The Stranger

The Stranger

Grief is such a stranger to me

That might sound like something magical, wondrous

But it is quiet and dead and dehumanizing

The lack of grief is a very reason to grieve

The lack of capacity to grieve 

Signals the presence of the monotonous, the mundane

I guess I need to set aside a coffee date

Maybe it is time to meet with grief

See all that I’ve missed over these last 30 or so years

Not so I may dwell in death or despair

But rather that I may dwell in life

I don’t want to be a stranger anymore

Little Feet

I found this poem in my journal and I wish to dedicate it to Isaiah on his "gotcha day" today.

Little Feet

I love these little feet

They have walked across African soil

Now they rest and sleep

These feet have seen the women weep

They have seen the men’s great toil

In the dry and barren streets

These feet have stepped on paths of death

Yet they thrive now in the light

These feet have known what hunger is

They have known the darkness, known the bliss

They have known the agony of the night

They have felt the wonder of the breath

I love these little feet

These feet that come from African soil

Now they rest and sleep

And in my heart I sense the deep

And the pleasure in the tumultuous toil

That brought him from the barren street

And now he rests at home

Each Life

I'm posting this poem today in honor of our son Isaiah's "Gotcha Day."

Each Life

This is what it’s all about

These are smiles of heaven’s shouts

This is life that sets one free

This is life as it’s meant to be

This is a picture of the kingdom of God

A picture that was taken on this earthly sod

This is a picture of heaven on earth

This is a picture of what love is worth

This is a sight of the look in God’s eyes

This is the cost of the most priceless prize

This is the world in the way it should be

This is the way that we set the world free

Each life makes a difference

Restore

I wrote this poem for a patient of mine. She was an infant with a terribly progressive terminal disease. I guess you could call this poem a "statement of faith" if you wanted to, but as a physician I despise when it seems that illness wins and my patients and their families lose. So in light of what most would call a hopeless situation, I decided to do the only thing I could do: write hope. 

I read this poem again tonight as I was going through my journal, and I felt like I needed to share it. I feel like there are lots of people who need hope, and if you are one of those, then this poem is for you. If you know of someone who needs hope, then please share this poem with them. I think it makes the world a better place when we take something born out of great tragedy and pain, and then help to turn that around for great good. Thanks :)   . 

Restore

The very things meant to destroy your hearing

Will be used to spread the sounds of heaven everywhere

The very things meant to destroy your vision

Will be used to reveal the colors and the beauty of God

The things meant to destroy your soul

Will bring healing to the nations

God has spoken, it is true

Those things brought as destruction against you

Will be the very things that lift you higher

Higher than one has ever been before

So keep looking for the door

The Angel

The Angel

There is an angel outside my window

Standing amongst the trees

Standing amongst the remains of the giants

Always looking to the gates

Standing, watching, in silence he waits

Watching the entries, the exits

The comings and goings

His head lifted slightly toward the sunsets

He reminds me often that my life is up to me

Yet there remains a guardian

Not a guardian to keep fear and pain away

No, a guardian to allow fear and pain to play

In the midst of my noisy din,

In the midst of my normal day,

Along the paths of chosen friends,

I find I live in the presence of my enemies 

While drinking the choicest of wines

Breathing the breaths that are most sublime

All the while my guardian keeps watch by the windows

What he knows no one knows

What he’s seen, what he’s heard

The gusts of the wind, the songs of the birds

The cries of my heart, the darkness of my eyes

The stillness of my soul that has been mesmerized

By the things he can see and hear every moment

But there are no moments in eternity’s scenes

Space without time, movement within rhyme

And without

I swallow pride, I swallow doubt

Nodding slightly to my silent guardian

Who still has head lifted toward the sunsets

Who can I be?

Who is this that is me?

