Friendship

What is this holy temple?   A place where we learn to feel better About feeling bad about ourselves Because the music is loud enough To drown out the cries of the wounded Who live in our chests And the sermon delivered With shouts and tears And sometimes dripping with sweat Also hints that we are not alone And we are all bleeding out Into the offering basket together   What is this holy temple?...

It’s true, she loves the river And its steady constant force The ocean is just leftovers And she prefers the source   She leads me through the briars Stinging nettle, oak, and sorrow Some pain for the present moment But the rest we’ll save for tomorrow   The path is narrow and overgrown If it’s even a path at all Two roads diverged and we took neither She heard the river’s call   Down the...

Humboldt County The house we call our own Her laughter now fills this home It defies logic and reason And all good doctrine It sets sharply against The crushing weight of debt And doubt It ripples down the hall Like waves that dance On an ocean that will drown you Without thinking twice   From the depths I think about thirty different things All at once I should have painted more often And maybe wrote...

You always had a way with words Man, you could ramble a story Like Johnny Appleseed across an entire conversation Quips loaded like hippies into hatchbacks Looking for a place to crash With eyes full of wonder One thing you knew The Truth is not a “What” But a “Who”   We go back lifetimes And then some But never all that close Until we shared beers on the deck under a hot sun And...

The land that lay directly behind me as I painted this distant view from a lonely rolling ridge on California’s central coast belongs to none other than Neil Young, and having learned this I couldn’t help but recall a recording I’d recently heard of him singing the old Woody Guthrie tune This Land is Your Land:   As I was walkin’, I saw a sign there And on the sign it said “no trespassing” But...

He burned hot and bright like a distant campfire, like candlelight. He’d laugh his howling little cackle that pulled you into his slipstream as you made your way along the path, down the makeshift rope, repelling over the edge of the cliff and dropping weightless into the crystal cerulean waters of the rocky cove far below. Everything made him laugh. And almost everything he laughed at led you to math, calculating the odds of survival....

Who of us isn’t a word about to be spoken to a friend? A ship about to leave the local harbor? When the anchor is pulled We’ll sail into a new tomorrow As dark and unknowable As the deep   Who of us isn’t question asked in earnest? A fishing vessel on the open ocean? Lines cast and waiting To bring in a harvest To feed the world Maybe today   Who of us isn’t...

What is the Kingdom of God like? And to what can it be compared?   It is like a thief and a murderer, sharing a single cell in a dirty prison. Through the barred windows they can see the world outside, the blue sky overhead, freedom, yet just out of reach.   Not that life out there had ever gone well for them. It had been one loss after another, and a life spent forever...

Walkers, joggers, and yoga bloggers. Bikers, skaters, likers and haters. Selfie seekers acting the goofiest and shady ham-radio enthusiasts. Car sleeping, still drunk, greasy tattooed bass players grumbling out car windows at bright eyed white shirt spring break baseball players who are invisible to the chain-smoking plastic chair and card table dark-eyed novelist who instead zeroes in across the street at an upstairs party for real estate tax evading campaign slush fund grovelists.   California...