Talking over, under,
around this side,
that side and
the backside,
shouting each other
down,
pols polling, huff-
ing and puffing,
preachers pon-
tificating from the
pulpit and up and
down the center
aisle
and all the while
I’m wondering
if anybody’s
listening. Is
anybody
simply
listening
to what
is being
said or
is everyone
simply
taking “selfies”
over again and
again?

When they started upon the journey
they made sure of five-year plans.
That far ahead they thought they could see,
but it went faster than hour-glass sand.
Then the glass shattered, every plan erased,
all minutiae from every conceivable place
in the life that they had so painstakingly planned.
He really had not known what pain meant
until that tragic, totally unplanned event.
For years he just took it day-to-day
and only now to the other does he say,
“Dearest, I think that’s a great five-year plan.

The adolescent asked,
“What does any
of this mean?”
having been keen-
eyed
to all that had gone
on in his universe —
the stumbling,
the bumbling,
the fumbling
of the gods.
The man-child
sighed
as he
took
his
next
step.

We watch the mayhem played
out on our streets
due to guns, guns, guns
and then we protest
the proliferation of guns on our
streets
and then we go home
to watch guns, guns, guns
on T.V. and in the
movies.
Where is the sanity here,
if you please?

We have a new grandchild on the way.
We’re not sure of all the ancestry
that comes into play,
but our best guess is this —
he or she will be a rainbow coalition of bliss.
There will be Irish, Scotch-Irish and German,
Cherokee, Hispanic and, maybe even
African-American.
This child will help us get back to where
we all came from,
helping us see that we are all
out of Africa
and therefore all one.
Now, I’ll be the step-grandfather who
wishes his Dutch and Swedish blood could
have been in the mix,
but as we are all God’s adopted children
by grace,
I believe I will see a child of every stripe
and race
who just by being here,
might help our warring ways to fix.
“Jesus loves the little children,
all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black, brown and
white,
they are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children
of the world.”

I have come to the conclusion
for myself,
that faith needs more
fiction and poetry,
metaphor and simile
and not just systematic theology
as important as that may be.
Faith, for me,
is experienced and
expressed best
through
poetry and an excellent,
touching story
with theology as a
foundation upon
which it all
can rest.

He’s in the desert
and while here,
he thinks a lot about
rain.

When he was a kid
in the upper-mid-
west, he loved to
puddle run.

Here, a storm comes
but often the rain
evaporates before
hitting the ground.

While he loves the sun,
especially in the winter
in the desert, he thinks
a lot about rain.

He doesn’t think about
gray skies; he thinks
about rainbows and
rain in his eyes.

In the backyard around the pond,
the Buddha looks east,
the monk looks west,
And Confucius just stares beyond.

He went to the Art Institute
having lunch once in a while
in the courtyard
before he met her.
He went to the Field Museum
and the Museum of Science
and Industry
before he met her.
He browsed art fairs —
on occasion purchasing
something that caught
his eye
before he met her.
He frequented art galleries
before he met her.
He dug out and kept
a large, charcoal
drawing of a female nude
from the waste bin in
the art department of his
college
before he met her.
He went to the Oriental
Museum
before he met her.
He went downtown on the IC,
ate at Stouffer’s with
the bright green peas and
Berghoff’s where he listened
to men discussing business
over martinis
before he met her.
He stared at the Christmas
decorations in
the windows
of Marshall Fields
before he met her.
He walked around
Buckingham Fountain
during the day and at
night when the colored
lights were on
before he met her.
He stared at the skyline
from the planetarium
before he met her.
He stood by the huge boulders
protecting the extended
land from the waves of
Lake Michigan
before he met her,
but because she was an artist,
and just seemed to come
alive when they visited
the city
their children would never
appreciate any of this.
She derided him as being
a mere “suburban” boy to her
sophisticated “city” girl.
The children listened to her.
Now she’s gone and
he can never set the
record straight
as if he ever could
have.

We read brief summaries of Leonardo
Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester under the
actual writings and drawings. He was
left-handed and wrote from left to right.
My left-handed, late wife, who was an
artist, did the same thing — her first
grade teacher slashing through her writ-
ing with a red marker. Years later my late
wife shouted at the memory of the former
teacher, “If you had put a mirror up to
it, you would have seen that my writing
was perfect!” I thought about that as I
looked at Da Vinci’s tiny scribblings in a
peculiar Italian which were all about how
water flows. How it flows up and down, in
and out. Apparently, Da Vinci had more
tolerant teachers or they were smart enough
to have mirrors handy to read what he wrote.
Maybe he said, “Mr. Giuseppe, please put
a mirror up to it,” and, again, apparently
they were pretty impressed, because I did-
n’t see any red slashes through his Codex.
Finally, after all that reading about water,
I had to find a bathroom before we moved
on to the Andy Warhol exhibit. I wonder-
ed if Andy had been left-handed, too. It
wasn’t mentioned in the exhibit which was
all about his portraits, although it in-
dicated that his mother doted on him. My
wife is left-handed and she is an artist,
too. I wonder if there is a connection be-
tween being left-handed and being a visual
artist, although, she doesn’t mirror write.
If she did, I would have thought that was
pretty clever and I would have followed her
instruction about the mirror. I, certainly,
wouldn’t have made red slashes through her
writing. I once made red slashes through my
son’s English paper when he was in middle-
school. A few years ago, he reminded me of
it. I had forgotten, but now I feel guilty
about having done that.