I knew the song well,
well before I saw it,
saw the title, first,
carved deep
in an old wood school desk
in the gable room
of my historic fachwerk church
in the heart of Cream City.
Each time
through the decades,
I heard about
the desert that had turned to sea,
I thought of that pen-rutted,
scarred wood,
revelation writing,
hinged desk top.
Will that still be
my embedded memory
now that I’ve seen,
second,
decades later,
in the desert,
the no-named
equine tribute
live?
There are those moments /
when you beg to dance, and the/
whole world laughs at you.
When I give my own/
off’ring, I can just do the/
best I can, in faith.
Buried for ten years,/
like me, they’ve now come forth to /
do what we should do.
If she’s going to/
lean deeply into him, I/
should lean far away.
I don’t know why she/
needed to sit next to me,/
but I’m glad she did.
Several years ago, several women I was interested in dating told me they wouldn’t date me until I returned to the LDS Church (which I knew was true) and got my Temple Recommend. At the time, I was hurt, and wrote this poem: http://cyranowriter.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/getting-to-the-mountaintop-together-revolutionary-contexting-limerick/
The other day, in church, one of these women was sitting next to me, (as my friend), and I realized something:
She now sits with me/
on the mountain top, not through/
my path, but her own.
A noisy church ward/
is much more fun when it is/
ethnically diverse.
If I really cared/
about her, I wouldn’t do/
half the things I do.
OR
If I cared about/
her, I wouldn’t do half the /
things I do to her.
Some churches have loud/
kids. Some have whisp’ring grown-ups./
Both can be controlled.