POETRY

SPRING

Snow on the cold wind

through bright waves of rising sun.

Skittering glass flakes.

(In 1970 I published a little book of poetry and peddled it around to stay alive. It was a simpler time--I went to a printer and said, "Hey, print this for me and I'll pay you as I sell it!" He said, "Sure." I haven't cracked it open in many years, but I just did and found this. It's here mostly for the sound. I'm going to submit it to capitalization--in those days I wanted my poems to look like the liner notes on Bob Dylan albums.)

STORM

The winds are up,

the awful breath of distant skies,

come closer.

In the vast, where there was heat 

and haze, it blows to raze

the columns of complacent afternoon;

the ashes swirl away, ascending seas.

And way up there the sun

excites new waves of air

deep-rolling in the trees,

and random traces

lick and sweep eroding ground.

The sound is broken on our faces, while

blind wheatshafts lie

and softly cry the birth of chaos.

Bare-heel deep in earth, 

stand near against the storm--

I'll be your staff, as wailing spirals

through your hair bear chaff

on sailing terrors in the wind.

(I wrote this for my wife on Valentine's Day 2006.)

WE WILL

We will pluck rubies from low-hanging branches.
We will weep rainbows when hard frost is gone.
We will draw honey from throats of gold trumpets.
We will ride strong horses into the dawn.

I will find diamonds deep in the mountain.
I will deliver the fire-feathered ring.
I will forge stones and the fierce sun will kiss them.
I will thrum wood and the angels will sing.

You will take hold of the mantle of morning.
You will ignite every dream we may know.
You will weave light into wings for our children.
You will drape sorrow with succor, like snow.

(I wrote this for my wife's 2005 birthday. Not 2005th.)

LAURIE'S EYES

They reach out like soft hands
to gather trembling wounded wills
within her shade of love.
Like strong hands they grasp the solid rod of hope.
Like ropes of flame those fingers ring my heart.
They probe the pain I fail to feel
and sing the path to healing
on the harp of peace,
appealing to the child,
the man, the family,
"I can see you,
yet I love you still."

(I wrote this for my wife's 2004 birthday.)

A WORD FOR HER?

Find a word for her?
They come in rushes, bundled:
"bursting light,"
"exploding color,"
"popping blossoms,"
"sweeping fragrance,"
sudden, sudden, sudden!
Is this a surprise?
What about the staid and steady?
No. Emergence,
appearance,
arrival and healing,
like a rapid angel.
But she stays!

(I wrote this in about 1984.)

A BROTHER DIES

A brother dies, is called from here.
The chair he kept is hollow now.
No more his reasons, round and clear,
but echoes we will follow now.

A brother dies, a candle dims.
The light has left his whitened hair.
We think of years once bright with him,
and wonder at the darkened air.

A brother dies, a darkness wise
and deep descends upon us here,
so we may better see his rising
star, more bright, more fair, more clear.

(I wrote this in the spring of 1987, inspired by Psalm 139 and a haunting Celtic tune, the name of which I don't know.)

WITH MY PROUD SHIPS TOSSED

With my proud ships tossed and broken,
with fear in my sails,
I would rage against high ocean,
black tides and with'ring gales.
But the waves forget their passion
when Jesus walks the sea,
breathing peace through all creation,
speaking sweet love to me.

When the night clouds in their dark flight
veil the white moon in gauze,
and the barest breath of starlight
fails where the deep sky was,
and the dark draws tight around me,
all hopeless I would hide.
But the night shines bright about me,
and Christ by my side.

(I wrote this for my wife, Laurie, as a Valentine's Day gift in 1995.)

IF WIND WINGS FLAME

If wind wings flame from giants robed in light,
and angels powder peace along their flight­
If spirit clings to clouds that veil the sun,
you must be angel, wind, or cloud fire-spun.
If you are merely wife, and not these things,
why do I feel with you bright warmth of wings?

