Situations

As I've said before, every sword needs an anvil,
to make its heart stronger, to wear it down.
Patience untested is pride and
Unreflective kindness sounds snide.

Darkness hides the will of God.
The future, more than past, seems broad.
Humility shows me where I stand,
That love is given to give again.

Confirmations, Signs

Jokes and smiles are blinding lights.
love and joy cannot decide
between the lips around me.
Nor can my loins make judge alone -
they care for no more than flesh and bone.

So I trust myself to poems and songs
and to faith in God who turns all wrongs
and still reminds that the flesh of my side
is my sister first and then my bride.

One and one make a third the same
but the one direction is hard to change.
Two dimensions make greater range,
for mystery is love's domain.

Hope in circles

All those things out in the wild
and the cars I played with as a child;

A mother never turns away - a father never hides
Sometimes I wish it weren't so college ruled,
O the tales I told through those dotted lines.

Happy friends all sigh together,
the laughing ones die young.
The lucky ones who meet their end and smile.

These rocks, reflections, shadows of tomorrow.

Augury

Ever marching in the ditch,

in endless circles through the pitch,

shuffling with their heads turned round,

tears down their back and on the ground,

Seers looking for the future

missing the present and the law,

now only see where they have past.

My security and their abject shame:

a fire burns high but a candle is yet a flame.

Nothing ever ends, but nothing stays the same.

Remedy

Our sickness is growing with every kiss shared.
Our love is contagion and tonic well-paired.

Redirection

The quiet room of forgiven hearts--
red, still throbbing, sensitive--smarts.

The embers of guilt long yet put out,
still glowing in darkness what pales in the light.

Only stillness can choke it -- hearts pound in the wind.
Or to pray for each drop which forgets every sin.

Reimaging

That weary souls can warm another's feet,
the pounding run of brothers, home to heat,
The pledge of joy in hand inert in hand,
that love which grows when two souls, weary, meet.

That objects I may make of objects mine,
thus giving life by giving life in time,
that life which, spoken, ever takes my name,
which, given, now is bridge to two soul's pain.