KALEB SMILES
God Thunders.
Heaven trembles,
Earth moves,
Kaleb wheezes…
God Directs.
Mother quakes,
Doctor reflects,
Kaleb weakens…
God Speaks.
Nurse muses,
Father questions,
Kaleb decreases…
God Conveys.
Surgeon plots,
Church at prayer,
Kaleb clings…
God Moves.
Surgeon exalts,
Morning waxes…
Kaleb seizes.
God Commands.
Elders Pray,
Oil Flows,
Seizure ceases…
God Imparts.
Doctor ponders,
Church intercedes,
Kaleb strives …
God Bellows.
Doctor qualms,
Parents sorrow,
Kaleb sleeps…
God Roars.
Tests portend,
Parents forebode,
Kaleb Sleeps…
God Whispers.
Doctor marvels.
Nurse amazed.
…KALEB SMILES!
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
A Prayer for Kaleb
Such a small thing for You,
But the whole world to her
Who bore him in her womb
And longs to care and nurse.
Such a small thing for You,
Who made all things from dust,
And printed on so few
The imprint of the Just.
Such a small thing for You,
But life’s great call for him,
And from whose seed You grew
His likeness once mere dream.
Such a small thing for You,
Whose image we all bear
Though dim and dull of hue
Have made us Sons and Heirs.
Such a small thing for You,
But our whole thought and care
And in whom we imbue
The earnest of our prayers.
One mere thought from You who spoke the Word that out of chaos all became.
One whisper of Your perfect will makes blind to see and heals the lame.
One vapor of your sovereign breath makes kingdoms fall and stars to wane.
Such a small thing for You.
Such a small thing for You,
But the whole world to her
Who bore him in her womb
And longs to care and nurse.
Such a small thing for You,
Who made all things from dust,
And printed on so few
The imprint of the Just.
Such a small thing for You,
But life’s great call for him,
And from whose seed You grew
His likeness once mere dream.
Such a small thing for You,
Whose image we all bear
Though dim and dull of hue
Have made us Sons and Heirs.
Such a small thing for You,
But our whole thought and care
And in whom we imbue
The earnest of our prayers.
One mere thought from You who spoke the Word that out of chaos all became.
One whisper of Your perfect will makes blind to see and heals the lame.
One vapor of your sovereign breath makes kingdoms fall and stars to wane.
Such a small thing for You.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Of Theresa
Proverbs 31:10-30
Most excellent wife, ‘tis thou found me
When I dared not to seek.
The worth of jewels thou so exceed
That of them I‘ll not speak.
My heart so fully trusts in thee,
I have no want of gain.
My greatest good hast inured thee
To be thy soul’s refrain.
Life’s wool and flax thy fingers spin
With skill and willing joy,
To craft a mantle fit for kings,
yet meant for my employ.
Stately as a merchant’s ship
Bears food from ‘cross the waves,
The labor spent to make thy trip
Thou hidest from my gaze.
Thou risest ‘fore the night is done,
When dawn’s crisp chill resides,
To provender and serve the one
In whom thy love abides.
Thy wisdom and thy diligence,
Thy character and grace,
Have conquered every hinderance
Through trials, to see God’s Face.
Resplendent in the form of woman
Strong arm joined with loving eye,
Making glad thy earthbound husband,
Joining hands our troth to ply.
Thy lamp burns bright into the evening,
Spindle whirls and distaff bends,
Diligence whilst sun sets, fleeting,
Thy family’s needs are thy first ends.
Fed and warm while Winter rages,
Abed in slumber after each day’s roam.
Scarlet clothed as hearth-fire blazes.
Safe inside their house, made home.
Modesty and Poise, they both are thy sisters.
With laughter thou face all fears yet to come.
By means of insight hast thou plied all thine answers,
The honey of Wisdom resides ‘neath thy tongue.
Other women do great, and yet not withstanding
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain.
Surpass them you do, humbly I’ll state in passing,
For ‘tis thou that art mine, and ‘tis lawful to say.
Well hast thou seen to the needs of thy household.
The bread of idleness ownest thou none.
In joy have I watched as thy children, grown older
In unity bless thee and praise thee as one.
I join in their chorus with heart’s full affection,
Overcome as I am before family and friends.
To sing of that exquisite day when that maiden
Purposed to join this most common of men.
The purpose for life hast God hid in thy bounty.
My quiver is filled with the fruits of thy womb,
Strong Sons are the arrows with which God has armed me,
The beauty of daughters my joy and my boon.
My wife fears the LORD and that’s worth my oration.
And granting the fruit of her hands my delight.
But showing her honor due one of her station,
Will never come close to the love she requites.
So bless I that day when thy parents’ affection,
Joined in sweet bliss for thy life to conceive.
United in flesh with the Father’s Election,
Called forth by the Spirit and through Son redeemed.
For my loving wife Theresa,
on the occasion of
celebrating her fiftieth birthday.
John Ford
November, 2007
Proverbs 31:10-30
Most excellent wife, ‘tis thou found me
When I dared not to seek.
The worth of jewels thou so exceed
That of them I‘ll not speak.
My heart so fully trusts in thee,
I have no want of gain.
My greatest good hast inured thee
To be thy soul’s refrain.
Life’s wool and flax thy fingers spin
With skill and willing joy,
To craft a mantle fit for kings,
yet meant for my employ.
Stately as a merchant’s ship
Bears food from ‘cross the waves,
The labor spent to make thy trip
Thou hidest from my gaze.
