call YOUR state shape “mitten”~~

Yeah, a wicked witch ‘s squashed glove: who are you kiddin’!!

—–  Written by Vicki Hill on March 23, 2013

A man sat watching Bruce, The Boss,

on T.V. and was escorted back years

ago, a seeming infinity ago, to a family

Christmas visit to the suburbs of the big

city in which he was raised but which

he had left, a seeming infinity ago, and

during which he took his two kids who

now live many states away and probably

wouldn’t even remember if the man asked

them about it in an e-mail, but certainly

not a text message because he doesn’t do

very well with that and his old flip-top

phone doesn’t help nor does he call much

anymore because more often than not, he

gets the message, “Hi, leave your name

and phone number and I will get back to

you as soon as I can,” the “can” being the

operative word there and the escape from

an obligatory return call. He leaves phone

calls up to them anymore. Anyway,

he took them to a CD shop, the species

of which is now a dinosaur in the mak-

ing, to look for the Bruce Springsteen

song “Born in the USA.” Then he sang

the lyrics, in his best Boss voice, to the

kids for the couple of miles, so many

years ago, back to their grandparents’

house where they fled the car for the

ubiquitous Christmas Carols his in-laws

played on their stereo. Then some sum-

mer, he sang those same lyrics as he,

from first base, tossed warm-up balls

to the third-baseman, short-stop and

second-baseman on the church soft-

ball team, a seeming infinity ago. Just

before the warm-up was over and the

game was about to begin, he switched

to “Glory Days – just thinkin’ ‘bout

those glory days,” and standing on that

baseball diamond, he remembered his

glory days, a seeming infinity ago,

until ever so many years later and not

so long ago, at a high school reunion,

he discovered that what Bruce sang

was right. In the cold, stark reality of

the now, those days, a seeming infinity

ago, weren’t all that glorious, after all.

But he still could get revved up sitting

in his easy chair listening to Bruce and

singing along while playing an air guitar

as his wife worked a crossword puzzle

and the dog moved to another room.

The man, when he was a

boy, went with his mother

to see Peter Pan. He loved

it but he would have

loved a hug of goodness and

grace, too.

The man, a man, saw Peter Pan,

the boy of Never-Never Land,

reject a hug from

Wendy even if he wanted

her to be the mother of the

lost boys of Never-Never Land.

The man would

have given anything

for a hug, one that filled him

with goodness and grace,

but the only hugs

he got as a kid

drained him to the

marrow of his bones

like a giant vacuum

encompassing, sucking,

smothering him to

death. And  his

mother did hug him, again and again.

How needy were you, mother,

the Puer Aeternus, reluctant to

grow up, asked himself.

When Peter Pan

went home,

his mother wouldn’t

give him the hugs

of goodness and grace.

When he went

home, the door was

locked.

The man, as Peter Pan,

knocked and knocked

on that door.

He dreamed of

snuggling in the warmth of

Sophia’s breasts that would

have nourished him and given

him the strength he would

need to grow up, grow up.

Oh, he wanted

to grow up.

Would it ever be?

Peter would fly away

to Never-Never Land

and the man

could only hope

for a place of peace

and maturity

that eventually,

hopefully, might be.

A young man asked an older man, “What happens when you die? If you’re cremated you become ash that goes into the sea or the earth or into an urn and onto someone’s fireplace mantel or a part of you goes into a fob of a necklace. Is that it?

“If you’re buried with formaldehyde and other stuff in your dead arteries and veins, and locked in an airtight box, you deteriorate very, very slowly and look really hideous over time if anyone happened to open the casket. It’s the stuff of horror stories. Is that it?”

“Interesting burial customs we have, huh?” the older man said in a declarative if not rhetorical question.

And then going on, “Well that’s a pretty good description of the physical reality. Actually, I’m thinking on another level, perhaps one more metaphorical. The literal always leaves me a bit cold and empty, like it isn’t capable of dealing with bigger questions such as the one you raise in anything other than a black and white way.

“I’m playing with the imagery of the Realm of God as a just and harmonious eternity within which I, a personal being, who after death and perhaps in some mystical way before death, float in and out of all else manifesting many and various forms — liquid, vapor, physical, spiritual, hard, soft, gas, fire, you know the elements and beyond — in loving relation to all the other personal manifestations of a relational creation.

“Have you ever thought of a relationship with a rock?  An Episcopal priest, sculptor colleague of mine from my days in campus ministry once asked innocently if I liked rocks. At the time, I didn’t understand the sculptor in him and it became kind of a joke between us. I recall that even at the moment he asked he realized the humor in the question for the uninitiated. I’m sure he didn’t know where the rock ended and he began. At the time, I thought he had rocks in his head.

“The other day I found a beautiful rock (It looks like Swedish granite) in the now dry, winter trough between the upper pond and lower pond in our back yard which during the spring, summer and fall is a waterfall. See, the waterfall has changed form and function but it remains of the same substance, from trough to waterfall and back again, with a little help from me and a pump connected to an electric outlet. That part about me, the pump and electricity is the literal interpretation.

