Miles per Life

Miles Per Life

Every day, I drive from my street

onto the highway,

rush to 55 mph

slow to 45

then 35

through town.

From home, to home

always an inching back

or zipping forward

from sign to sign.

Today, I turn the age

of the youngest speed.

The years will accelerate

in rising order

regardless of which

way I’m heading.

But in the realm

where I prefer to move,

I’ve lived each limit already,

can look back at my linear self

driving linear roads and wonder

why I focus so on numbers

why I sigh at yellow lights

and cross-walkers.

I always make it home.

Home—more than the number

it wears to be found.

Age—more than the speed I live it.

Both—just figures

to help me know

how close I am.

The Fig of It

I find a fig tree circled

by its own, fallen fruit.

The carpet of rot permits me

to pull a soft, ripe drop

of sweetness and eat.

O, audible flavor!

The fig’s each seed

tells the mouth a story

of what may grow

with right soil, light, and rain.

Each seed of my life

asks to grow, tended, into

a useful, beautiful yield.

Each seed blooms toward fruit

with every hope of sharing

its own reward.

I mourn small losses:

figs that missed

a table of friends & cheese,

figs that won’t know

the steep of time, jarred

‘til winter hunger wakes them.

Make my life this: a ready harvest

given, taken, tasted.

Findings

Findings

Sam?

Samantha, the dog I thought a “he” until just before her owner left her with me to join his friends kayaking, has disappeared. One minute, Sam’s splashing in the rocky shallows with me, the next, all I see is the cliff we climbed down to get here. I’m left with the sound of the river and hot August sun. And the diesel truck back up at the road. The hill and truck are enough of an adventure. The rapids eight kayakers just put into here don’t even register.

My whistle’s worthless. Sam!

I’m driving shuttle for people who love to ride fast rivers. I love to sit beside a river, let it go about its business. Right now, that business includes moving eight, bright boats for hopefully enough water miles that Sam will come back before I drive down to the take-out.

I read somewhere that dogs respond better to lower tones—they carry authority. I lower my voice: SAAAAAM. I look for a place to sit, find a scoop of rock chair’d by time, and watch the frothing. One thing about waiting, it makes you pay attention. A racked buck bends to drink on the other shore. A red dragonfly is followed by two blue. The summer-exposed boulders stair the river down with thick, white water. The roar around them is so loud I can’t hear any thoughts but water’s. I wonder if I envy wildness and flight. Another bit of the river’s business is to speak, I think. Its voice is constant, like God’s. As with both, I’m not always listening. Listen.

Sam?

Beside the unstill waters

of the Salmon,

I have been calling

the river by its nickname.

Sam the dog isn’t here.

I am.

The river is—

with red and blue boats

with red and blue wings

with me finally glad for my stillness.

Loss makes way for being found

by a river in the full sun

of late summer,

unmoving

but unready to return

to a stationary world.

P.S. Two days later, the message comes: Found: lost dog across the river. All is well.

Flight has hands

A cat, a restaurant table, a feather decal, a camera, and the window that sees us together. If hands can take flight, then maybe flight has hands.

Bikini Season for the Spirit

This is the time of year when side-bar internet advertisements flash with “secret” tips to slim down and tone up in time for donning that swimsuit. Gyms, weight-loss programs, and diet supplement distributors are hoping we’ve strayed into caloric and sedentary detours during bundled winter days.

The last time I wore a swimsuit was in September. Then, this last week, we had a gorgeously balmy day. I borrowed my friend’s book by Watchman Nee and sat by her pool. The book was Releasing the Spirit, and it managed—in just one hundred pages—to put the entire spirit-soul-body connection in perfect perspective. As I read that progress comes when the soul and body have yielded to the spirit, I drifted into the lovely sunlight-between-the-fibers-of-my-hat land.

When I lived in the tropics, I wore a swimsuit every day. I even kept one in the car so that I could pop to the beach from wherever I was. There was none of the spring surprise at what cold winter had paled and densed because winter near the equator is still dang hot (I didn’t use hot water in my shower ‘til the trade winds of January). When I was faced with the reality of myself daily, I easily kept my physical life in balance: jog on the beach, one helping of sushi.

Temperate winters are sneaky. All of a sudden it’s January, and my body craves almond butter and sharp cheddar. With no need to wear a bikini, I can forget the importance of discipline. At least, I used to. After those two island years, something shifted: I liked that I was always ready to go to the beach. And so here on the mainland, far, far away, (and far away from a warm, turquoise sea), I still keep a swim suit and sarong in a little bag in my car. Who knows when someone will suggest a jaunt to the hot springs or offer a spontaneous vacation to the Maldives?

But now the bigger challenge: I want my spirit to be even more prepared than my soul, let alone my body. I’m getting ready to finish my second year at a school of supernatural ministry. Soon, I will get to see whether I have set into place the discipline required for the bikini season of the spirit—awkward metaphor and all.

For Habakkuk & his readers

Words, solid as stone,
flighted as feathers,
turn into both
the honey comb
and the sweetness
running from it.

Run with them.