We drive home through tree tunnels
Gray skyroof barely visible
Through green and brown ceiling struts
Green fingered walls, now close, now further,
Yield downward to brown columns
Gray floor with yellow and white accent lines,
Sided with green grasstiles.
We drive home through tree tunnels
Now bright, now shade, now straight, now curved
The tunnels appear and disappear with no warning signs
Yielding to wide pastures, usually
Occasionally a house, rarely a small town
Just once or twice a bridge over a river.
We drive home through tree tunnels
Quietly enclosing us with the news
That she is, or soon will be, dying.

Death humbled is no more than brief sleep.
So says Donne, impudent, confident poet.
But if rest and sleep be just poor pictures of death,
What then of sleepless nights, of restless sleep?

Are nightmares harbingers of hell?
Do we toss and turn, each long night, in sleepless beds
As we will, one eternal day, toss and burn in hell?
Ah, please, God, no.

It is eternity enough to lie with wayward thoughts
Black as a moonless starless sky
Dark as lowering unplayful clouds
Restless as winds that gust only regrets
Toppling my flimsy barricades of excuses.

Death, though humbled, remains powerful
Storm enough to sink sleep
Leaving me stranded on a dark sea of doubt
Treading memory’s wakefulness
As buoys of peace graze my eyelids
Only to surge away.

The cows broke through the fence
Onto the side road, just feet from the highway.
One bright strand of new barbed wire
Ran between the old strands
Held up by older posts.
But the cows, though slow bovines,
Just leaned in
Leaned in and the fence gave way
And they wandered into the road.
You went out to help Andi round them up
Though neither cows nor fence
Were yours nor hers,
But being neighborly
And not being able to raise the owner,
You two went out to gather up the cows
Leaving us two, me and the baby, here
Where just moments ago
I looked over at you
Holding him close on your chest
Beneath your beard.
Your old man wrinkled forehead
Matched his baby worry face –
Six weeks and seventy-two years
Snuggling in the big chair
In front of the window
Beneath the framed picture on the side wall.
The lower edge of the picture frame
Made it into the picture I took
Of you and your grandson.
The hard edge of the frame
A boundary
Holding in all that love
That still breaks through
Even in a cellphone photo.

Once again my dream becomes a nightmare
I reject my daughter who rejects me
In sleep as in life
Although sleep reveals the reality
That reality obscures
Because in the dream, she is 5
Not 35
I am bloody from her thrusts
Though she thrusts with a doll
Not withheld grandchildren.

Each day, I forgive
First myself
Then her.

Not each night
But often enough
My dreams remind me
That forgiveness
Is not a sentence with a period.

Forgiveness is an art
That must be nurtured
Trained
Practiced
Worked at
Attempted again and again
Never perfected

I peer
Nearsightedly
At the screen
As news and not news
Scrolls through my mind

The French Ambassador rebukes Trevor Noah
For congratulating Africa on France’s World Cup

Four Alabama policemen are suspended
For giving a down low OK sign in an official picture
Is it a childish game or a white supremacy code?

A young male blogger whitesplains that music is the cause
Of everything that is wrong for black Americans
Not the enduring legacy of slavery, not racism, not white privilege –
Their funky ass music

I think
Sadly
How our eyes – my eyes
Are blinded
By our – my
White skin.

Rise up, little girl
I do try
To rise above the patriarchy of the church
To rise above the racism of my heritage
To rise above my envy of others
To float
To the top of the murky sea
Where I swim amongst my nightmare monsters
To bubble up and burst through
To continue up, without wings
Into the sky
Only to find troublesome winds
Blowing me every which way
So that I drown in the rarefied air
Of thoughts too deep for easy
Floating, drifting
How do I swim through air?
I do try
But I tire and sink
Knowing that I can’t
Until again I hear
Talitha koum

Richly roundly smoothly darkly brown
Nutmeg plays the spicey melody
Cloves, spikey and pungent, sound deep soothing bass notes
Long cinnamon sticks, orchestral reeds, lighten and brighten
Nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon:
Rich earthly smells ringing, singing song blankets
To cover tired eyes, wrap worn spirits in
Warmthly richness inhaled comforts
Scently goodness heals
Simply spices
Song

“In all faces is seen the Face of faces, veiled in a billion riddles.” Nicolas of Cusa

I see the one true Face in every face;
A world’s billion riddles of the divine.
So said Cusa’s mystic of sublime grace
Whose eyes could see divinity’s design.

I know myself blinded by race, by age,
By wealth, by lack of faith in those others.
Scruffy conmen on street corners assuage
My guilt. Surely they are not my brothers?

But how can I, a white American,
Know much of life’s crueler crushing portions?
What does it mean that I attempt more than
Another to see beyond self-absorptions?

Only the love of our divine Mother
Can open our blind eyes to each other.

I do not need deep drinks to quench my thirst:
a sip supplies.
I do not need soft songs to soothe my ears:
a chord comforts.
I do not need long looks to please my eyes:
a glimpse gladdens.
I do not need sweet smells to tease my nose:
a whiff welcomes.
I do not need love’s lust to wake my skin:
a touch transcends.
I do not need rare rites to know my God:
a prayer portends.
A sip, a chord, a glimpse, a whiff, a touch,
a simple prayer brings God Herself to me.