HIS COMING

There was joy in the hope of His coming,
the promise of reunion with Infinite Love and Light.
But then we passed through veils and into shadows,
fell through the gate of blood and bone
into a lone and weary waste.
Stars smoked out by the traffic of laughter and war--
song smothered under by the din of industry and greed.
Alive alone to some forgotten need, we bend stiff tender knees.

We listen for His horses' hooves thundering in the canyons,
banners snapping in the sun,
the angel host with bolts of flame and flashing steel.
But neither in the fire nor the whirlwind do we hear His voice.
No, mingled with the lowing and bleating and cooing and clucking
and crickets and sighs of leaning stars
we hear the cries of infant hunger,
sudden cold--
a baby king, just moments old.

(Again, a hymn. I have no memory of writing this, but I imagine it must have been before 1985, hoping it might be part of the Latter-day Saint hymnbook that was published in that year.)

JESUS, ROBE US

Jesus, robe us with thy grace.
Replace our sin-spun pride
with holy cloth of covenant --
adornment of the bride.

And gold and whitened folds of light
upon on our shoulders rest,
and on the shoulders of all souls
who nakedness confess.

When we poor children meet in Thee,
and rags of sin remove,
adorn our trembling limbs with grace
and mercy, beauty, love.

(This was written maybe twenty years ago as a hymn about tithing, but you don't even have to know what tithing is for these simple verses to be true. It has recently been set to music by Newell Dayley.)

IN FAITH, WE GIVE

In faith, we give to the Lord.
In love, He gives to His own.
The gift of the faithful blooms in His hand
from the seed so humbly sown.

In faith, we give to the Lord.
In love, He gathers our seed.
The gift of the faithful springs in His field,
filling all His kingdom's need.

In faith, we give to the Lord.
In love, He feeds all His fold.
The gift of the faithful, given away,
He returns -- all heart can hold.

WHEN THE WORLD BEGAN

I remember a little of when the world began,
when skies were deep in Southern California.
There were sheep next door and no apartments.
(I had seen a manger with my own eyes.)
Leaves and puddles, not a curb and gutter yet,
to mar the diamond of our street.
A car might come, and big kids move out of center field
until it passed. Fences hung with berries. Birds ate plums.
In the iron angle of Peck Road and the tracks
lived Mexicans like tigers and dreams, like smoke.
Dad took me to the foundry
­at home I watched Mom in the tub.
There was a rodeo once, in the beginning of the world,
and cardboard cowboys stapled on my new stiff jeans.
Bees attended the dripping of the faucet out back
and I thought about God and Jesus, distant as Mars
and real as the smell of new Keds.
This was before the first bike, first high schoolbus.
This is in the time of the first mythic dog,
mother of gentleness, centre of truth, runner of laps of joy,
laying buff holiness on our knees to be stroked.
We were not alone when the world began.
There was a man each evening washed his driveway
whistling nonsense.
We came out of doors for sirens.
You could see the mountains, count the pines on top.
And people still burned weeds in the City of Angels.

(16 May 1987)

WHERE WE LIVE, THE SNOW FALLS

Where we live, the snow falls,
all through the silent night,
in hushing curtains, veiling
all the ugliness in sight.
And when the darkness shallows
and the sun begins his flight,
all shapes in all creation
are bright echoes of his light.

When Jesus came, the snow fell
(or so the carols say),
although in springtime Bethlehem
a blossom burst that day,
and cast its color on the hill
a few brief miles away,
where Jesus would, like snowfall,
clothe us white, and cleanse our clay.

(I found myself suddenly single somewhere in middle-age. Here are four poems I wrote for a lady I very much loved in that time. They are some words of beginning, some words of ending, some words of benediction, and some words of looking back.)

SWEETNESS IS SHARP

Sweetness is sharp,
slicing as feathers slice the air,
as flame fair splits the clouds
at sunset,
sharp as fingers melting
ice cocoons 'round me, as sharp
as moons rise warm
from pink-rock rims of pine
and pierce the soft blue sky
yes, sweetness
penetrates this fallow heart
like shards of rain,
shafts of sun,
blades from bursting seeds,
sweetness
as sharp as your love.

