Advent: Day Five

Prophets, you who bare words
to their loveliest curves and lines,
bring honeyed apples in bent cursive
to quivering lips. For hearts burn out

for want of flame. Sometimes you should
stand in the flat blacktopped corner
of the local church parking lot, become a
garden of Eden in violets and golds,

a silent stream of created beauty,
rushing courageous over all boxed ears,
and you should just be. Pencil lead
on tablets leaves the arguments of ultimate

pointedness inside the practical glass.
But if you wrap up your hands, and you
forever stay a sight, if you are not a place
for the tired bees to alight and more than not

find renewal of life, then the moving world
will toss you aside. All tulip tipped and unfortunate,
gorgeous and useless, one purpose without point,
misunderstood now kindle unintended god's lights.

Day 2: Morning

Psalms 3 & 4

"I will lie down and sleep in peace,
for you alone, O LORD,
make me dwell in safety..."

Dance through my heart, oh, with loud claps remove
the formless from my liturgy. If found
without color, wanting for life, or browned,
then banish the artless. In beauty, You've
wrapped a garden round me, I dare not move.
But lie down in this peace, rituals resound
and reflect rhythms of sleep and unbound
joy in working. Drier grounds must improve,
therefore supply text to the wordless way
Your ceremony mystically transforms
Augusts into Septembers, a Tuesday
into weekend nights; all the darkest storms
are turned for good, to water not dismay
meaningless life in all its dreadful forms.