Category: politics

Trying to Transplant Pain

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Why should I have to deal with so-called human beings
when I can be up on the roof
hammering shingles harder than necessary,

driving the sharp nails down
into the forehead of the house
like words I failed earlier to say?

And when a few wasps eddy up
from their hidden place beneath the eaves
to zoom in angry agitation near my face

I just raise a canister of lethal spray
and shoot them down without a thought.
Don’t speak to me, please,
about clarity and proportionate response.

The world is a can of contents under pressure;
a human being should have a warning label on the side
that says: Disorganized Narrative Inside;
Beware of frequent sideways bursting

of one feeling through another
—to stare into the tangled midst of which
would make you as sick and dizzy as those wasps,

then leave you stranded on the roof
on a beautiful day in autumn
with a mouth full of nails,

trying to transplant pain
by hammering down
into a house full of echoes.
~Tony Hoagland “Wasp”

Two aerial tigers,
Striped in ebony and gold
And resonantly, savagely a-hum,
Have lately come
To my mailbox’s metal hold
And thought
With paper and with mud
Therein to build
Their insubstantial and their only home.
Neither the sore displeasure
Of the U. S. Mail
Nor all my threats and warnings
Will avail
To turn them from their hummed devotions.
And I think
They know my strength,
Can gauge
The danger of their work:
One blow could crush them
And their nest; and I am not their friend.
And yet they seem
Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
To bother to attend.
Perhaps they sense
I’ll never deal the blow,
For, though I am not in nor of them,
Still I think I know
What it is like to live
In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
Building the fragile citadels of love
On the edge of danger.
~James L. Rosenberg “The Wasps’ Nest”

When will we ever learn?

This election season is unprecedented with plenty of verbal kicking of various hornets’ nests, some while resting in our literal laps.

We are surrounded on every side by anger and agitation, some of it coming from our own words and activities. Some of us feel like we are precariously balanced between family members and friends, hoping not to make things worse by saying what we believe, or choosing silence.

Rather than throwing stones or spraying poison at yet another wasp nest, I walk on by, acknowledging its fragile presence, but uninterested in joining its buzz.

As the walls of this seasonal fortress are tissue-paper thin, it won’t survive the winds and rains of the coming winter. There will always be attempts at rebuilding and still I will try to avoid the agitation.

I’m not in or of them.
It’s a long time passing…

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An Ache Nothing Can Satisfy

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At the alder-darkened brink
Where the stream slows to a lucid jet
I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat,
And see, before I can drink,

A startled inchling trout
Of spotted near-transparency,
Trawling a shadow solider than he.
He swerves now, darting out

To where, in a flicked slew
Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves
Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves,
And butts then out of view

Beneath a sliding glass
Crazed by the skimming of a brace
Of burnished dragon-flies across its face,
In which deep cloudlets pass

And a white precipice
Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down
Toward where the azures of the zenith drown.
How shall I drink all this?

Joy’s trick is to supply
Dry lips with what can cool and slake,
Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache
Nothing can satisfy.
~Richard Wilbur “Hamlen Brook”

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

How can I take it all in?

Like so many others right now, I’m thirsty for honest, respectful discussion and debate about the state of the world. Instead, I’m left dry and wanting, ready to blow away with the next gust.

So I ache to witness fading colors, fallen leaves, swift winds and pouring rain, as all creatures great and small prepare for winter’s chill. There is stark honesty among all soon to fall asleep.

I yearn to hear God’s Truth spoken out loud.
How amazing it would be — to be dumbstruck with joy.

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Let the Years Be Kind

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Just down the road… around the bend,
Stands an old empty barn; nearing the end.
It has sheltered no animals for many years;
No dairy cows, no horses, no sheep, no steers.
The neigh of a horse; the low of a cow;
Those sounds have been absent for some time now.
There was a time when the loft was full of hay,
And the resounding echoes of children at play.
At one time the paint was a bold shade of red;
Gradually faded by weather and the sun overhead.
The doors swing in the wind… the hinges are loose,
Windows and siding have taken a lot of abuse.
The fork, rope and pulleys lifted hay to the mow,
A task that always brought sweat to the brow.
But those good days are gone; forever it seems,
And that old barn now stands with sagging beams.
It is now home to pigeons, rats and mice;
The interior is tattered and doesn’t look very nice.
Old, abandoned barns have become a trend,
Just down the road… around the bend.
~Vance Oliphant “Old Barn”

We will call this place our home
The dirt in which our roots may grow
Though the storms will push and pull
We will call this place our home

We’ll tell our stories on these walls
Every year, measure how tall
And just like a work of art
We’ll tell our stories on these walls

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine

A little broken, a little new
We are the impact and the glue
Capable more than we know
To call this fixer upper home

With each year, our color fades
Slowly, our paint chips away
But we will find the strength
And the nerve it takes
To repaint and repaint and repaint every day

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time

Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine
Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time

Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine

Smaller than dust on this map
Lies the greatest thing we have
The dirt in which our roots may grow
And the right to call it home
~Ryan O’Neal “North” (listen to the choral versions below)

Each of us needs a home.
Every creature needs a place to put down roots and rest their head.