“The rock sits by my computer as a paperweight but for the first time in my life it is something more than just a rock. It’s a gorgeous part of God’s creation, a very, very, very slow-moving organism in spite of it being thought of as inorganic in chemistry, a connection to my father who sold Swedish granite headstones, a connection to my son-in-law, the geologist, and a great remembrance of my priest/sculptor friend.

“One day I might be a part of the Grand Canyon in relation to all the various ages of rock.  I think I felt a bit that way when I first saw the canyon the day of my daughter’s wedding on an outcropping. Oh, by the way, there was a flock of Condors flying over the canyon. My son was mesmerized by this endangered species. I think he was lifted up and for a while flew with them, although he is much more handsome than the birds.

“One day I will swim as water in a pristine ocean (I do like salt).  Hey, I’m sixty-five/seventy percent there already.

“One day I shall rise like a Phoenix from the ashes. We live there four months out of the year. My wife thinks I’m already a great ball of fire.

“How could I possibly imagine myself as anything other than ‘I’ in relation to the great ‘Thou’ no matter what form I might take?  Hey, if it’s good enough for the Trinity, it has got to be good enough for me — different forms, one substance.”

The young man furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, stared like he was thinking the old guy had rocks in his head and said, “Interesting. Thanks,” and walked away.

The professor of English Bible,

a former missionary to India with

a doctorate in comparative religion

from a prestigious university,

held the Bhagavad Gita in one hand

and the Bible in the other asking us

to compare the two. We thought he

was biased in favor of the Bible, so

that meant that we should be, too. It

was a denominational seminary, after

all, not a big time divinity school of

free thought. I knew I was in trouble

because I recall really liking the Gita,

and its Eastern poetic allegory as

versus the God blessed gory stories of

the Old Testament, for sure. I kind of

thought Jesus would have liked the Gita,

too. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I

think the prof liked the Gita, but it was

a denominational seminary, after all,

not a hot bed of free thought, like the

prestigious university where he got his

doctorate. I really liked him, he was a

sacred cow shatterer and, along the way,

he had been in some theological hot

water and I wondered if he were hiding

something. I think it was that twinkle in

the eye or the knowing, Peck’s Bad Boy

grin, but he did have a job at a denomin-

ational seminary, after all.

Sitting in the restaurant, the man, who just turned seventy, saw a former NFL great on T.V. talking about and paying tribute to his dad, who died when “The Best Hands in Football” was only seventeen.

That caught the man’s attention. The former player then said what pierced the man’s heart. The player said his dad was the greatest dad ever. The man, who waited for his nacho, shed a tear.

His dad died when he, too, was seventeen and while he, also, thought his dad had been the greatest dad ever, he never, ever said it and really never even thought to say it or ever announce such a thing because his dad committed suicide and who would ever have believed a seventeen-year-old teen about suicide?

And then for all those years in between seventeen and seventy there was silence, a loud, blaring silence that rang in his ears like a bad case of tinnitus.

Nobody spoke of his dad and his children never heard very much about the father who had held the man’s hand when they walked in the door of the man’s new fifth grade class in a new town and a new school and who promised that fifth grade school teacher that he would work with his son so he wouldn’t have to repeat a year in school and who tossed baseballs to him over and over and over until the man could hit a fastball and a curve and who sat in the bleachers in great pride as his son became a Little League All-Star and who watched as his son walked forward to be inducted into the National Honor Society.

The man had wished that his dad had been there when the man got his bachelor’s and master’s and doctorate with distinction, but in a certain sense he was there.

And so the man turned to his wife and choking back the tears and in a halting voice said, “My dad was the greatest dad who ever lived.”

And then he thought to himself, at least there are two people in the world who now know that.

The etymology of

“Barking up the wrong tree,”

came home to him one

day around three.

Distraught, he called some-

one who had been through

the same thing as he

and said, “You won’t believe

what happened to me.”

She responded, “What do

you want of me?”

Taken aback, as he just

wished a bit of sympathy,

he repeated maybe

times three

and still the ever distancing

voice spoke bewilderingly,

“What do you expect of me?”

“It’s okay,” he said, finally

cutting through the ambiguity.

He shuffled his feet

like a short man who

had suffered a stroke

or a drunk trying to

find his way home,

except the exception

is the rule. In winter

clothing, it was a

child who tossed a

snowball onto the side-

walk just in front of

himself and stood silent

as it smashed. He even

may have thought of a

bomb dropping and

said, “Boom,” as

it splattered in front

of him. And then the

bullets smashed into

his twelve-year-old

body like one of the

boy soldiers of Africa

or Iraq or Afghanistan

except it was in a park

on a wintry November

day in Cleveland, the

US of A. The police were

told a shuffling, black man

was seen in a park brandish-

ing a lethal weapon. The kid

could have been playing

cops and robbers with his

pellet gun, but the cops

certainly weren’t playing

around or playing fair as

it turns out. The tape shows

it. No metaphors here.

Just a tape of the incident.

Score one for technology

as the keeper of justice.

Eye-witness reports have

been proven so unreliable.

So much for what we see.

“Just give me the facts, ma’am,”

old Jack Webb used to say

on T.V.