This is not a happy note.
It speaks of God’s abandonment.
When God turns her back to all.
And walks away in sorrow.

Only for a time, of course.
But time enough to undo God’s blessings.
And give the nation what it truly wants:
Money, power, prestige and wantonness.

And in getting what it wants, it dies.
And the good, the bad and the ugly die right along with it.
There is no choice in all the dying.
Once the wheels of divine abandonment are set in motion.

No choice at all, once the choosing-time passes us by.
And then the course of history.
The slow grind of time.
When all is lost, and tears flow hard and hot.

And people wonder where their god has gone.
And why now all of this horror.
Because the choosing-time is gone.
You had your chance, but Baal you choose, and so the story goes.

This is not a happy note.
It speaks of God’s abandonment.
When God turns her back to all.
And walks away in sorrow.

If they are to stay in this
glorious land along the
inland sea, they, who long
for the out-of-doors and
love the forests and waters,
must sit and listen and
run along the trails and
hear the voices of the past
and voices of the land
before the indigenous,
original peoples and
then the original peoples
and transcend those who
came from Europe and
conquered and dominated
and subjugated and eviscer-
ated the wild land so much
so that the indigenous
people fled and the wild,
swamps went silent under
all the deep, dark, black
dirt brought in to fill
felled forests and suffocate
swamps and silence the cries
of the wild, in the name of
decency and order and control,
which resulted in neat rows
after rows after rows and
pollution of the wonderful
waters. They only want to
breathe in and breathe out
all that was before and what
could be after what is and
unite with all that was
and once again will be
when empire ceases to be
and hear once again the
Eastern Massasauga’s rattle
and the haunting beat
of a drum.

“Performance Artist” may be
Too generous of a term for
“The Man With No Core.”

So, while the world may not know
At any moment what is in store,

The best that can be said
Of him is that he is no bore,

At least not yet,
But, on this, you can bet —

While his base
Will believe absolutely anything
That comes out of his
Orange-topped, buffoonish, clown face,

Ultimately, Clarabelle the Clown
And Bozo will be in a tie for first
Leaving Buffoon Face

In a distant third place.

She sat next to him as he stared
at the computer screen occasional-
ly glancing her way. She had just
read a sad story and shared it
while trying to hold back the tears;
He then read her a sad poem, when
in the upper-right-hand-corner of
the screen a notice popped up of
a new e-mail: Love Pill for Pickup
Artists.

He looked at the photo of
the two of them when they
were about five, six or seven.

Early in the marriage, they
put the photos in a frame and
hung it on a wall. Now it

stands on a table in their
daughter’s home, her mother
having died twenty-four years

before. He joked about how
much hair he had then, Dutch
and Swedish little, boy blond,

too yet. As the little boy
in the photo, he had secrets
as did she, but his came

bursting out along the years
unlike hers. The little tow-
head in the photo held her

cards close to her chest
and then she died without
showing them. “You will

really never know me,” she
once told him. The only
secret he kept was the

lump in his throat as he
made a joke.

As Americans are lulled
into dulled acquiescence
by corporate commercials

and Casper Milquetoast TV
journalism, owned by the
corporations, they, for

reasonable reason in this
lopsided culture, can be
wiped off the face of the

earth by one fell swoop
of the one percent of
one percent at anytime

they might wish to land
that knockout blow. This
isn’t just about red, black,

yellow, brown and white;
this is about muddle-head-
ed, middle class folk who

think they are really safe
in Sultan land or assume
they are powerful enough

and strong enough to pro-
test against all things
unjust unaware that they

are just one swipe away
from oblivion just as
Jesus was and we know how

that worked out for the
Sanhedrin and Romans and
will for the Sultans in

spite of their oligarchic,
plutocratic, anti-democratic
empires — juxtapositional

joke.

He gasped awake
Death did take
His life did quake
He had a deep ache
A breath to take
He was awake
For heaven’s sake
Love he did make
To glorious daybreak

They pulled the netting with
all the dead leaves off the
pond after five months away,
unplugged the bubbler, plug-
ged in the pump and watched
the water cascade down in a
little waterfall from the
upper pond to the lower pond.
The goldfish, all of whom
survived their tenth winter,
seemed, in his mind’s eye,
to look up and smile. That
may be wishful thinking but
the fish are alive, he smiles
at them and salutes their
perseverance after a long
winter — a greater per-
severance than he endured
in the Valley of the Sun.

The good, old, guilt-ridden,
shame-faced, white, Baptist
boys (Forgive me, Jesus; my
wife is in the bedroom.)
down South love the Donald
because he can get away
with what the boys can only
dream of but feel guilty
about and ashamed of as they
spend all that time online sur-
veying what the net is purvey-
ing – the sights of forbidden,
brown sugar and chocolate
mousse, carnal delight each
night. They stand with O’Reilly
for the same reason, for Bill
is a serial letch getting some-
thing the boys couldn’t catch
with an oversize mitt as they
switch from Fox to the foxes
and back again. (Forgive me,
Jesus. I just can’t help my-
self. I’ll be right there,
honey. This should only take
a minute. I’m not doin’ nothin’,
honey. Oh, nothin’, nothin’
at all. Lord, have mercy!)

He walks through the open
doorway and closes the door

behind him. He enters into
nothingness, no ego, no

vanity, no mixed motives,
nothing and there in the

black hole of existence is
the essence of his existence,

in the black hole of his
core — nothing and then

everything — a tiny spark,
a glimmer of light, the

eternal essence, the only
thing that matters, the

love of God and in that
tiny beam of light he sees

who he is and all the love
that surrounds him coming

back at him from all those
who have been touched by

his life and love and in
that nothingness he finds

everything.

*idea from a meditation by Frederick Buechner