Yet, due to ravages of time,
a poverty of spirit and strength,
discouragement and discord,
natural disasters and drought,
or the devastation of politics and war —
too many find themselves chipped away until nothing is left.

It is time for restoration. It is time for renewal.

It is time for kindness:
the broken repaired,
the lonely made welcome,
the hungry fed.

Somehow, someway, we rebuild, repaint and restore
so all put down roots and thrive
and are welcomed home.

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The Oldest Tree

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Lately, when I awake desolate
feeling half-swamped
by runaway currents I name—
dread, for my children, and theirs,
and this planet—I backstroke
through time to rest my palms
against the delicate skin
of the gingko tree, the one
and only, in my home town.
Rooted in siltish sand,
come autumn, it flaunted
10,000 golden fans:
a waving descendant my uncle said,
of the oldest tree
to inhabit the earth. Memory
replays three fluting sighs
of a mourning dove, high in the canopy,
that vast fretwork alive again
with rustling endearments—yet
ghostly, too, as his unseen hand
almost rocks my skiff of a self.
~Laurie Klein “Lately, when I awake desolate”

So many reasons to awake in the night,
eyes wide open, searching the dark seas of trouble
for some sign of hope
for calm and peace in this stormy world.

Rocked to sleep again, I float among abundant
golden gingko leaves, each waving like a sail in the breeze,
before it tumbles, swirling, to the ground, forming
deeply cushioned and comforting pools of yellow.

Navigating these brutal times, desperate to
anchor within some safer harbor – I treasure
the old ginkgo as it reaches over each cherished child
with its golden cloak of love and protection.

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Edges So Sharp

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The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one 
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something undone.

Today’s edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved.

The way a lost
word

will come back
unbidden.

You’re not interested
in it now,

only
in knowing
where it’s been.
~Rae Armantrout from “Unbidden”

I wish for you the blessing
of a room where strangers sit
breathing unashamed
into a chosen silence

Not the gasping breath
of travelers on a crowded plane
or the tenuous wheeze
of the waiting room

May you know the power
of those who have decided
to submit to the silence
to enter the mystery
be consumed by it
and emerge transformed

May you belong among those
who inhale the stillness
as if it is keeping us
because it is
keeping us alive
~Bethany Lee, “To Enter the Mystery” from Etude for Belonging: poems for practicing courage and hope

The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are…
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
I am with you.
~Frederick Buechner in “Wishful Thinking and later” in Beyond Words

Twenty three years ago,
a day started with bright sun above
and ended in tears and bloodshed below.

This is a day for recollection;
we live out remembrance of
the torrential red that flowed that day;

Two decades later, far-away streets still course
with the blood of innocents.

What have we learned from all this?

That terrible day’s edges were so sharp
we all bled and still bear the scars.

So do not be afraid: we are able to still breathe and weep.

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We Are Lost…

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when the sun peeks over the horizon to greet
the day and spread golden honey warmth
to the dark, sleepy earth

when the birds begin to stir and twitter
and tune their songs to one another

when the trees rustle as the morning breeze
opens her eyes from slumber, and the dew is heavy
on the blades of grass

when I know morning has come once again
and we are not lost to the night, even as we
are not lost to the day

light dawns, and I can move again
breathing in streams of fresh morning air
lighting a candle for rejuvenation
and praying the day in with ginger and
salt and clay

oh how lovely it feels to be alive
how magical to wake with the light
and live
~Juniper Klatt, I was raised in a house of water

…deeds are done which appear so evil to us
and people suffer such terrible evils
that it does not seem as though any good will ever come of them;
and we consider this, sorrowing and grieving over it 

so that we cannot find peace in the blessed contemplation of God as we should do; 

and this is why:

our reasoning powers are so blind now, so humble and so simple

And this is what he means where he says, 
“You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well”, 
as if he said, “Pay attention to this now, faithfully and confidently, 
and at the end of time you will truly see it in the fullness of joy.
~Julian of Norwich from Revelations of Divine Love

Even when,
yet again,
innocents – our children, our teachers –
do not wake, as if by magic, to see this golden morn

I’m heavy laden as the tears of this dewy dawn
touch every lost and grieving thing

there is no reason for this
to happen again and again and again
~we weep until we are dry as dust~

Pay attention to this now, to this mourning for innocents
who are lost to the night and the day.

If only we listen and act, shall this be made well.

