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Wednesday, September 24, 2014

BETRAYAL

"And as soon as he was come,
he goeth straightway to him, and saith,
Master, master; and kissed him."
    (Mark 14:45)

English ivy embraces
Our backyard oak
It looks like
A mutually beneficial relationship
But it's not
It's a death squeeze
Not all hugs
Not all kisses
Can be trusted

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

HAMMER MILL

It began with a slow whine
and built to an angry roar.

On this day it might have been Menno Shelly
shoveling the ears of corn on his truck
into the metal jaws that swallowed
then tore apart cobs and kernels,
transforming them into what
was called simply "chop."

It happened daily at the feed mill
where my father worked. Eight years
of age made me old enough to be
there to watch and marvel at men
who lifted and carried hundred pound
feed bags, handing out good-
natured insults to each other, often
shouting them over the ear-blasting
noise of the hammer mill.

More than anything
I wanted to grow up to be one of them.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

GOD'S ECONOMY

The mulch pile at the Camp Hill
Recycling Center towers ten feet
above my head. Ground-up limbs,
branches, twigs are here for the taking.
Just bring your buckets and your bags
and haul it away. Scatter it
around your shrubs and trees.

Could it be that nothing, nothing
is ever lost? Could it be that everything
passes on to something else, to be
reformed, transformed? Even you,
even me. Even that butterfly over there,
flirting with the black-eyed Susan.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

DRIVING HOME ON SUNDAY NIGHT

From the back seat where I sit
with my sister, I peer through
the windshield at oncoming headlights,
wondering why my parents are so calm.
How could they not know what I know:
that the Rapture is happening,
is taking place this very moment,
as we head home from my grandparents'
house where I had seen with my own
eyes the headlines of the newspaper
left lying on their dining room table:
"Airplanes Plummet to Earth,
Pilots Disappear"; "Flames Devastate
East Coast"; "Tens of Thousands Reported
Missing." Quotations from the Bible
salted the pages: "Two shall be in the field;
the one shall be taken, the other left."
"There will be famines and pestilence and earthquakes."

How am I to know the "newspaper" was
only a religious tract designed to frighten sinners?
So I sit on the edge of the seat,
my questions stuck in my throat,
terror-paralyzed, and see, off to the left,
the airport tower light sweep
its circular path across the landscape,
surely searching for the missing thousands.