All One, One for All

Homo sapiens be in a pickle.

We upright beasts are facing a  heap of 

hardship and eventual extinction—or so it appears.

Witness: there are too many of us at 

any one time, on a spaceship that’s

more like a hot potato heating up.

D-day is coming when each of us has 

a smartphone that can be linked to any

WMD to match our ADD.

So it may appear.  On the other hand,

did you see the game between the Barons

of Birmingham and BSC Panthers?

At first blush it looked like a rout, and yet

what potential those youngsters did show when

confronted by insurmountable odds.

That is what the future is all about,

our latent capacity to grow up,

and we are moving in that direction.

We can wake up and make peace with ourselves

or end it all tomorrow.  Either way

the heavens are full of experiments.

Still the true solace is not in knowing

the cosmos does not depend just on us;

it is in seeing the true face of That 

Which alone is, yet is never lonely.

You Alright? She Asked

Leaving a baseball game, seventh inning,

to avoid toes of people in my row

I go to hurdle my stadium seat.

My shoe gets caught in the slats of seat's back

and I take a tumble.  On the way down 

I see a woman’s face, sheer agony

from fear I might be undone by the fall.

The woman shows empathy for a true

stranger, without knowing that in falling
his mind is calm, nonresistant, grateful

for her caring concern and compassion.

In flight he loses his purchase, all sight

of self, as though he were but a witness

to the event without an interest 

in the outcome . . . oh, only the slightest.

St John’s Gospel, A Riddling Point of View

Once upon a time I gave to my sister a riddle,

“If God made the world, what made God? “ 

To which she did reply,

“God is Love Unborn, always forever 

in the world but before it, and not of it.”

I pressed her, “So where is Love?”

She gave me back a riddle,

“Without Love, nothing you see could ever be, 

but you will never see Love, just its sign.”

Whereupon she hugged me nigh unto her.

Today, sixty years after,

I recall sister’s riddling 

response to my cleverness

whenever I see people 

who seem to love each other

shamed by others for sharing 

very Love.  My heart screams out,

Fret not, for you are so loved, as the world.

Homeland Terrorists

Some of us believe other

people have no right to act

contrary to our beliefs.

Yet under democracy

all of us have rights just as

persons, no other reason.

Unless you can show that your 

other is not a person, 

you got to quit your terror.

None gets to hold one’s own faith 

against any other in

the name of supremacy.

Unless of course you are on

the Supreme Court and believe 

corporations are people.

Peaceful Uprising

Waking up dripping

with words

like a cool sweat from

a walk

I must do something

to still

the living waters

that stir

so I scribble down

the words

in order of their

uprising.

Once Upon a Time

I sat the sunset 

admiring Mount Hood

then came down off my 

dreamy high horsey

bemired in this, that

hundreds of thousands

of contractors all 

make a living from

your, my taxing pool

at the Pentagon.

Now it’s enough I

wake up with these words.

If ‘tis all a dream

I stand for balance . . .

come April fifteen 

ev’ry blasted year.

Humdrum Matters

Making a grocery list, I sit at a desk that rests

in front of a window from which hangs, as a thin curtain,

a faded pastel cloth, once used to cover a table

that served a listening post.

Said table would be adorned with bread from a bakery

and grapes from a grocery, with a book for me to read 

while I sat there waiting for no thing in particular, 

ears attuned to passersby.

Located in a hallway of a student center of

a large university, my job for an afternoon

each week was to be an ear for any passing by who

sought to unburden a self.

I provided this service for eight years and overtime

I met friends for life, from one who was my first customer,

on the way to take his life, to one who had found hers as 

a faithful Hindu swami.

The first, I talk with now and then, as we walk the same streets.

Of the swami I’ve lost track, as she moved on from serving 

the post with me to holy matters other side the earth, 

leaving me a pastel cloth.