Mocking Bird Song

We sat on moonlit craggy
rock-dome; its granite face
turned outward toward
enshrouded valleys.
I felt your grief,
unspoken,
yet so real
as if a marker
stood between us.
The quiet stone sank
deep into your heart
as in a well
without an echo.

Night surrounded us
and wrapped each ponderosa pine
in silver stillness.
The shadowed wilderness
gave not a hint
of sad remembrance.
Yet I knew what images
lay close
beneath your wistful smile.
So we watched the sky
change from blue to indigo,
then black.
Twilight,
like a curtain drawn
across the mountainscaped horizons,
hid the day.
Its last, long sigh
was lost
in gray-hued past,
unreachable,
as the hard escarpment
underfoot.

What could I speak
to pierce this wall
of tears?
The lunar orb
had not an answer,
but shed
its lonesome whiteness
on your face.
The softened light
seemed here to paint
your features
with a shaded
distance,
far beyond my touch.

God, where have my words
flown off to?
Grant me speech
to meet
such sorrow.
My answer was a memory
that here I share with you.

I’ll tell a winsome story
of my far-off homeland, Tennessee.
In this fabled place,
there is a bird.
we call the mocker. He speaks not
from himself,
but in mere shadow-voices
copped from others.
Yet, as a child, I heard him clear
in early morning,
carol loud his own breathed spirit.
He did call out
with all his grace toward misty space.
There, soon, a lantern sun
would break in two,
the eastern sky.

In brighter times,
the mocker hides this other self.
Instead, he shows it
just before the dawn
with long, enchanting songful cantilenas.
Joyful, loud, in ecstasy
he greets the coming day.

Arise and sing,
my mocking bird,
sweet loved one
of this other time.
Put off your mask;
fly free
to mountain peaks.
Come laugh with me.

I’ll tie your griefs
around the wings
of my tiny mocking friend.
Yes, then I’ll tell him:

“Take my loved one’s burden
to the highest branch
of yonder Ponderosa pine.
Sing it out
above the treetops.
Bear such mourning
and transform it
into songs of life a-borning.
May this new-found voice
soar far
above the clouds,
and let its sound ring out
for all of time.”

Evensong

In Two Parts:
Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis

Part I: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”

Jesus sought
Lazarus
in the sweaty stink of crowds.
They pointed at tombs
amid fly swarms
over dog bones.

“If only you’d been here,”
Martha wept.
He sat
to catch her tears
and add them to His.

“Believe the mystery,”
his face replied.
Her eyes grew wide
into black reflections
of Judean rock-cliff mountains.

Crowds pressed in and
laughed at Him.
He looked at skies,
tracing ragged-laced horizon lines,
snake-drawn and jagged.

Martha heard Him speaking
like desert winds,
“Lazarus lives
in the shiny spaces
next to your tight-wrapped hair pins.”

Turning to the tombs,
He shouted,
“Come forth.”

They saw Lazarus
frolic out
in thready, shedding bandages
He took
roses,
and held them with his grimy hands,
bowing before Jesus.

The Lord laughed and
waved the flowers
in clouds
of butterfly-fluttering
petals.
They embraced and
He left Lazarus with a whisper,
then vanished
into massive, shoving crowds.

Martha rushed to Lazarus.
“What did He tell you?”
She asked,
as her face sought words
with eyes that blinked
behind long-white streaks.

Lazarus near-whispering answered,
“He said:
Believe.
The rose
will bloom again.”
Part II: “Lord, let your servant depart in peace, according to your word.”

Fog slips down
a Tennessee lakeshore.
Village townfolk
rest
under clay-red sundown.
Curtain clouds
arise.

Kingfisher sits
on driftwood twisted
witch-hand branches.
Tree stumps
cringe as if away from
falling cloud-fire.
Knotted wood knees
thrust and break
into bleak horizons
casting serrated shadows.
Black mud covers
deserted clapboards,
rotted corpses of barns
and horse bones.

Kingfisher’s wings
take to the sky.
He flies
above the sheeny purple-cloud reflecting
mirror like a spirit dimly seen.
Deep in the river’s green
wet innards,
catfish spawn their offspring,
channelbottom born.

Kingfisher’s voice
grows shrill and seems to me
to cry,
“Cold waters
called out
all the old men’s names
and swallowed
their flesh.”

Still, kingfisher
searches skies
for home.

Farmhouse lights
join stars,
while windows
fade
in blackness.
Swimming lightsnakes
shimmer
on a misted laketop.

Kingfisher, silent,
takes his rest.