Don’t mean to be cynical, but being
cynical, crotch shots to females? high
profile, big bucks job lost, son dying
of overdose in close proximity to above.
What goes on behind closed doors?
Condolence tweets (How easy is that?)
up the wazoo by Fox faux and real TV
journalists, divorce on the horizon?
Arrogance, arrogance, arrogance, pride/
fall/sins of fathers, etc., etc., etc.,
ETC. Oh, God, I, too, have sinned and
my shadow goes before, behind and all
around me.

In my naiveté I think that poets are
perfect. They have to be to write so
perfectly about life, don’t they? And
then I read two wonderful poems about
family life by a woman and two wonder-
ful poems about family life by a man.
Then I read that they divorced back
in 2010 and after I got over being dis-
appointed in the perfect muses and
their perfect poems about family life,
I just appreciated the poems for them-
selves, which I suppose is the way it
should go. And, as I think about it,
there was just a hint perfectly, prophet-
ically placed in that one poem, wasn’t
there?

One’s deeply bronzed African skin,
Deep brown, beautiful eyes,
One’s white Scandinavian skin
Tanned in the late
Summer light
Blue eyes bright
And between them
Seeing them and
They now truly seeing each other,
The olive skin
And hazel eyes
Of the one —
The son
Of Nazareth.

The sun shone brightly bouncing off 
	the white wall on the west as it 
rose in the east and spread across 
	the dune grass which danced as 
the east wind blew the blades 
	westward, nodding, bowing 
as in reverence up and over the dune 
	to the inland sea and beyond.

It’s September and the decorative grasses
have grown plumes of silken fingers. The
ladies rise through the leaves and leave
nothing to chance as they hold everyone
accountable by shaking their fingers at
everyone as the wind blows. And then the
wind stops and the women stop wagging
their fingers just to let the profundity
of their assertions sink in as they then
begin again.

Given the sermons, home visits,
counseling, funerals, marriages,
administration, meetings, meet-
ings and more meetings and all
the other responsibilities in
ministry, he is so glad to be
retired from all that and on to
something so very different from
all that but at least as meaningful,
unlike so many that he hears about
who can’t let go of all of that. Who
were they before they were or-
dained ministers and why can’t
they be somebody other than an
ordained minister after retirement?
I don’t know. They have to answer
for themselves as I am sure they
would do gladly. All I know is that
I was called and now I am called.

The rich, religious right want every-
one to be like Jesus; they want them

to wear a crown of thorns and be nail-
ed to a cross to show how much faith

they have by dying ignominiously at
an outpost in the middle of the middle

of nowhere in the Middle East of the
Roman Empire and that’s the gift that

the rich give — the narrow road that
leads to salvation, which is good for

everyone except the rich and they don’t
have a clue about what they are doing

as they are seeding the resurrected
church of the poor for the future.

*Thanks to Chuck Smith for the idea.

Someone took the F. Scott quote on
the rich and made the following

humorous exchange: F. Scott ad-
dressed Ernest, “The rich are dif-

ferent from the rest of us,” to which
Ernest replied, “Yes, they have more

money,” and there is the rub — the
money. Recently someone disputed

F. Scott’s assertion. To paraphrase:
“The rich aren’t any different from

the rest of us. They are just as venial,
small-minded, selfish, corrupt, uncar-

ing and greedy as the rest of us.” Yes,
but maybe, just maybe, all that money

lends itself toward making the rich a
wee bit more of all those not such

great things because as an incredibly
insightful person said, “You cannot

serve God and mammon,” and that is
always the temptation when you have

a lot of mammon and F. Scott said
something like that in the quote.

Once again and again and again,
he stumbled and fumbled his way
into a last-minute decision which

he knew virtually nothing about
and once again sent everyone into
hypertension and hypoglycemic

reaction (except 33 % of the pop-
ulation), trembling at the thought
of hundreds of thousands of inn-

ocent kids being torn away from
their families and sent somewhere
which signifies nowhere and Kafka

laughed from somewhere on the
other side of the nowhere, except
that this time he may have tripped

over his own feet into something
which actually might have a good
outcome. If anything, he has shown

that in contrast to him there are,
believe it or not, conservatives
with heart or at least a keen in-

stinct for America’s compassion
for little kids and dogs and po-
litical survival and, in a crazy

kind of way, he may have helped
save the day for all those kids,
about whom he knows nothing and

cares even less.

Children feed the fish.
The waterfall water falls
bringing oxygen.