SUDDEN AS A BELL

Sudden as a bell you are gone.
Dull echoes
suck and swallow my sleep.
As deep as breath
you were inside me,
thin as death the line
between our lives­we were the same.
Is absence easier?
When every gentle thing,
all fair light, sweet smell,
kindness knells your name?
To make it somehow easier
will these be rung out too?
Wrung out the rag of my senses,
tears on stones

PSALM FOR A LADY

May the Lord bless you and keep you,
and the glances of His love
strike down the wicked
in the very shadow of your gates.
May His morning sun
kiss every hair of your head,
and through each numbered thread
pass peace into your mind.

May your fair feet, winged, fly
from kindness through new kindness,
dancing rose-field dances,
blessing as the busy
golden ankles of the bees­
fly, swift galleons of grace,
sweet seas of milk and morningdew­
fly, fire-fledged talons,
from the white-flamed branch
through cyclones of Spirit
and grasp the glowing dust of stars,
then walk our shadowed earth
in hush and meekness, splashing light.

And may your hands, in evening
touch the faces of your children,
knowing that the Father of all children
loves you,
mother of mere millions.

I THINK THE PATH

I think the path I walked awhile with you
was toward the place where children's dreams come true.
My own dream was that maybe my poor hand
would sing in yours, and bring you to that land
where all your songs and mine begin to blend
and all your longings find a holy end
and light enfolds you like a faithful friend
and, like a child, you wake at home again.

(This is actually a lyric, albeit a kind of poetic lyric. I'll take the risk of publishing it on the "Poetry" page. Much of the magic of Christmas glows in the notion that something so enormous came to us in a very small and humble package on that night so long ago.)

WHAT IF LOVE BECAME AN APPLE?

What if love became an apple, sweeter than all else?
What if peace became the secret every summer whisper tells?
What if light became a river, ringing down the canyon wild?
What if hope became a person?
What if God became a child?

What if laughter were a liquid you could drink from a glass,
and every tear of empathy a diamond that would last?
What if joy became a blossom folded safely in your hand
and it shone between your fingers?
What if God became a man?

What if every song that angels sang became a falling leaf,
and every dream a snowfall, and every prayer belief?
What if faith became an angel who spoke your name and smiled,
and she smelled of hay and starlight?
What if God became a child?

(The following two poems are related. The young man in the first is my great-grandfather, Edward Payne. The baby boy in the second is his son.)

THE CONVERSION OF A YOUNG MAN IN ENGLAND: 1854

He came upon the meeting in the grove
among the leaning
green and golden oaks.

Without a cloudless vision of the why,
he came, and waited
in a thinning dawn --

and others like himself, he reckoned, came
and listened, taut,
beside him in the oaks,

while dawn began to thin like parting fog
among the leaves
and in the way of sky.

Along the warming ground the sound arose
of waiting, like
arousing bees -- young wind

sang on the warm as lark calls, thinned and drawn.
The panes of sky
went soft, and then the sun

fell dappled on the words the elder said
among the leaning
green and golden oaks.

THE BURIAL OF THOMAS PAYNE

One wagon lags behind the train...

soft in the desert is spoken
"Thank you­for the kindness"
grateful swells her injured heart.
such an awesome big thing, this
kind struggle, as the silent shovels
carve a place, a resting place, a lonely
place for lifeless little Thomas.
we dressed him up in a red dress and we sewed
him up in just a poor pale sheet
(who would have thought, those times
of hope, to make the terrible provision? pausing
then to buy the rope and lash
an empty unnamed infant's coffin
on the wagon-side...no zion-visioned man)
so now, beyond the comfort
of the phantom yeast-bread slice he cried for
never cut from the loaf
he lies
enfolded in the shaft
beneath a wagon's severed end-gate
"oh thank you" solemn brothers

...and the platefuls of Mormon-trail life
rattle down
true on the boards