He thought to himself there were sights to see,
so he packed his bag and headed for the sea.
He jumped in a boat and was off to see the sea.
Three days he sailed here and there with nothing much to see,
so he returned the boat and the sea he never more did see.
He thought to himself there were mountains to climb
so he packed his bag and set off for a life sublime,
but the mountain was so tall and so very hard to climb,
that he decided that climbing mountains wasn’t so sublime.
So he bought new running shoes decided to go for a jog
but he slipped and got stuck in a bog.
He tried riding a bike but he hit a walker
and the walker said to take a hike,
so he jumped off his bike and headed for a hike
thinking this is surely something he would like,
but the day was hot and the mosquitoes thick
and he headed to his lovely home, and decided
in the comfort of that lovely place the rest of the
the day he would stick.
He sat in his chair and out the window he did stare
and thought he could see himself sailing in the sea,
and climbing mountains so sublime and jogging for joy
and riding his bike
back and forth through time and taking a hike
through the night in the bug free air
and all from the comfort of his recliner chair.

Some want to know:
How long does it take
to compose a poem?
He used to be asked
how long it takes
to write a sermon?
Compose a poem?
Write a sermon?
Compose a sermon.
Write a poem.
Compose and write;
write and compose.
Prose and poetry;
poetry and prose.
Who’s counting?
Who knows?
A second?
A minute?
An hour?
A day?
A lifetime?
An eternity
some might say,
and to that he would say,
“Whatever you say
is simply a-okay.
I just want to read
and say
the poem and listen
to the sermon
and hope I think
about them for at
least a day.”

Underground Christians shared power, found immunity
To root in ways of Jesus, living in close community
Then came the turnover to a state religion
Spoiler Alert: Constantine, the exalted, decreed citizens be Christian
Up from the graves, allees of skulls in Tiffany window array
Now built to new heights as obedience to Imperial way;
Over time, contradictions of that once oral, heard,
Traditions are now inscribed in billions of recorded words
So began transformation of one body into 40,000 divisions
More each day, all erecting exclusive Jesus Revisions:
Shaping the Parent God, obliterating Holy Spirit heart
Bright Sun shining not on everyone., just my perceived part.

Minds split apart as each hair on a head.
So now the Each judge a dwindling Many,
Who is quick and who is dead?
Shall we go underground again?

Below a Santa Fe sunbrella,
April 29, 2015, by Vicki Hill

*An inspired phrase in Richard Rohr meditation

I said to my dog, “You’ve had a nice day.
You went for a walk, a run and a swim.”
He got all excited because he thought
those were things yet to do today with him.
My dog doesn’t live in the past
and if I said, “Tomorrow,” he
would look at me sideways fast.
Not in the past and not in the future,
my dog is grounded in the mindful now
and that must make him a Buddhist, somehow.

       for the Written word, he’s happy spellcheck 
mostly gets it Right, because without it, writing 
     is really One horrible and heck
          of a Nasty chore which saw uninviting
               Grief inducing marks with a red check.

“An epithalamium (/ˌɛpɨθəˈleɪmiəm/; Latin form of Greek ἐπιθαλάμιον epithalamion from ἐπί epi “upon,” and θάλαμος thalamos nuptial chamber) is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber.”

He came across a new word: epithalamium.
The poet wrote a poem titled Epithalamion for his
friends on the occasion of their marriage. It was
sensuous and tender and poetically descriptive
of two becoming one. He read the poem on the
day before the twentieth anniversary of his wed-
ding. Ironically on the same day, the day before
his twentieth, a friend, not knowing of the sign-
ificance of the up-coming day, had sent a wed-
ding reception toast which covered the four
loves: storge — empathy, philia — friendship,
eros — physical attraction, agape — self-sacri-
ficial love. He thought about the beautiful epi-
thalamionic poem and the four loves and thou-
ght they were all wonderful but after twenty the
second time and twenty-six the first, he decid-
ed that he’d better pay the most attention to
agape if the other three had any chance of sur-
vival. Sometimes age and experience lend
themselves towards wisdom, sometimes.

Instead of walking
by the waterfall and pond,
he sits and listens.

                        he was Going for a walk to roam
     when the pain hit in his tOe
                               Up to his gimpy ankle,
                         so he Thought he would stay home.

He read a poem about an impatient
father teaching his son how to tie
shoe laces. The poet used the meta-
phor of a knot and how it took most
of his life to untie the knot of his
father’s hold on him. In this case
he is the father with the self-made
knot of guilt and regret in his sto-
mach like Marley’s ball and chain
carried around forever about teach-
ing his daughter to pray, losing pat-
ience when the child couldn’t mem-
orize the words quickly enough for
him causing her to cry. Can you im-
agine ruining prayer for a child?
Neither could he.

Scratching his head and rubbing his
new buzz cut his fingers felt the rough
scar of an old accident. He was trans-
ported back forty-five years. Trying to
impress his country parishioners, the
wet-behind-the-ears preacher from the
big city volunteered to cut tobacco one
Friday morning. He got caught between
the rows of cut tobacco, panicked, duck-
ed down and rose up too soon scraping
his head on a cottering pin. Blood gush-
ed like a stuck pig; they roared in laugh-
ter as he emerged from the tobacco.
They wrapped his head in a towel from
the general store next door and sent him
on his way looking like Omar Sharif or
Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia
driving fast past the farms on his way to
the physician. He had to drive himself;
the tobacco had to be cut. “See you
Sunday, preacher,” they roared after
him and then said to one another he was
told later, “Did you notice he didn’t say
a bad word?” In the moment he drove a-
way he realized he wouldn’t have a long
tenure in the country church. No he didn’t.
He thought about what stories would be
told between then and Sunday, what he
would look like as he entered the pulpit
on Sunday and how much laughter there
would be at his expense. All his fears
came true and it was then he thought he
wouldn’t stay long in the rural, Kentucky
countryside. But he did.