Abraham's Sky

from Ain't Milton: a chapbook of poetry

And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendantas be." Genesis 15:5

At that moment,
That present moment touching eternity
When the ancient one peered, invited, into the Eastern sky
And viewed through tears his promised progeny
And saw the stars infinitely spread
Like sand of angel's sandals
Across the carpet night,

At that moment
Did one star shine for me?

Was it a fire primeval quenched
Whose light, from creation's infancy had traveled
Through history's depths to greet the father on that night,
A beacon from an empty void?
Cold.
Dead.
Silent.

Or was his eye distracted
By a maverick,
A comet renegade too rebellioius to revel in the sky,
Abandoning the joyous dance of Heaven
To drink the richness of the muddy soil,
Exchanging ecstasy for pain,
All for dramatic brilliance?

Instead I, his spiritual offspring, hope to be
A flicker
So unperceivably small in the silence of space,
Perhaps in the corner far behind Abraham,
Out of his glance,
A pulsing fragile sliver of light,
A fractured piece of celestial diamond
Content to serve its simple purpose
Of lighting a tiny corridor of Night.

"It's Not Real"

With three words, I refused the pretend soup held in her cupped hands;
I assassinated her imaginary friend as if he were a threat to me;
I took the delicate, tiny shells of imagination she hid away and
Pulverized them into sodium pentothal powder.

I am exiled from Never-Never Land,
And I am no longer a tourist in Avalon.
But there was no need for such adult cruelty
To strike the cheeks of one so young and innocent.

To Charles

“Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, "Teacher, rebuke Your disciples." But Jesus answered, "I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out." Luke 19:39, 40.

“I can’t lift my arms high in praise,” you said,
your body crippled by cerebral palsy,
“but I can lift them higher than a rock.”
Your arms reached up, jerking in spasms,
your voice so low and garbled we had to lean forward to listen
and focus on your lips,
the beautiful lips of the black man confined to a wheelchair.

“But I can lift them higher than a rock.”
And quicker than the fear of bouncing a check
had rushed in my head that morning,
a shameful grace rained over me
and washed away
my concerns about paying the cable TV bill,
and the remaining text of a pity argument,
and my anger at having lost my parking space that morning.
And all I wanted was to shout in deafening blasts,
lift my arms with yours, and
stare through your stained glass eyes
at the beautiful Savior.

Amaranthine

Like the executive flinging himself from ledge,
Diving into the arms of metal and concrete,
I fell in love with You.
Like the knife plunged deep, fatally into the chest
Of the faceless and innocent murdered victim,
You slipped in my steel heart.
The dissection you performed was more discreet
Than the gentle surgery of a mafia goon,
And, like dung and vomit,
You were to me unbridled release.

The Swing Set

Sitting on a plastic seat next to the glider,
Holding the chains that freed me to the sky,
I listened to the creaking
And grinding
Grate, crack
Creak, grind
Of metal on metal,
Shaking the bright red frame of the backyard swing set,
Writing my first poems
In songs that labored to rhyme.

As I moved higher and higher,
Closer each move to the upper branches
Of the pecan tree
(Could I touch the buds with my toes?),
I felt safe from critical eyes,
Writing words not graded,
The hands of Jesus
Pushing me from behind.