Rain Dance – Audio

Standard

It had not rained in Birmingham for 70 days.  It was hot and dry and miserable.  The dry thirsty earth was cracking, vegetation brown.  A dusty malaise held sway over the land.  Then one evening we could feel Her on the Wind. . .

Art – Matt Chambliss

Music – “Letter to Plato” – Isaiah Smith

Rain Dance

She approaches

Out of the West She comes

Hot and cold interplay, creating currents

I catch Her scent and breathe Her into me

 

Cause She’s Windy baby, and She’s so fine

 

She moves me

I feel her on my skin

She drips Her moisture onto me, teasing me awake

God I’m dry, I need Her waters

 

She dampens the leaves, the petals are wet

She rumbles and flashes, revealing Her soul to me

Come shower yourself onto me, quench my aching thirst

 

The wild tumult rages

Twisting, turning, exquisite yearning

The sounds of Her coming approaches

She longs to spill Herself, give Herself away

She is come now and I alive ride on Her storm

 

Cause She’s windy baby and She’s so fine

A Thousand Miles Away – Audio Update

Standard

 

Art – Matt Chambliss

Music – A Thousand Years (Piano/Cello Cover) – The Piano Guys

I dreamed that I was awake

Or perhaps I was awake yet slumbering

Consciousness in flux somewhere between the two

I know what is real, I know the difference

I can feel it

There is substance and passion and depth and sweet rest my reward

I can breathe there

But sometimes reality manifests itself in one and then the other as it wills

So who is to say what is dreaming and what is wakefulness

The Real is not tethered to the narrow realm of the senses

It gives allegiance to none, for there are many ways of knowing

How close is a thousand miles

It seemed as if I could have reached out and touched you

But you were a thousand miles away

What is the distance between this breath and my next

A step or two, feet, inches, seconds, the measurement is irrelevant

So close, yet thousand miles away

I felt you walk into my dream

I felt your presence before I turned, before I heard the voices

I sensed the singular form of you so the sight did not surprise me

Because I can sense you from a thousand miles away

How is it that I can inhale the fragrance of you, hear your voice in my dreams

I felt your glance on my back like a touch reaching out, a kiss on my neck

But there was a gulf between that would not be bridged, a guardian watchful

Polite, familiar chit chat for a second of a second

I could not find your eyes

So close yet a thousand miles away

I felt you leaving and I turned to watch you go

My observation hidden behind the tinted veil

I watched you walk into another dream that was a thousand miles away

Then, at the last instant, the final frantic moment you turned

I saw your eyes seeking me, trying to pierce the darkened glass

I recognized and reached out from the shadows

I was close, but hidden, and a thousand miles away

So, I will write to remember, I will write to say

What it’s like to feel your warmth

From a thousand miles away

Mountains nor Molehills – Audio Update

Standard

 

Art – Matt Chambliss

Music – Hans Zimmer – Inception – Time

I sense the vibrations deep within me
Foundations quake, shaking that which once was firmly held
What was assumed to be eternal falls around me in pieces
Like glitter in a globe it slowly swirls, gravity accomplishing its work
I watch it crumble and tumble, down, down, down
Currents of anxiety keep it aloft past its time
It needs to settle, I need to settle
An active passivity restrains my impulse to jump, to move, to seek distraction
Let it settle, it needs to settle, don’t stir it up again

New awareness is finally breaking the old making room for what is not, yet
But the birth is like the grinding of hard stone and dust
Shifting of the plates, a new geography is forming
It threatens home and kin. They feel it too
But crisis calls for calm, don’t feed it, don’t jump
Old rifts will be mended, new vistas will emerge, danger and hope coexists
I can make neither mountains nor mole hills
The power is at work in me, I am not the Maker, I am being made
I will not jump, I will wait, and watch, and listen to the stillness

Cry Baby – Audio Update

Standard

My daughter painted this the other day and asked me to write a poem for it.  She titled it “Crybaby.” I looked at it for a long time and after observing the obvious I was caught by her eyes.

Music –  Derek and Brandon Fiechter

Cry Baby

Looking past the masks you wear

I can see You there in your eyes

Peering through your windows

I can see your Soul

 

I feel your fear

I sense the fragrance of your envy

I can taste the dark sadness of you

Willing, wanting to be yet, will not

 

Comical, cartooned, contortions turned tragic

Captured in Culture’s cul-de-sac

Creativity consumed, consecrated to the warped reflection

Callous, constrained, yet secret tears fall down the well

 

Youth harbors Eternity’s now stirring seed

Weeping moistens the protective layers of self

Masks hide and safeguard the Soul’s germination

But the seed must die in order to live

 

Cry Baby is not your name

It is the very way you seek

Cry Baby, suffer

Feel the pain of your disloyalty to You

 

Surely the seed fears the transformation

The pain of the outer shell splitting

Now vulnerable, alive, alone

Feel the light there in the darkness and reach for the sun

 

Be still baby, just look in my eyes

I can see you there, I see your beautiful Soul

Let go all that is not You, turn inward to see

The amazing You, you were created to be