THERE ARE TOO MANY MACHINES

there are too many machines
making too much noise
whirrs and thumps and thuds
beeps and buzzes
wails and moans and roars

find the silence
hold it
hold it
rest in it

ahh!

PARTY CRASHERS

You can’t see them,
but they’re there,
nibbling, chewing, munching,
stuffing themselves for dear life.
It’s as if you’ve hung out a sign:
WELCOME TO THE- ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT GARDEN CAFETERIA.

Like most uninvited guests,
they prefer to keep to themselves,
unobtrusive, not lingering long
at the punch bowl,
gliding smoothly, quickly, away
as you approach.

You can’t see them
but they’re there all right.
Look what they’ve done to the beans!

HOW TO WRITE A POEM

It’s conversation mostly
You listen to what others have been telling you
about themselves
about yourself
about laughter and tears and God

Some of them you’ve lived with worked with . . .
your mother
Bob Kurtz who hired you to help with the milking
Miss Bishop who made your memorize lines from Macbeth
Nelson your barber who talked louder than the radio he always kept turned on

Some of them you didn’t . . .
Amos
St Paul
Chaucer
Kierkegaard
Flannery O’Connor
Wendell Berry

You listen to them all
and yourself
and you get a sheet of paper
and a pen
and . . .

BOOTS

One of your first visits
ought to be with Boots,
the secretary told me.
You’ll like her. She’s a real character.

So you’re the new pastor.
They told me you was kind of skinny.
Yes, everybody wonders that . . .
how I got my name.
My real name is Arbutus, but
my little sister couldn’t pronounce it
and called me Boots. It stuck.
I know you won’t ask, you’re too polite,
but I’m eighty-seven, still going strong,
eat a bowl of oatmeal every morning.
Never smoked. There were fifteen of us,
I was smack in the middle.
If I’d been Mama,
I woulda took a knife to bed with me.
She lived to be eighty herself though.
Daddy died at fifty-two
which proves something I guess.
I don’t go to church much any more.
Can’t see the point really.
But you stop around any time.

When the phone rang three days later,
it was her daughter.
Mom died last night, she said.
Guess she’ll be making it to church
sooner than she thought.