While he read a meditation
on the life of Francis of
Assisi, something fluttered
in his peripheral vision.
It was a moth, but said moth
fluttered on the inside
of the screen.

He read a poem where learning to swim was
the main metaphor, or — something else; he
did not know because his mind wandered way

back to his first YMCA experience as an
eight-year-old and he said to the instructor,
“I’ve got a sore stomach,” so he wouldn’t have

to go into the cold, deep water where Leviathan
lived. He shivered in the shower, got dressed
and went to the White Castle on the corner,

the stomach ache miraculously having disappeared.
On his way back to the YMCA where he would wait
for his father to pick him up, he tried to think

of what to say when asked about how the lesson
went. His mind jumped nine years to another YMCA
where he was taking classes for his Water Safety

Instructor’s certificate so he could get a summer
job as a lifeguard and to the seventeen-year-old
girl in a black tank-suit and how nicely it fit

around her bottom when she bent over, her back to
him and how nicely it fell away from her perky
breasts when she bent over while facing him and

how the firm nipples stood out against the wet suit
as she stood and looked directly into his eyes and
smiled. And you can understand why he wasn’t think-

ing of swimming as a metaphor or something else in
that exact moment when he was drowning in other
thoughts.

A map is magic.
You sit at a table
looking down at
the map and with-
out moving, you
travel in time and
space to a distant
place. The “ancient
myths and dreams,”**
the hopes and fears
are maps and magic
showing us the path
to follow to the
distant place and
time, which is here
with us now.

*idea from A Great Reckoning
by Louise Penny
** quote from a meditation by
Frederick Buechner

He was told that if you don’t say it,
you won’t have to apologize for it
and when he said it and had to
apologize for it, he was mockingly
told “Told you so,” but more often
than not, he told that which others
wouldn’t be so bold to have told
and which needed to be told and
now because he has embarrassed
himself again and has once again
been told, “Told you so,” he has
vowed to be quiet forever and ever,
amen. And then his wife in a voice
warm not cold and not at all a scold,
said, “I have taken a poll and you
need to continue to be bold, but
once in a while stuff it, so I
won’t have to hear your friends
say ‘I told you so.'”

When the two grieving disciples
encountered a person on the road to
Emmaus who later was revealed
to them as Jesus as he broke bread
and poured wine,

when the disciples came ashore
in darkness seeing an unidentified
person on shore who in the pre-
paration of breakfast for them
would be revealed as Jesus,

was it?

Of course, it was, because it was
you and I breaking bread, serving
wine and making breakfast for all
those whom Jesus loves.

If a sibilance sounds like leaking “ssss” in The Donald’s pants
and assonance sounds like “ass,”

if anatomical sounds like “anus,”
and gastronomical sound like “gas,”

then with ass, anus, gas and pants we have gotten
to the poetic bottom of White House leaking factssss.

However, if an onomatopoeia sounds like piss,
we may have bottomed out at Trump’s not so sweet tweets and shits.

If arrested and convicted for
murder of another person,
the perpetrator could go to
prison for life or die of an
injection or in the electric
chair, but because of the
invocation of sacred violence,
democratically elected heads
of state are blessed and praised
for slaughtering millions of
humans in the name of God
or country or freedom or all
of the above. Leaders of total-
itarian regimes, demagogues
and despots, while using the
same justifications and, perhaps,
even enjoying the temporary
approval of their citizens are
found out and ultimately cast out
for crimes against humanity,
but the democratically elected
heads of state simply retire with
a comfortable pension, a library
to their glory and for historical
purposes and time on their
hands for avocations or charitable
foundations or just plain time
on their hands. With that time
do they ever think of the millions,
do they still give thanks that
God is on their side like they
said when they said “God bless
us” at the end of every speech
further justifying the invasions
whatever the real reasons may
be, do they ever hear Jesus
say, “Well done, thou good and
faithful servant” or might
they, just might they,
offer up a Kyrie?

I’m going bananas over Bonobos.
We share 98% DNA, but who would know?
They don’t act like us at all,
apparently heeding a primate’s higher call.
They have a society dominated by females
who show life-long motherly love for all.
There is no violence; no evidence of homicide
and in freewheeling, frequent sex they do abide.
They out hippie hippies on “Make Love Not War,”
and they feel no need to settle any score.
That’s why I’m going bananas over Bonobos.*

*Bonobos are now an endangered species facing extinction
because of human exploitation and violence:
http://www.bonobo.org/bonobos/what-is-a-bonobo/
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Similarity_to_humans.

He stopped his slow jog along
the trail to watch the fly-fisher

cast beautifully back and forth,
back and forth and then the final

gracious thrust only to have the
fly land softly on the surface of

the water. The trail, the pond,
the fisher, the cast, the landing.

If I were the fish, I would have
said this is all so beautiful,

I just have to bite.

In pursuit of perfection
he sprays the purple
dead nettles, not knowing
their name, not realiz-
ing they feed bees in
early spring, make
tea with honey and
medicine. Then he sees
bees flee the poison
and he stops spraying
because he knows that
he is a destroyer.