He sits there quietly 

The gusting spring winds scattering flowers abroad

So that it appears the snow has fallen once again

A snow of pinks and purples and whites and yellows

Stories of newborn sullen fellows

Whose lives were a scattered glance

Yet in all their beauty, all their romance

The yearning lingers on

A light, a stroke, a sing, a song

The angel still keeps his watching, long

As the seas still swirling

The shoots unfurling

This life is just a whisper away

Clover

Clover

Isn’t it amazing

That in the midst of nowhere

God places his nicest beauties

In the places where feet trod, unbeholden,

Stomping the life out of it all

Completely unaware, uncaring, of the life being crushed

Yet right there is where His beauty lies

Right there is the place where I can decide

To keep on crushing with these weather-worn boots

Or to stop and cherish the moment

I think I’ll stay right here for a while

Intricacies

Intricacies

This is amazingly intricate

Accidental it cannot be

Every tiny fiber making it’s small contribution

Every contribution critical to the mass

I refuse to see through a looking glass

Whose lenses are shattered by mere reason

That is why even in the deadliest season

One can see that beauty exists

Beauty lives

Beauty speaks in the loudest of voices

In the quiet intricacies of our human choices,

In the fallen leaves of winter

It only takes the size of a splinter

To open the heart to reality

Reality that goes beyond our dark winters

Chasm

Chasm

Sometimes living poetry

Is like looking into a deep, dark chasm

I see nothing

I feel nothing

Yet I know something is out there

In there, within the darkest depths

And suddenly and without any explanation

There I just step

Falling, falling, falling

Into a place I know not

To a destiny I know not

Yet I feel the air around me growing thicker

And there is a slowing of my descent

And I feel my wings getting stronger

Strong enough to simply put them forth

And the air builds up below me

And now I am headed back up towards the lights

Able to see where I just journeyed

Seeing creatures and creation like never before

Seeing myself like never before

And it all started at the edge of a dark chasm…

Slumber

Slumber

That time between the worlds, secession

Where sleep is dream and wake is a question

Where our souls get closer to where our spirits dwell

And oceans wander and the deep does swell

Where light and life and echoes cease

To be just yearnings and are released

There the call of wonder comes

It beckons for the light of sun

Yet is saddened by its appearance for

The soul does long and cries for more

Of the time between the worlds in slumber

Worlds where what is not is number

Worlds where what can be are living

Worlds where what we need are giving

Everything our heart desires

In living waters and spirit fires

We step into a flowing river

That brings us warmth and makes flesh shiver

Until it seems it is no more

Where last week’s sky is this week’s floor

And all of this wrapped up in time

To walk along in slumber’s rhyme

Is to be so close to heaven we can taste it

To Be Continued

To be continued…

I have embraced everything meant to destroy me

I’ve shunned everything that gives me love

The recognition of it all isn’t helpful

I think I might just need a death, a burial

In order to see something new

Maybe this blind man needs to view

The sunshine that starts the new day

I’ve been told to believe and pray

This I’ve done ten thousand times

Ten thousand times ten thousand

Yet here I am

On the opposite side of the universe

Floating along as the missing link

I sense my soul and body sink

Into the fires of some distant nebula

I have searched for answers

I have searched for gold

I have humbled myself

To gain riches untold

But all I have is dirt and grime

And emptiness surreal

As I sit here amongst the dirt and sand

I sling the particles of dust from my hand

Not realizing this is the very substance of magnanimous creation

I must have a new imagination

I must see things as they really could be

I must enter into a regeneration

I must plant my being beside the great trees

I must grow right where I’m planted

I must trust the farmer when it is time for uprooting

These pains, these doubts, these questions are shooting

Quite the snowstorm amongst my brain

I embrace the process

I embrace the pain

I embrace the love

I embrace the mystery

And I realize this story is to be continued…

Brown

Brown

I’ve noticed that the earth is brown

It seems that it could be the color of down

Yet I sense it carries something much more

A place where there is an opening of a great door

Where earth is a gate to heavenly places

Joyful gatherings and beautiful faces

simply spring to life and come to be

Where acorn grows into the tree

Where man grows up and begins to exist

The place where light and love does kiss

From dusky dawn to gentle breeze

From moving waters of hearts in peace

This is the place where heaven does grow

This is the place where I always know

That brown was simply meant to be

To show it’s not always the ways that I see

There is often more, there is more that’s hidden

There is strength in weakness, more when given

I see now more of what brown does show

It’s the lower I am, then the higher I go

Kissing Sun

Kissing Sun

Everywhere I go

Everywhere I see

People moving, walking, enjoying life

Why not me?

