He thinks about the man
who had lived such a
hard life — immigrant
kid, motherless at seven,
orphaned at thirteen,
tossed from foster home
to foster home — one
who only saw failure
lurking around the corner
even as he tried so hard
for success, a husband,
a parent, a good guy.
He is destined to be
forgotten. Who will tell
that man’s story if he
doesn’t — even these
brief words?

We love to live along the shore,
in the dune
and hear the water’s roar,
but oh, so soon,

we discovered hostility
lurking all around.
Were we destined for misery;
might an answer be found?

Each spring they fly —
drones of might
circling the sky —
the most deadly termite.

And so a barrier was placed
in the ground
circling our living space
safety all around.

Our house wouldn’t be a hovel;
the wood would not crumble;
we could sigh mightily —
now living in a toxic bubble
with a ten-year warranty.

Six years into retirement
he sometimes wonders,

not often and not that
it bothers him at all

but from mostly six
years worth of gracious

distance, if it all meant
much and then his wife

delivered a note from
many moons before which

said, “I seriously was
considering suicide but

you told a story in your
sermon about a friend

who committed suicide and
simply how much you miss

him and it changed my life.”
He thanked his wife.

The thoughts of a lover
are thoughts that will last
while forgiving over and over
sins of the past.

The pledge of a lover,
if not made in haste,
will continue to hover and hover
being fortified by grace.

The patience of a lover
with years present to past
will grow into future upon future
coming and going too fast.

“Does it take higher intelligence
to be angry, really angry?” he
asks himself because he has had

four chocolate labs and he
has seen anger only once from
one of them in twenty-two years

and that one time the dog was
really, really provoked. “But male
Homo sapiens?” he asks again.

“Holy Cow!” he exclaims in ear
shot of the fourth chocolate lab
who slinks off to the other room.

“How well do you ever know another
person let alone know yourself?”
he was asked by a friend. Not

well, he thinks to himself except
to count on the anger factor. Of
course, he has seen it over and

over and over in violent movies
and on TV at political rallies, and
in himself, for sure, but also, in

good, highly educated, really smart
guys who have learned how to camou-
flage but given the right or wrong

situation of vulnerability let their
guard down and then there it is. Blam!
You can just count on it, he thinks

to himself, If you can count on
anything, you can always count on
male Homo sapiens’ anger. Maybe

it’s that higher intelligence. A really
smart friend, the one who asked him
the question about how well you really

know a person, a friend of fifty years,
got miffed at him and unloaded a barrage
of profanity on him giving him the

feeling he had been slapped up side
the head by a two by four. He thought
again about the friend’s question —

how well do you really know a person?
The question proved prophetic. He shouldn’t
have been surprised. The lab returns.

Maya said, “Nothing human
can be alien to me.
We’re all children of God,
you see.”
“Well, let me see,”
said the old, white man so sad and mad,
“Can illegal aliens be human to me?
I’m comfortable in this place
and I’m bound and determined
to keep this space
of mine for all time.”
For all time
sounds fine
to someone living in
H.G. Wells’ space machine of time,
but that’s just science fiction.
We aren’t soaked in eternal brine.
We have a start and definite benediction
and we’d better be ready to
pass the torch of demographical evolution —
the changing of the guard
to protect those of every race, color and hue
and we’d better start now — that’s me and you,
because “Nothing human is alien to me;
we’re all children of God,”
spoke the prophetic poet Ms. Angelou.

I read the words written in
2010 by a young man who takes
Jesus at his word and I thought
of 2016 and rich, wannabe leaders
appealing to the worst in human
nature by shouting “The wall
will be built” to a vulnerable,
frightened crowd:

…our culture that teaches us to insulate ourselves from suffering, to build up gates and walls and border fences that separate us from those who are suffering right outside of our comfort. But we come to find out that not only are we locking the suffering out, but we’re locking ourselves in–to a life that’s incredibly lonely. Those patterns rob us of life and community.*

Promises, promises which
result in anti-community,
isolation and perpetual
loneliness and ever more
fear and hate. When will
we ever learn, when will
we ever learn that when
we open ourselves to the
suffering of others, par-
ticipate in that suffering,
we are touched by their
hearts and their hearts
grow into the love and
gratitude of our hearts?

*Shane Claiborne, When Action Meets Contemplation, 2010

When he was a young adult
he would hear, maybe not
even listen, it was so repetitive,

to the words of general aches
and pains of his seniors.
He thought glibly to himself,

Get a life, folks, and then
later he realized it was what
they got when he himself, in

a reflexive pronoun, got
there, too, — for starters
he prides himself in his specificity

and not the ubiquitous general-
izations of the previous generation —
while his prostate apparently is

fine and he is old enough for
the digital exam to dedigitize,
his right testicle has to go,

the pinky finger size umbilical
hernia needs to be nipped in
the bud, the tendon in his

left hand should be cut because
it is pulling his hand into a fist,
giving his whole demeanor something

demeaning, a few varicosities
need to be sclerosed and most of
his joints make him feel like

the tin man in The Wizard of
Oz especially after a few too
many glasses of booze.

Without the tools nor the interest,
he asked his next door neighbor,
who had all the tools and more
than enough interest having been

in the home construction business
for years, if the neighbor would
consider replacing some rotting
strips of wood framing the garage

door before some college kids
came to paint the house, another
job for which he had neither
appropriate tools nor inclination.

The neighbor said yes and the
day came for the work to begin.
This put the man in a quandary.
He could go out and make small

talk with the neighbor as the
neighbor pulled at rotting wood
strips, something the neighbor
probably wouldn’t appreciate

given that it would take time
and concentration away from the
task at hand or he could stay in
the house and feel somewhat

awkward that someone else was
doing a man’s task outdoors on
his house while he apparently
wasn’t around or was crouching

inside. So he decided to do
the next most manly thing he
could think to do. He would
sit at his desk and nimbly

exercise his fingers showing
off to himself his significant
typing dexterity as he com-
posed a poem. When finished

he wouldn’t read the poem
to the neighbor but would
offer him a beer, another sort
of manly thing men do.

Surfing the internet for
poetry, he came upon erotic
poetry by females in which
they describe in detail
various parts of the anatomy
and things going on with those
parts. Being a guy, visual,
given to clichés and liking
to keep things simple, he
wondered if a picture or
better yet a video might
not be worth more than all
the poets’ words to which
the poets might reply in utter
disgust, “Guys!” — to which
he might reply, “Just
wondering,” and then he
went back to surfing.