POEM: The World as a Prey Animal

Whose eyes glare out at me from the brush?
Whose hot breath keeps time with mine and hopes for blood?
Whose very being-distinct from my own
Wishes me dead, as food alone?
As a victory kill in the glorious hunt?

Let me sleep tonight, sacrifice that I am.
Let me sleep tonight as a lamb in the wild.
In grasses hidden, where destiny thrives,
In chaos neatly tucked away in ordinary lives.

POEM: Read Me

Read me,
When the lines between us fade,
When memory thin as morning light
And voices cool as shade
Carry promise of distant thunder,
When all that remains is the cicada song,
Unabashed and unable to fathom summer’s end.

POEM: The Poetry That Is A Church (Version 2)

Let loose a prayer for anything and like incense it rises, a returning soul
Longing for the union that hides in the mud of us all.
Let us hold fast each other’s hands and account each one for the other.
Hold the sacramental deep like the air in our lungs,
Or the steely resolve of a wedding vow
Or the soft goodbye over a coffin -

Like a lighthouse, the Living Christ calls out in a lovely lonely baritone - “home, home”
Into the black fog that faith can sometimes be. A contract is scratched
Onto our fleshy hearts, by the beat and rhyme of the poetry that is a church.
This world so sparkles when viewed through her stained glass trust, so blue -
Or when lit by mystic fires, the red of blood, of what embraces and what is true