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In the Best Possible Way

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Let us go forward quietly,
forever making for the light,
and lifting up our hearts
in the knowledge that we are as others are
(and that others are as we are),
and that it is right to love one another
in the best possible way – believing all things,
hoping for all things,
and enduring all things. 
~Vincent Van Gogh from “Letters to Theo”

We like to blame our DNA for our tribal nature, to justify setting ourselves apart from the “other.” We tend to be discontent with whatever we are given — but that belief is exactly how humanity’s troubles began.

Every election and convention season only intensifies our sense of “otherness”, further putting wedges between us, driving us apart and further into the darkness.

We are slaves to divisiveness: even worshiping it in the name of “becoming great again”, emphasizing our own “truth” in the name of “unity.”

I simply can’t listen to it.
There is so much anger in the voices of our self-appointed “leaders.”

I want to know it is still possible to love each other in all our differences in the best possible way, with quiet endurance and hope. No shouting, no shootings, no need for a cascade of dropping balloons, and no ridiculous rancorous rhetoric.

We are as others are — others are as we are — denying it is folly. Believing it is the beginning of a selfless love for the “other”, something God did intend for our DNA, as His children who are no longer animals.

Indeed, God Himself became the “Other” living among us to show us just how it can be done.

It’s in every one of us. Now we must make it so.

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A Fallen World

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On the second day of fog, she goes to meet it

sits on the broad root of a broken down
apple tree, remembers being a child
in such fog, searching for fairy houses.
She hears movement in the grass,
keeps very still while the veil of haze
rises to treetops bronzed
by the burn of the sun. Slowly
horses and deer appear all around her,
they graze close together,
nosing fallen apples, until she forgets
this is still a fallen world.
~Lonnie Hull DuPont, “On the Second Day of Fog” from She Calls the Moon by Its Name 

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things“

When our grandchildren come to visit,
I watch as yet another generation rediscovers the mystery of
what we know about the joys and sorrows
of this fallen but redeemed world.

I am reminded there is light beyond the fearsome darkness,
there is peace amid the chaos,
there is a smile behind the tears,
there is stillness within the noisiness
there is rest despite the restlessness,
there is grace – ah, there is grace
as inevitably the old gives way to the new.

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The Colors of Grace in a Parched Landscape

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Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought?
~ Sophie Scholl from At the Heart of the White Rose

Little flower,
but if I could understand what you are,
root and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
~  Tennyson

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

Summer was our best season:
it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots,
or trying to sleep in the tree house;
summer was everything good to eat;
it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape…
~Harper Lee from “To Kill a Mockingbird”

I seek relief anywhere it can be found:
this parched political landscape so filled
with anger and lashing out,
division and distrust,
discouragement and disparity.

I want to be otherwise preoccupied
with the medley of beauty around me,
so there can be no room for other thoughts.

How is it?
— for thousands of years
and in thousands of ways,
God still loves man
even when we turn from Him.

I want to revel in the impossible possible,
in the variegated mosaic of grace
prepared to bloom so bountifully
in an overwhelming tapestry of unity,
between man and man,
and man and God.

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All Politics is Applesauce…

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I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.
~Will Rogers

Applesauce-making is one of my more satisfying domestic activities.  Peeling and coring apples can be tedious, as there are always plenty of bad spots to cut out. Though uncommon in our organic orchard, there is the occasional wiggling worm to find and dispose of before cooking. 

Our late summer transparent apples make a creamy tart sauce smooth to the tongue. With all the careful preparation before cooking, all blemishes are removed, with any extra unwanted wormy protein deposited in the compost bucket along with mountains of peel, cores and seeds.

If only our two main political parties would pick and prepare their presumptive nominees with as much concern and care…

Would that we could similarly pare out, peel off, dispose in the compost all the political flyers flooding our mailbox, the robo-call telephone messages asking for donations, the radio, TV and internet ads that burden us all until we crack and break under the weight. Most of the election fruit ends up rotting on the tree, turning us all to mush in the process. I’m weary just thinking about the millions of dollars spent in advertising these two (as yet) unofficial presidential candidates that could be used for far greater good and benefit for the citizenry.

Now we have a televised debate where one candidate is clearly incapable of providing coherent answers and the other, a convicted felon who spouts lies that go unchallenged as a result. It is clear now the whole kettle of sauce is spoiled. We could cook it all day long and there still are worms waving in the air, rotten cores festering, scabby peels floating on top, with the bottom scalding with the heat of the cook stove. 

Our political parties have profoundly failed the American people by propping up candidates unworthy of the office. I pray for a day when we can set our differences aside and raise up leaders who can do so as well. We must blend together our diverse flavors and characteristics for the good of all. Then, “applesauce” politics won’t simply be a mixture of nonsense and BS, as Will Rogers implies, but something actually nourishing for a flourishing future.

That’ll be the day…

There are men running governments who shouldn’t be allowed to play with matches.
~Will Rogers

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