A 39th Birthday Poem

Today the clocks stop
And the calendars freeze
And those chaps down in Greenwich
Can all take their ease.

Leastways, as concerning
This most recent rage
The topic? – Let’s drop it!
No more of my age.

No more to grow older
Why I simply refuse!
I have plenty things else
About which to amuse.

So remember –
As Father Time passes
   With gifts on his plate
Wrinkles and lines
   And gray hair for your pate
Just say, ‘No thank you!
  ‘I’ll not have any more.’
And know you can do it
  Check your Jack Benny lore.

RWOz2

Mother’s Day poem

Today’s a day
Like any other
The sun will shine
The birds will sing

But this day
Not like any other
We set aside
To sing your praise

For your strength
For your wisdom
For your love
We thank you now

All these things
You give your family
Every day
Come rain or shine

Now we rise and
Call you blessed
And I’m grateful
You are mine.

RWOz2

I Know

I know
Thy Word is living
And speaking
“Follow Me.”

I know
That by Thy Truth
I am set free
To be
All You meant me to be

I know
Thy Spirit quickens
And meets my every need
All I need do is ask
And You give
Boldness for any task

I know
That You know me
And I have no higher desire
Than to live my days before
The eyes of Holy Fire

And with those similarly viewed
Laying claim to the same insight
By the hope that purifies imbued,
Cleansed that we may be light.

RWOz2

All Hail Eloise

 

As they say in the movies, the following is based upon a true incident (and as you can see by the amounts and the mention of Cub Foods [i.e. Winco] this was back in 1991):

Let us sing of my pure one –
Famous in battle
Let us take up her praise upon our lips
For ’tis fitting that we praise –
Our lips and not her own.

With firm and measured tread
She takes the Safeway, the Thriftway
The thronging CUB food aisle
Swiftly to the fray she sweeps
Where each combatant must join the list
Against the exacting foe.
(All buttoned and be-ribboned
Anxious to take its toll)
With each stroke of the infernal engine
The cents into dollars count
Pressing hard ‘gainst the family purse and budget
As to the skies they mount
Thirty-seven point eighty blink the lights azure
Thirty-seven dollars and eighty cents
A princely sum that’s sure
Yet is her brow disturbed?
-No! There is only more resolve.
For her weapons this moment sheathed
Leap out at the total called.

And 37.80 ceases flashing
From its lofty height it tumbles down.
First fifty cents are taken off
Then six dollars in a lump
Double the sum of forty
As the coupons fall like trump
The total is hacked in half
And as the haze is cleared away
Another sixth is shorn
The total mortifies in rigor at 13.64

All hail Eloise
As she leaves the field
The victor undisputed
All hail Eloise
Her booty gained
In battle well-reputed.

RWOz2

Hands of the Living God

Sinner before the Lord’s tribunal
Held in the Hands of the living God
For the Lord’s not just judge but witness
To all your years as you trod the sod

Not summoned before a peer-made jury
But to face all alone His hell bound fury
Perhaps you think it’s all been fated
Kept in the Hands of the living God

Hanging uneven ‘tween hell and Heaven
What would tip the scales to bring them even?
With what now can they be freighted?
Held by the Hands of the living God

With breath in silence bated
Not even a single wrong unstated
Know you not
The judge who passes sentence
Whose final word is final law
No longer waits for you
To take stock of what you’ve done

What will be the final decision
Was it His or was it yours all along
When you crawled from the Hands of the living God

RWOz2

My Pure One

My pure one

How I love your name
And the warmth it breathes o’er me
Yet I must confess
I am more enchanted
By your name second-given

Not the name of a barmaid – No!
But the all knowing choice
Of a wise father king
For his princess second-born
My fair Eloise

Eloise – in battle famous
Though to you it may bring a blush
At its echo – angels hush…
And lean nearer…
Waiting…
Hopeful

To be caught up in the music elven-made
Rising from some sylvan glade
In anviled notes of silver laughter
Whispering in my ear
In the silence after
The name of
Ma chère Eloise.

RWOz2

The Art of God

Drawn to the canvas
Of the sky
Stretched twixt
Zenith and horizon
Sand flows past
In rivulets
Wind impelled
Over darker sand
Laid down by
Exhausted waves

Effortless
The art of God
Wherever we turn
Signs of His precision

The grace of God
Wielded by His Spirit
Invites us leave
Our prints
In His work pristine.

RWOZ2

Why Does the Eternal

How does the Eternal
Enter the temporal?
How does immense vastness
Put limits to that grandness?

Well, He did
And He does
But you ask
The cause?

Much better to ask “Why?”

Why come at all
To be so small?
Why show your face
When they heap on disgrace?
Why submit your back
To their wonton attack?

What could motivate that?

We read why
In John Three Sixteen
We are all
Mary Magdalene.

RWOz2

Choose Your Eternity

A point of view
Is just a view from a point
From where you sit or think
You taste the words
And tailor your response
To see you through thin or thick

But are you aware
We are all eternal
And into eternity
We all will go?

(Not into nothing
Will we dissolve
No matter how much
We may resolve)

All eternities are not equal
One is forthright peaceful
One is downright lethal

One eternity is a gain forever
In a light and love-filled place
One eternity is a loss forever
In a dark and burning space

What we do
When we are confronted
With news too good to be true
Listen and don’t be talking
When the good news comes walking

By the cross
You gain gain
And lose loss
(It’s what you get to lose)
You see it not
Till after you choose

We choose
Before you know
You were chosen
To belong.

We choose
And then learn
We were chosen
All along.

RWOz2

Obedience

from the Flickr account of Alex Proimos – Street Art, Buenos Aires

He who won’t obey

Has found it far easier

To live in the lie.