Life and all within it roll
On like the waves in the sea
Up and down forever bound
For the shores of infinity
Set Freedom Free
Freedom’s fallen to her knees
And she’s got no strength to stand
When the voices of a nation
Fall like salt upon the sand
Muted by a call of hatred
Ringing all across the land
All her screams for gentle mercy
Stifled by a tyrant hand
Look around you, there are signs
In the flower and the tree
in the river and the sky
For an eye that wants to see
Come together, join as one
Ocean of humanity
Here and now, remove the shackles
Here and now: set Freedom free
Day and Night
Though the day chases night
Never brightens it quite
In the way that the night
Quenches day
Every worry and stress
Every pain becomes less
When you hear what the night
Has to say
Forgiveness
You’re angry at them all, and now
It feels like something deep within has died,
How could they do this to you
After all you do for them and all you’ve tried.
“Forgive, so God forgives you,” is
The chant repeated, and you’ve tried a lot,
But then you look at people
And reduce them to the gadgets that you’ve got:
It’s easy when a smartphone just
Goes dumb, you can exchange it for another,
But you can’t find replacements for
A parent, child, a sister or a brother.
You feel the world against you
Like a hammer coming down upon a nail
And then they say they’re sorry, but
You’re tired of the way they always fail.
Now all your love has withered in
The desert of your anger, you decide
There’s nothing left to give up but
The hardest thing to give up is your pride.
So hear the Friday caller’s call
To heed the words that drift upon his breath
And turn your eye upon yourself
And beg forgiveness now before your death.
Till there begins to swell a wave
Of Mercy from the fountain whence it springs
A wave that rolls toward the shores
Of faith with all the mercy Mercy brings.
It fills you with abilities
You thought were well beyond you all this time:
It’s easy to forgive when you
Have been forgiven any fault or crime.
Good deeds and sweet forgiveness wipe
Bad deeds and their effects away for good,
It’s what the angels do when they
Set out to carry orders as they should.
The Lord forgives, and so does his
Beloved Messenger forgive, and so
It is with his companions
And those who followed them: Forgive. Let go
That hearts adrift may join once more
And journey all together to the end
Where everything begins again,
Where mercies and forgivenesses descend.
The Lion On The Foyer Rug
It was a massive golden beast, as awesome in its beauty as its quiet ferocity.
“But how did it get there,” you ask.
It happened one cold morning last winter. I had just gotten ready for work and was stepping out of my room on the second floor when I spied my six-year-old son by the stairs. He was looking down at nothing in particular. He didn’t look too happy.
“What’s the matter, man?”
The question elicited no change in expression, just a dull “Nothing.”
Well, I knew that was untrue. You see, like any father worth his uniodized sodium chloride, I know my son.
I suspected it had something to do with him realizing he had fallen asleep the night before wearing his Thomas the Train pajama pants without matching Thomas the Train pajama shirt, rather a plain old “soft” shirt – his preferred term for a white tee.
Maybe it was something else. But I was faced with two options – to either engage him and let him talk his problem out, or to supplant his current preoccupation with another. I chose the latter without hesitation.
I ran my hand over his head and invited him to hold it as we made our way down the stairs. He let his left hand slide on the bannister as I let my right shoulder graze the wall, each of us contributing our shuffle to the silent melodies of morning time.
Our stairs bifurcate at a mid-level landing, one flight goes to the right and ends in the foyer, the other goes left and back to the family room.
As soon as we approached the corner and stepped onto the landing, I jumped back two steps. He instinctively bounded back with me. I pressed my back to the wall and pulled him close.
“Wha..” he began, but I cut him off with a frantic finger to my lips.
We stood there silently for a couple seconds. Then I leaned down and whispered very softly into his ears.
“There’s a lion on the foyer rug.”
He looked back confused, then the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile.
“Abba!” he protested sweetly.
My face went hard. I continued in a loud whisper.
“Listen, if you want to play the pretend game, it’s all or nothing. That means we go all the way or we just forget it. Now, are you with me or not?”
“Okay,” he said after a moment of thought.
I held his face in my hands and looked into his eyes, still whispering loudly. “Are you with me ALL THE WAY?”
That was me summoming the method actor in my six-year-old. The response came as the smile left his face.
“Yes,” he said with a poker face.
I took a deep breath and pressed my back to the wall again and motioned to him with my free right hand to follow suit. He complied. We then crab-walked down a step. I turned my head to peek around the corner.
After about ten seconds of what was meant to be intense observation, I withdrew and leaned down to whisper into his ear. My breathing had become labored and there was a quiver in my voice.
