You may also reproduce up to 2000 words from the book A Commentary on Marriage in the Bible, volume 1: the Torah for whatever purpose you want so long as you include a full citation such as used in the MLA, APA, or Chicago style manuals.

A foot or so below on the wood lies another scar more brutal, more damaging. No tree could survive such a wound, a decapitation, and one tree did not as this hawthorn lives on through the roots of another, its own native roots torn and scattered by wind and forgotten. A gnarled, crooked tree died so that this thorn tree could live through the work of grafting, of having been uprooted, dismembered, resurrected by careful, calloused hands. The scar a reminder not of pain but of life and of qualities valued in old, gray eyes. The roots creased the ground, stony and drab, like strong fingers breaking gravel into fine soil, drawing life and nourishment from…from nothing.

These stones never lived before, their granite surfaces marked by deep-fired crystals, but not a fossil can be found in even one pebble. No limestone here, no caliche or sandstone. Only lifeless, sterile, metamorphic children of a former monument, a mountain peak, worn and etched, crumbled by time and stirred by wind, bird, rodent, and invertebrates uncountable and the dusted remains of a thousand generations of things that never lived here, could never live in this cold, barren expose, until a single seed set by a startled, lost bird in a narrow, shallow cleft sprouted by freezing ice melt from a glacier with nowhere to hide from the sun so close in the thin, thin air. The tree grew gnarled, never blossomed. No flowers to see nor bees to hear.

So came the planter and cut the tree down to save his prize, save it for a lonely hidden life too far to be seen, too high to know warmth. Now blossoms the hawthorn up the hill from an imported hive. Now admires the planter its thorns and frost-bitten branches, lonely and scarred still growing in rocks.

“Why do none nearby sing like you so lovely?”
Cried the one to the other across the miles.

“They all want to be something else than what
They were meant to be,” whistled her reply.

“This space between us really must be cut.
I’ll come to you this time, then we’ll trade.”

“That’s fair, I think. It’s nice to find a bird
Who loves the old hymns and sings them out so well.”

So when the time was good, the whole woods heard
A new duet, two voices in just one place for a time.
But alas work on nests recalled at the end of day.
Time went by and the little birds sang and played
To each other about their work, the hunts for hay
And seed and friends among the crows and owls.
The hen flew next, to see how lived the first
Among the wings and leaves of that other world.

“You are alone in grace and beauty,” he versed.
“Stay here with me. We’ll sing and fly together.”

She considered, but knew the truth already.
“I’d miss my friends and home by the springs.
It’s lonely here and the air is so unsteady.”

“Then I’m determined to come to you,” he sang.
“There’s no song like yours among these leaves.
Nothing to keep me here and besides we’re done
With half our days. Why live alone like thieves?”

“‘Tis natural now that we are more than friends
And I’d like it more if you were with me here.”

He left the dry north slopes to build a nest
In the branches near the water and his dear.
They sang and played and danced all spring.

Finally he said, “I think it’s coming time to make
This change for real. Come now and perch with me.
You and I are a perfect match to satisfy this ache.”

She cocked her head to one side and said, “I’m not sure
That this is right. I love you, but we’ll never be one.”

“I don’t understand,” he cried. “After all this time,
Why do you now say no to what seemed done?”

She sighed and shrugged her wings. “There’s just too much
That’s so very different between you and me.
Your plumage is too gray and your song too soft.
When you fly you ascend at all the wrong degree.
We don’t sing in perfect harmony like we should.
I love you, and I’m sorry, but this will never effect.”

He could naught but grip his branch and croon his pain.

“I must go, but tell me first if you hate or reject
As our friendship means more to me than you can know.”

The light now gone from his eyes, but loving still
He said, “How can I hate the heart within my breast
Even so broken and full of pain distilled?”

You fold them up like a cloth.

Your Word never ends.

I don’t know whether my poetry is all that great or not. I know other people sometimes tell me it is, but that doesn’t really do it for me. I like hearing praises of just about anything I do, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in them. I always have a suspicion that my head is being patted and my cheeks pinched. “How cute! He made a poum.”

It’s such a huge release to write a poem that you can feel really good about. You struggle to pull this alien thing up and out of your throat or from under your fingernails or your scalp, and when you do, you feel so pleased and proud like it’s your newest baby. But if someone asks what it all means, do you really want to tell them? It’s almost like they just asked about your favorite technique between the sheets. You might throw out a tip or two, but it seems crude and dirty to pick it all apart for public consuption. Having given birth, should you now tell all the gory details of how baby was made and then serve him up on a snack tray?

When you write a poem, do you start with something to say or do you just let it all come out? Do you start with a scheme of rhyme, rhythm, and meter, and force the words to fit? Or do you write it all down and then arrange the mechanics around the words? Or do you just ignore all the rules in a fit of laissez faire poenomics?

So, yeah. This was one of those rants that just belches out now and then. Pebble Chaser recently wrote about how night writing is different than day writing. I’m thinking she was right.

Technorati Tags: poetry, poems

The Sins of the Father
December 7, 2005

Today I sent a letter to my father,
Hoping his disappointment was misplaced.
Every line that I crossed was farther.
Since I left his house I’ve raced
In every direction to find my own.
Now here, now there, ever challenging
Social convention and his shadow-cone.
Orbiting, none-the-less, still following,
Falling in the shadow: his long life of love.
There is little else that I could ask for.
His approval, though, I’m still short of.
Every day I thank God as He keeps score,
For those small things that we do right
All eclipse our greater wickedness,
That in His mercy and His might,
His curse goes down just four or less.
Every blessing, though, goes through a thousand.
Remember, son, your father’s works, less sin.