March 2006

Earth, 8 minutes after creation (in God minutes)
And how the moon was formed by collision.

The Cocked Sideways Reasons for Spring

Run wild your upset eyes, look wide who cry for us.
Reach down into suffering and the purpose of death.
Quiet gently the question and hope of any meaning.
Speak as water, wind or tree the natural spirit in need and
seek wisely the counsel of friends who share a plea
for help in this bleak hour. Try the power of inner strength
though none but spring anoints with light a deeper flower.

You're ignorant of pagan words that made structure and metaphor
in your prayers long before they were ever spoken by your Savior.

Earth once trembled with snakes and ghosts when man spoke aloud
to gods, and his cries echoed like tombs at the sound of a
searching heart whose love and anchor stone had slipped away
in the darkness of a burial cave.

This cocked sideways planet that made the moon was the greater
cause of tropics and Arctics and long winter nights than any clue
from a prophet's wisdom offers us.

We are the scarce perfection of chaos, the pearl in the oyster
storm of sand and sea, a natural spirit that saves us from ourselves.

We as community know our myth and believe because we share
the gift of being alive together.

At the back of almost hollow words are skulls of those who spoke them
begging stars and stones to answer the why and the where of loved ones

composing the how-to prayer of survival.

Much of the metaphor comes from seed and soil, death before life,
mothering autumn's dry planting, spring and the agony of extremes,
the nature of worlds in collision and all the chaos of the heavens.

World, I call you perfect, only because I know of no other way
to cope with how you made us what we are.

The temple-speak of the universe resounds awareness that a trillion
catastrophes created the world and its concept is metaphor enough
to live with, make us stronger for it.