Sacraments of the Earth

Where does the end of the world
Meet the beginning

A bottle of rum
And an expensive cigar
Talking with a man
Of letters and rhymes

Adjacent holy writ
And bread and wine
Praying to a God
Of incense and of chimes

How is the map laid out
Betwixt fairy and the earth
And the conversations
That lay us all bare

I will not swim the Tiber
It is not mine to swim
I have my confession and
It is sufficient 

But we battle not men
Of earth and flesh
But those of Our Church
Those men of the dirt

They that do believe
But do not believe
That second of greatest
Demands

And they devise
Dementia among us
Derision and dysphoria
And we hide from them

Noah rode us through
The floods of disbelief
Into the promised land
The covenantal relief

How does this coffee
And a guy with a mandolin
Intersect
With salvation

Man does not minister to men
God does

Then Danced A Shadow

Trimmed these sails
To light in your port
Then danced away

Fear, just me
Same as ever so
Twixt these twin shadows

I am not torn
Yet have these relics been only
One a wound as will not close

Twins adored
Riddled to shreds
My heart and my mind

I’ve walked me to a spiral
That loops returnt to itself
Of touches unendured

O lust that betrays me
Let me distill this dream
For I touched not thy tresses

That last time so fair
Though twas cold bitter cold
For fear or was it fear?

For some thing I dared not again
O why did I pull loose
This anchor when not half set?

Open these arms this time an’ I return
Two shadows
My sails have harbor’d

Between thy ports
Mooring in but the one
Though the other left fair trade

O let me be, cursed dreaming
Let my breath be my own
Or let down thy slip

Let me mind this fair haven
The dark one that has haunted me so
Think this paradox?

No but painful
To dream to lift this fair veil
Of the white

Of the fountain
Of the longest long lingering
Let me come here

Or throw me to the stars
And let me ne’er hear again
Nor see with these eyes

These browning lands ever.

How Long Does It Last?

I wonder.
How long does it last?

How long does the trauma go on?
How long does the rapture proceed?
How long does the euphoria persist?

How long does the angel dance with me?
How long does this fascination last in eternity?

What is the puissance of an extravagant experience?
Do we fare-well the amazement of our generations
when we depart this mortal coil?

What transcends from this place to the next?
What lasts?
The last ship?
The last spike?
The last wish?

What is beyond the pale?

Don’t get me wrong, I savor the Savior.
Don’t get me wrong, I dream of the deliverance.

But what of these sacraments
Of the earth?
And I refer to a lost one of ours,
His cigars and bourbon.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. These things are here.
A note, a scent, a permanence that

Transcends.
Like the incense on the chain,
Swinging the sacred into my space.

Ours is that,
He transcends.

So has he placed among us the
transcendent?

I suspect there’s something
in that last spike, last ship, last moment.
Something that lasts, that becomes longer than this.

I wonder.
If when the ship lifts, are all bills paid?
Or are they immanent and awaiting the next arrival?
Or is the ephemeral but disposable?
Like our tiny microcosm, tossing everything but the sink?

And “you can’t take it with you,”
Does that apply to our notes? Our scents? Our permanence?
Or does it only fit my lunch, or my wallet?

What remains, and what is lost?
Is my evangelical pre-mil dispensational disposition lurking here?

Is it not a gift of lasting latency
to savour, to love, to slip into our deepest pockets
that which drives us to the very center of me, of me, of me?

Lord, thy will be done. Amen.