He awoke with a jolt from
a dream in which he was

irrevocably dead in a light-
ning fast flash. He should

be glad as St. Paul to leave
this place and be at home

in Christ, right? Wrong.
Death still stings; at least

the dream of it did for him.
And he was glad to catch

his breath and turn on the
hot shower. Come on, the

man thought, me and thee
St. Paul? Really? No way.

I prefer to live and think
about it for another day.

Maybe some day
I’ll be a great saint.

How many black men and
women must suffer and die?
Why, oh, why?
Of course, the ghetto breeds
dysfunction and people act out
but every part of society is
dysfunctional but not
all suffer and die.
Why, oh, why?
Are the police so scared
that they strike out upon
the unarmed and unprepared?
Drugs run rampant through
the inner city and suburbs, too;
long jail sentences lean
strongly toward the black few.
And they suffer and die.
Why, oh, why?
The Civil War still rages on
in spite of all white protestation,
and they suffer and die.
Why, oh, why?
It’s time to define why
and stop it.

I just left this at one of the blog sites of Dr. Thomas Eggebeen,
minister and prophet par excellence who also serves up tasty
dishes from his kitchen. My note was in response to his
latest comment, which is on the environment and Psalm 96
and can be read and tasted at http://thoughtslist.blogspot.com:

I love your ecological theology
or theological ecology
or biblical environmentalism
or maybe you just served up
a plate of stewardship
of the creation
with a dash of righteous
indignation —
very spicy.

As crocuses, daffodils and birch tree buds
begin to open to the beckoning sky,
one’s calling comes often as a nudge,
but some do need a push, like you and I?
Perhaps the call comes through a lightening bolt
as in the case of a future saint.
He heard the call as he fell off the colt
and blindly stumbled in a near faint.
But Providence provided a good eye.
Still it would take from three to fourteen years
for that cross credentialed saint to fly
from here to there, facing danger with no fears.
So, be patient with instant gratification.
Just wait on divine notification.

He heard the surgeon/sculptor say
the difference between surgery
and sculpture is control.
He is in charge of the clay
while the flesh goes its own way
toward healing. It was in that
moment he knew that
in retirement he was in control
of his own day.
He wrote sermons for parishioners
and articles for editors with
the final say.
Now he controls the words,
lines,
meter and rhymes
his own way.
It’s quite liberating,
if he does so say.

Four, twenty-five cent copies of a
prestigious, poetry magazine from
2011 and 2012 picked up at a local,
book sale and two days later the
poet didn’t understand the new
gnostics and their words, metaphors,
similes, allusions contained in
cryptic forms, line breaks and the
absence of line breaks. For the poet,
it was like trying to read his son’s
graduate papers with charts and graphs
and statistical analysis for the
master of management and labor re-
lations degree. It was like reading
a physician’s signature on a prescript-
ion. It was then he understood why
one of his best friends who has a
doctorate says he never reads poetry
and says it is too hard to understand
and wants to know what degree his
friend the poet has to qualify him
to be a poet. The poet understood
the editor of the poetry magazine
wanted to bring poetry back to the
people. He is no longer the editor.
It was then the poet understood why
almost nobody reads poetry and why
the poetry section at any bookstore
is miniscule and why the copies he
bought and brought home were going
for twenty-five cents each. It is
why the poet was never so glad, as
right now, for the poetry of Billy
Collins and Ted Kooser.

For my one thousandth post, I have the pleasure of posting two poems by
poets Vicki Hill and Steve Haarman, who sometimes goes by the pen name Stansberry McKricken among others. Vicki’s poem begins with images of life along the shore of Lake Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. Steve wrote his poem about New Mexico in 2014. Interestingly, Steve and Vicki are in Santa Fe right now.