They seem to know who they are

What they’re made to do

Just saunter along through the morning dew

Until you sleep at night

Every thing is all right

But not with me.

Maybe the problem is I’m not sure who I am

I’m not sure where I’m going

I’m not even sure where I’ve been

I’ve lost the memories in the day-to-day battle

Of simply surviving to see another listless day

Maybe this is me

Maybe I am right where I belong

Walking slowly to a wanderer’s song

With my eyes always turning back to see what I might have missed

The shadows long, the sun I kissed

The light has faded out the memory

The wind does blow a gale today

The lake waves hit the shore, the spray

Goes flying by in desperate adoration

Of the stillness in which I sit

Surrounded by the gentle wings

Of love and life and simple things

Wondering why I have this ache about me

Even nature can plainly see

That I have the heartache to be set free

So we can join together in a passionate song

And sing the night and through the whole day long

Until we’re both so drunk we don’t even know it

We can only live a life that shows it

But there I go again in fantasy

Wondering why I have this ache in me

Knowing it is there for a reason

Knowing there is coming a fruitful season

When life does spring up from this ground

The breaking of the soil will release a sound

That all the earth will know and hear

The life of love, the death of fear

This will be great reality, this will be the death of me

And no one and everyone will realize the difference

Celebration

Celebration

Can you sense new dreams arising?

Can you feel a radiant hope anew?

Don’t you feel there is a new day dawning?

Can’t you hear the morning dew

Singing a new song?

A song your heart has been singing all along

Yet it seemed there was no one else to hear it

But now it’s been heard

It has risen to the heavens like a hummingbird

And has fallen to the earth like an eagle

Powerful and windswept

Magical and momentous

Your hopes and dreams have come alive again

The colors and lights and sounds are friends

That have joined with you on the journey

I am glad to be watching this happen

A river from heaven overflowing its banks

No longer will we walk the planks

Of harsh and bitter judgments

No

No, we will walk through meadows of poppies

Baby’s breath

Fields of lupine and gold

A greater story will begin to unfold

As we walk on through the color fields

No sword, no vine, no thorn, no shield

Will keep us from the heights

We will dance and sing with all our might

For all our might will be easy

The sounds, the lights, the smells all pleasing

Will be the order of our days

So won’t you join me in this fray

This raucous celebration?

I’d really like to be with you for at least another hundred years…

2/13/17

Inspiration

Inspiration

Sometimes I wait on inspiration to write

Sometimes I can’t wait any longer

That’s when it is called “work”

And work it is

Grimacing over every word and idea

Fighting off the demons of criticism and lack

Wishing that the winds would come

Lifting me into the heavens

Where everything is easy and light and free

Or is it?

Could it be that work is where we really find God

Instead of all of those angels

Could it be that in the wrestling

We meet the greatest One of them all

He might cripple us for the rest of our lives

But He just might meet us right in our need

Teach us something new

Give us something bright

Something no one else will ever understand

Nor will we ever want them to

Because it is ours

So keep moving along

Keep writing the words of your living song

You are making a world of difference

And it is very, very beautiful

2/8/17

Dedicated to my wife, Melissa, the hardest working person I’ve ever met.

Daydreams in Nightmares

Daydreams in Nightmares

Sometimes I just stare out the window

I get into a place where there is nothing at all

Nothing permeating my mind except what is in front of me

Even that slips off into a surreal mist

I see the birds sunning themselves

Drying off after a good bath

Finding the crumbs from last night’s outdoor dinner

Cleaning the porch more thoroughly than the children have ever done

A dancing web, the rising sun

Is the only framework this vision will ever need

The morning routine chases the birds away

The children stay inside to play

In the realms of entertainment and imagination

I seek an end to this daily frustration

While the birds are trying to alight again

Trying to find their place back in the scene of things

I walk in lands with golden rings

Every single one of them a strange distraction

Distorted views and a dark refraction

Seem to be the norm 

But my hope is warm

To the coming of the seas

To the faithfulness of the trees

Standing as they have always stood before

A beacon to an open door

Which leads to secrets of the universe

These poems of a post modern man

Seem so difficult for me to understand 

When they are grappled with the mind

Unleash the being that sings beyond all time

Enter into the vision of rhythm and rhyme

One will then know the dark from the difference