“It’s massive. Must be at least 400 pounds of muscle, bone, teeth and claw.”
“It has claws?” he asked aloud with wide eyes.
My face showed sudden panic as a finger flew up to my face to shush him, my expression contorting into the unspoken plea of Could you please stop acting like you’re six years old and be an adult for once? I continued in a whisper.
“Of course it’s got claws. It’s a LION.”
I gulped and shook my head, breathing out slowly the way they teach at Lamaze classes. Fond memories. I renewed my grip on his hand, then stole another peek before returning to his earside with an update.
“That animal is sitting on it’s haunches. It’s ready to pounce. We will have to move imperceptibly.”
He whispered back this time. “What is imperpes-, what is that?”
“IM-PER-CEP-TIB-LY,” I replied visibly annoyed at having to deal out a vocabulary lesson in the middle of this crisis.
“I read about it in a Jim Corbett account when he found himself face to face with a man-eater in the jungles of Kumaon. It means very, very slowly. We have to step on that landing very, very slowly. We have to move very, very slowly as we circle around and take the other flight of stairs to the safety of the family room. Can you do that?”
He nodded, “Yeah.”
“Okay. There is one very important thing you must remember,” I added stealing one more glance at leo.
“What,” he asked.
I snapped back and looked him in they eye.
“Do not… I repeat… DO NOT look at that lion,” I said.
“So, don’t look at the lion?” he repeated back almost inaudibly.
I shook my head emphatically. “If you look at him, he may take that as a challenge to fight you. So whatever you do, don’t look at him. You got that?”
He nodded, “Yeah.”
I held his face in my hands again and kissed him on one cheek, and then the other. My voice softened.
“I love you man.”
We straightened up again, our backs pressed against the wall. More labored breathing. Then I looked down at him and nodded a “You ready to do this?” He nodded back.
We assumed a normal stance on the stairway and ever so gradually stepped down onto the landing. I was gulping audibly and my breath came in gasps now. I tightened my grip on my son’s hand. He reciprocated. I looked down at him and his eyes were wide open staring straight ahead at the dining room chandelier.
Slowly and not so imperceptibly we turned around and began to step off the landing. I was now looking down directly at my son.
He brought his right hand up to join his other hand so that they were clasped around mine. I watched for the trigger and it came as he turned his head to the left to sneak a peek at the beast.
That was my cue. Now I may have spent a second thinking about the consequences of rushing down the seven steps before us. After all, I am his father and couldn’t help wondering if this bit of mindless haste might cause my boy injury.
(Excuse me, something is pressed against the inside of my cheek. There. Now, where were we?)
I dismissed the thought as I decided we were in survival mode. There was no room for injury. There was only room for respite from being mauled by a lion.
With all the suddenness I could muster, I screamed:
“EEYAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
He screamed:
“EEYAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
We rushed down the stairs and collapsed on the floor in the family room in a heap of laughter.
That was a year ago.
That was fun.
Truth
Seek the truth for what it is
Not what you’d like it to be
Shake off time
Then time constrains
Time dies
Truth remains
Repartee
The words are formed and primed to do their dance
Upon the bones of honor in disgrace
You’ve strung your bow of tongue, awaiting chance
To send that verbal arrow nocked in place.
But then, just as you are about to fire
There falls a slowing hand upon your bow
Eliding tension for a reason higher
Than all the reasons you could ever know.
The arrow is dismantled word by word,
Replaced by disposition quite reversed:
An arsenal of patience undeterred
By thoughts seducing you to be your worst.
It is an act of courage to withhold
A poisoned arrow, be it cast in gold.
Parenting
I’ll let it slide because
I know you’ll learn someday
That all you said there was
Just all you didn’t say
A day on the prairie
Today:
just a day on the prairie
bounding
leaping
suddenly silently wary
slow down
amble on
by the brown
stroke of dawn
The Faces We Forget
Now even as we mourn the loss
Of famous faces for the good
They heaped upon the world they touched
As only people like them could,
We can’t forget the faces that
Were too horrific for the news
Because they bear the marks of death
Witnessing inconvenient truths.
Let’s not forget the faces of
The elders who we push aside
That WE may live in peace and comfort
In the days before THEY died.
Let’s not forget the faces lost
Without a home to call their own
In games of war where bombs are tossed
By oh-not-so-mistaken drone.
And if we cannot see these faces
We must close our eyes to see
For that is how the blind are blessed
In matters of a mind that’s free.