“Early Enchantment” by Vicki Hill

Dew drips from non-guttered rooftops as the
Sun lays light more each moment on earth’s canvas
Watch day unfold: captured light is released
To paint dunes, grasses, bracken with long fingers
Soon to reach everywhere.
Cobalt waters:
I look up to see how well the sky matches;
Gull-feather clouds won’t bring rain today, a chance for
A delightful beach walk: a 5-star day, the first for school

Children return their familiar bricks and whiteboards, as
I recall all those years of weeks of ritual acquisition and
Preparation from Aasics to zoology specimens that might be
Needed: the mounting anticipation, anxiety tinged by
Eagerness to leave the limited world of home for that of friends,
Each hour’s variety–even learning– then raucous bus rides home
Unless friends angled by to give a parenting stretched hope thin
For safety. After-school activities smorgasbord to sample, investigate, participate.

I now go to nature’s school, with unexpected finds and knowledge every hour,
Recall the applicable lessons of long-ago, many poetic verses committed
To memory, songs and psalms randomly bursting forth praise as creation bears witness to
Heart and heaven,
Both within view, grasp, hands trained to open, and share.

“NEW MEXICO” by Steve Haarman

I like New Mexico
Wasn’t born there
Somehow feel like a native
This is my kind of land
Mountains and valleys
Green and brown
Sunrise and sunset
Both beautiful
Even the moon
Knocks you over
There are lakes
Areas to ski
Just the living
Is enough for me
The air is good
Especially the breeze
On a sunny day
I like that warmth
The people, too
Seem to appreciate
The native traditions
Sacred things
The lore of the Indians
The cathedrals and churches
Spanish architecture
The spirit is almost touchable
Tradition and art
Unique, but familiar
Longing for the past
Looking forward to tomorrow
Santa Fe is great, but
Just one of many choices
New Mexico
My dream
I like it

Stansberry McKricken
January 16, 2014 ^

Everyday, the poet, reading
poems of the century’s best
and brightest, feels the old,
familiar tug on the sleeve and
hears the voice in the ear and
feels the pit somewhere down
south. And so the life-long
battle for the soul continues
in little ways, everyday – a
tug, a whisper, a pit — not
so much in the grandiose de-
cisions regarding war, as
necessary as those may be.

We move along through life feeling no pain.
We are caught up in events, so there is no pain.

Oh, we experience that which is ever so difficult
but really are inconveniences and actually no pain.

And for the most part, barring any unforeseen event,
we muddle our way through creating our own pain,

which we indulge and make into reasons for discord,
but in life, there is the inevitability of real pain,

which bears down upon us like a fast, freight train.
Lost love has happened to me; you, too, will feel
real pain.

Last spring he tore a tendon connecting
his left triceps muscle to the arthritic
elbow caused by falling off his kid’s
skateboard forty-years ago. At the end
of his left arm, the second knuckle of
his pinkie finger is twice the size
of any other knuckles from an old high
school baseball injury. It gets gout
in it quite easily when the man drinks
and it hurts like hell. While he hiked in
the woods near his home his left arm
fell onto the ground near the path, but
he kept walking. Last fall while pushing
against his right thigh to work his sore
IT band, he tore the meniscus in his right
knee. He had to stop jogging for five
months and had only jogged once since
then and the knee really hurt. A little
farther along the path, his right leg
fell off. Fortunately, he had a hiking
stick to hold himself up. He hopped with
just a left leg and right arm. They start-
ed to become sore and fell off toward
the end of the hike. He rolled down the
hill into the pond, saw a nice minnow
and took a bite. The next thing he knew,
he was being pan-fried with potatoes
and onions and heard his dad calling
his mother and sister to breakfast
while on vacation in the north woods
of Wisconsin. He wondered what would
happen to the hiking stick. It was
purchased at a Pow Wow of the Ottawa
Indians in Hart, Michigan and he really
liked it. However, it wouldn’t do him
much good anymore. In the distance he
heard Dvorak’s Largo from Symphony #9,
The New World, “Goin’ home, goin’ home,
Lord, I’m goin’ home.” After breakfast,
his dad wrapped the man’s innards in a
newspaper and buried them two feet in
the ground and well away from the lake,
which was what they did back in the day,
but the raccoons and opossum got to the
paper before he had a chance to read the
obituaries.