From the Fire Swaying

This is not a love song.

They are gazing out from old photographs, they are begging me to stop looking at them, they will not stop looking at me.

Oxen in fields of daisies. You have to ask - you have to see - who are you afraid of and why.

Rain draped across the barn roof like silver, falling like a thousand marriages forsaken for the joy of following Jesus.

Slapping the earth, crying to the one who is beautiful but still, dance!

Oh dandelions you are never not welcome in the ruined gardens of this sacred because wounded heart. 

Of him we say, the crucifixion, it didn't take.

Hay deliveries. 

Johnny Thunder's Pipeline.

I remember kissing on Lake Champlain a hundred yards from the fire, swaying in time to the soft lap of water on October sand.

It's possible there is only et cetera and our work is to liberate its doomed calling to contain everything we don't say. 

How you enter the space of d minor when the lights are low and you think nobody is listening.

I've been tired a long time, and my tiredness is related to the absence of joy. 

Imagine Jesus telling you he'd climb back on that cross in a heartbeat if you asked him, if you wanted proof, and knowing in your heart he means it.

This is my hand, in it you may rest, and if you need water you may take it to the river and sip from it. 

Oh look who's in bed with me now.

Ground hamburger with peppers, tomatoes and feta, served hot on rice with a side of lettuce and lemon juice.

Angry women with whom we refuse to not be in dialogue, no matter what the price - this is an old law that served a long time but now I ask: is it healing or does it merely postpone healing?

Of what is Kenya (the Titanic, the witch in Hansel and Gretel, apple trees, chickadees, black bears, back roads, uncles and cannabis et cetera) a symbol?

You can never fail: your perfection is written in the cosmos: a single syllable in a song older than everything, including your ideas about me and God.