Well, you have your pillow of stone and
the hip thrown out,
the light in Antony’s cave,
Joseph’s twisting,
Joan’s gloaming,
and a river flowing past
the dead in the ground.
Well, you have your pillow of stone and
the hip thrown out,
the light in Antony’s cave,
Joseph’s twisting,
Joan’s gloaming,
and a river flowing past
the dead in the ground.
Lord, you are kindness in every color and flavor!
It should all of it fit.
Even all the worst
you’d never have do with it.

“As soon as I lie down, I fall peacefully asleep, for you alone, O Lord, bring security to my dwelling” – Psalm 4:9

When I think of you,
I think of your troubled sleep
and many hard choices.
I see you at night
in the desert,
getting Mary to safety.
And later, again, the three of you in flight,
pyramids looming in the distance.
In all the Gospels you never once opened your mouth.
You didn’t have to. Your actions said it all.
For you were, as all could see,
faithful in all things.
You know I’m not, but would like to be,
so I ask, meekly, that you pray for me
that I might be
in more than just my mind.

They say we’re evolving into robots,
or rather,
six-million-dollar men, adjusted for inflation,
or actually deflation,
since we’ll become cheaper to make,
and we’ll be everywhere, like plastic stuff
no one wants (not now, though later they will).
“People 2.0” we’ll be, they say,
though no self-respecting robot
would use that term. We don’t
go around calling ourselves
“the chimps” now, now do we?
So yes, we’ll be off flying ourselves
through space in ships oiled to light
beams, just ahead, I suppose,
of the bombs we’ve built
and the rising sea with all the
dead fish in it (it’s a vision
of hope, as I understand it, a new
chance to get it right).
Meanwhile, though, I’m stuck on this
future trash pile on Good Friday
2017, clinging to my cross,
a chimp and chump weak in the wind
of God 2.0
Is there an icon of eyes
of the dove
wings wide
just above the shoulder –
and of in the eyes
that branch
buried in the heart of Jesus?