February | 2018 | Azotus Theology & Art

Dear Friend

Who Sees

Dear friend,

These days which bring such lighted promise

Within this arduous muscled battle

Witness His bright Charity

and Wisdom wound

and found in you.

And while you

in His great love

sweep toward the fray

And swords of prayer sing louder still

I am still appearing

spearing at windmills

tossed and

lost along the battle’s rim

Wandering on my dog-eared mule.

(yes, it is okay to laugh).

But you

My friend

Do not despise my youth

And all my lost and easy words

pass by your ears of wisdom

untouched

forgotten

like an untold story

in a foreign city

with no interpreter

And though I now drink Hope

Where once

Was bitter gall

You have Hope yet brighter still

Which I do not yet

Understand.

But this we do share: We love the Wind

And the Wind swirls round us like Love Himself

And the thin windchimes tin and shimmer gently

And the young brown birds land on the wires,

Singing

Only to rise on new currents

Painting an ecstatic rhythm of freedom

within the will of the Wind

And in my most quiet moments

I see the Universe winding down

Within God’s utter Completeness

Satisfaction

and Joy.

Written during Carl Daniel’s wake

from the 100 year-old Oak which died

the same week he did.

Over the great rolling

Pacific waters came

The driven wind

Licking and skipping

Over the seminal

Pounding whitecaps

Inland

Raking roary furrows

Over rows of seeded pelicans

Kissing seasoned brays

Driven to the inlet stadium

Round Point Joe

Scaling sandstone rythyms

Higher and higher

Breaching round the birthrim

Pulling the cormorants into dervish

Driven

Into the cuts of rising cypress and oak

Running the dark-carpeted forests

Ignoring all words

Swirling in whirlwind

Sucking the seed of Great Oak

Into a dancing circle unbroken

Driving seed into the

Darkened

Waiting

Loam.

Father seed,

Mother womb

Inward

Ticklish dance

Inside virgin

California range

Raised underneath

Yet within

The shuddering pulse

Of the Pacific.

Dance of the New Oak

Unfolding

Unyielding

Radicles snaking

Young Fatheroots breaking

And taking the earth

Founding

A Spray of five young

Stalks begin to brood

Extending from the heart

Knowing and naming

Whatever the flinted

Barking trunk

Cannot glimpse.

Carved on each branch

Are the names of all

The Lovers

The Songs they sung

The sons and daughters

Whose humble fame

Framed the surface

Of that expansive

Family name

Shuddering

Five heavy limbs remain

Outweighed

Stretching too far

Too far

From the heart of a trunk now dead.

Now Men will come.

Do not despise them.

Men must come.

They are coming

Come to pull down the heavywood

Come to root up the tendriled histories

From a Century’s shadowed earth

Cutting a series of red-furled slabs

Still moist with November’s red rings

Still crusted with the dark brown-oak of Fatherwood

Down

Three-fold cords

Bundled and

Stacked along the five family walls

When the cold comes

And the hollowness hearkens

Then comes the heavywood

Piece at a time

Laid upon the hot harness

Of each hearth

Time of ashes

Colors dancing above the drying centered rings

With hallowed smoke climbing

From the bellies

Of Five children.

The blackened brick, wood and fire

Form the Question:

Where do we go from here?

Where?

Now

The wind once again dances

Over a great empty space.

Outward

Miles away

Orphans drop

Their inevitable fruit

driven

On the Wind which comes

When new seed is sown.

The wind has shifted

New lives will be formed

Their names will be spoken

Tommorow.

__________________

Azotus Theology & Art

Monthly Archives: February 2018

Dear Friend

Dear Friend

Who Sees

Elegy for Carl Daniels

Written during Carl Daniel’s wake

from the 100 year-old Oak which died

the same week he did.