The six-year old, tow-headed
Boy with a hand-held wood
Cross, got in the 1950 Dodge.
As they drove away, his
Father asked how vacation
Bible school was. “Fine.”
“What do you have in your
Hand?” “A little cross.” “I
Saw writing on it. Can you
Read what it says?” “Yes,”
The little boy said excitedly,
“Jesus paid it all.” “What
Did he pay?” his agnostic
Father asked. “I don’t know,”
The boy said timidly. “Well,
Neither do I,” the father said
As they pulled up to the curb
And his father let him out
By the front door. “Have a
Nice day, son. I love you.”
The father watched until
The boy was in the house.
Years and years and years
Later the little boy would
Learn that it isn’t about
A debt but all about love.
He still misses his father.

He stopped by to bring an old
news clipping of a member of
my family and before he
left, I asked him, if as a former

college baseball pitcher, he
ever worried about losing control
of his throws. He stopped cold.
Yes. It had been what stymied

him. I asked because I, too, a
former, college baseball player
had lost control of my throws
and it ended my playing days.

We talked of Steve Sax, the Los
Angeles Dodger, who near instant-
aneously lost his ability to throw
from second to first in front of

forty-thousand fans. I said there
had been a traumatic occurrence
between the season I had control
and when I no longer had it. He

nodded knowingly but didn’t ex-
plain. An exacting discipline —
throwing the ball at a rapid speed
or a curving arc 60’6” through a

small window of opportunity and
something not related to that
function can mean the difference
between a strike and a ball, success

or failure and the end of a career.
We had a new bond in sadness. I
knew misery is supposed to love
company but I felt sorry I brought

it up in the first place because I
could see a hint of discomfort
on his face at the memory and
maybe even the disclosure.

My neighbor and The Donald are
“slobs and phonies and morons
that Holden Caulfield runs into
on his travels,” but, “are, like
Seymour Glass’s Fat Lady, ‘Christ
himself, buddy,’”* and while
as hard as I find that to accept,
I have to if I am to accept that I,
too, am accepted.

*from a meditation by Frederick
Buechner

 or-ig-in-al bless-ing + in-com-plete-ness
	        +
	     process
		+		
	    at-one-ment
	        -
 or-ig-in-al-sin/sub-sti-tu-tion-ary-atonement
	        =
      the-big-ger-pic-ture of
                 
god’s-mysterious-gift-of-universal-sal-va-tion 

       il-lu-min-ed-in-je-sus

Shackled by links of chain
from the past, always the
past, he tries to break free —
flailing his arms and legs
as best he can and cursing
to the heavens, but the
chain does not break,
only a bit of trust between
them is chipped away
by the swinging links
of chain and the terrible
timbre of his voice — now.

The Trump Tower Laundromat is
so dirty from the job of keeping
Russian money clean,
legitimate customers are
never ever seen.
We can only hope the laundromat
will soon be shut down
by the Special Investigator’s
“follow the dirty money,”
cleaning machine.
Then our collective national ear
might be ever so grateful to hear,
Jefferson Beauregard, among
so many others in fear,
asking, “Pardon me, soon to be former
President Trump. Could you spare a dime
so I can pay my lawyers and the fine
for my high misdemeanors
and crime?”
Mr. Trump, one to welsh
on most but never the Russians,
said, “I think a Lincoln
penny would do just fine.
Oh, by the way,
did you know that Lincoln
is a Republican, who
(like Frederick Douglass–
of course, both friends of mine
who think I’m great)
is doing just fine?”

*coined from the title of an article
in the July, 13 New Republic.

He recently read 92 in the Shade,
a steamy novel of life in the 1960’s
in Key West. Today, it is 92 and it
is overcast actually, but the 92 is
the percentage of humidity, so it is
raining just without the drops, and
his upper Midwest town certainly is
not Key West hot; some having de-
scribed it as pretty much all wet
even when the humidity is closer to
60, which it is a lot of the time,
year round, even — dampish, kind
of like some of the people.

I just deleted a poem which was about the hypocrisy of Southern white racism, where whites are nursed as infants by black, wet nurses, but then support a system of racial inequality. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was simply a handy tool to make that point. It served its purpose in helping me crystallize and verbalize my feelings, but I am afraid the poem might be perceived as a personal attack on the Attorney General and so, it’s gone.

I saw the vine-attached pink
tomatoes in the hand-built gray
bowl on the counter

and I thought I would wait till
they turned more red and told
that to my wife,

but temptation got me and I
carved a few slices off of one
and they were delicious

with a bit of sea salt shaken on
them. I’d say I was sorry, if she
were planning the tomatoes

for something other than for
the availability of themselves
but I don’t think

she even thinks about that know-
ing how much I love tomatoes and
something tells

me she bought them just for me,
but I apologized anyway hoping
for her acceptance,

which she gave unconditionally.

I saw a movie of a romance between
a French woman and an Indian man
and I wished that my little bit of
Indian blood came about the same
wonderfully romantic way, but when
I learned I had much English blood,
I surmised it came about in a much
more predictably coercive way.