Thou risest ‘fore the night is done,
When dawn’s crisp chill resides,
To provender and serve the one
In whom thy love abides.
Thy wisdom and thy diligence,
Thy character and grace,
Have conquered every hinderance
Through trials, to see God’s Face.
Resplendent in the form of woman
Strong arm joined with loving eye,
Making glad thy earthbound husband,
Joining hands our troth to ply.
Thy lamp burns bright into the evening,
Spindle whirls and distaff bends,
Diligence whilst sun sets, fleeting,
Thy family’s needs are thy first ends.
Fed and warm while Winter rages,
Abed in slumber after each day’s roam.
Scarlet clothed as hearth-fire blazes.
Safe inside their house, made home.
Modesty and Poise, they both are thy sisters.
With laughter thou face all fears yet to come.
By means of insight hast thou plied all thine answers,
The honey of Wisdom resides ‘neath thy tongue.
Other women do great, and yet not withstanding
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain.
Surpass them you do, humbly I’ll state in passing,
For ‘tis thou that art mine, and ‘tis lawful to say.
Well hast thou seen to the needs of thy household.
The bread of idleness ownest thou none.
In joy have I watched as thy children, grown older
In unity bless thee and praise thee as one.
I join in their chorus with heart’s full affection,
Overcome as I am before family and friends.
To sing of that exquisite day when that maiden
Purposed to join this most common of men.
The purpose for life hast God hid in thy bounty.
My quiver is filled with the fruits of thy womb,
Strong Sons are the arrows with which God has armed me,
The beauty of daughters my joy and my boon.
My wife fears the LORD and that’s worth my oration.
And granting the fruit of her hands my delight.
But showing her honor due one of her station,
Will never come close to the love she requites.
So bless I that day when thy parents’ affection,
Joined in sweet bliss for thy life to conceive.
United in flesh with the Father’s Election,
Called forth by the Spirit and through Son redeemed.
For my loving wife Theresa,
on the occasion of
celebrating her fiftieth birthday.
John Ford
November, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
The Hireling
2007, Pastor John Ford
I’ve often wondered how a man,
Filled up with fear and awful dread,
No inkling where his foot will tread,
Him prone to stumble, slow to stand
Might be a tool in Father’s hand.
God’s mouthpiece hung on fallen head
Whose quaking lips the Gospel spread
‘Til Son‘s renown has filled the land.
To be found lacking, prove his want,
Attest his falling, uphold his doubt,
And be called ‘hireling’ is his fear,
Each night in sleep this is his haunt.
By day he strives to be devout,
And hopes his God finds him sincere.
2007, Pastor John Ford
I’ve often wondered how a man,
Filled up with fear and awful dread,
No inkling where his foot will tread,
Him prone to stumble, slow to stand
Might be a tool in Father’s hand.
God’s mouthpiece hung on fallen head
Whose quaking lips the Gospel spread
‘Til Son‘s renown has filled the land.
To be found lacking, prove his want,
Attest his falling, uphold his doubt,
And be called ‘hireling’ is his fear,
Each night in sleep this is his haunt.
By day he strives to be devout,
And hopes his God finds him sincere.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
LEVIATHAN
Job 41, Psalm 104
By John Ford
May, 2007
Beneath the briny sea he sleeps,
him made to reign o’er rolling wave.
And through the dark and boding deeps
none can be found more fearful made.
His Lord the same Creator‐God
who makes, sustains, and rules man too,
his visage to our eye so odd
that God has hid him from our view.
Our proud and fallen nature would
him too make tame to bid our will,
but God against our plans hath stood,
and strives instead to make us still.
No bridle made with human hands,
no fishing stock of earth’s design
Can guide him ‘bout to our demands,
Or pull him from the loamy brine.
No hook of steel, no tethered maw
can stay him from his ardent path.
No oath of peace emits his jaw,
no covenant will bind him fast.
No seaman’s dart will he endure.
No javelin sharp can pierce his side,
No purchase may his flesh secure.
No merchant’s scale will he abide.
His frolic not disclosed to Adam,
gambol hid from mankind’s eye
below the Kraken’s coliseum,
covert play‐yard whence he hides.
Like all creatures God’s breath bellowed,
one mere brute spawned that Sixth‐Day,
Yet he, unique from all his fellows,
set full apart for Godhead play.
Adam, hewn for Father’s Glory,
image bearer of His face,
tasked with tending this, His Story,
leaning wholly on His Grace.
Mankind God has made for labor,
sweat and mud his chosen plate.
Makes war and peace both on his neighbor.
Curses God, and seals his fate.
This one God has made to mock us,
lay siege to pride, cage vanity.
One gaze t’ward his oily blackness
betrays our trite mendacity.
Armor, in which Maker clad him,
‘gainst our wax‐pale trifling frame,
Starkly bares our fraught condition,
who cannot even our tongues tame.
What chance have we, against this serpent,
his fiery blast and plate‐clad brow?
Our Strength is poured out, courage forfeit,
our vessel swamped at his first blow.
On earth is not one made his equal,
without fear, yet fearfully done,
God who doeth all things right well,
uses to portent the Son.
O Lord how manifold thy great deeds!
In wisdom you decreed them all.
Earth is filled, as well the great seas,
creatures great, and creatures small.
There go the ships, here come the galleys
Dominion Mandate drives man on.
The Lord is high, yet not withstanding,
descends to sport Leviathan.
Job 41, Psalm 104
By John Ford
May, 2007
Beneath the briny sea he sleeps,
him made to reign o’er rolling wave.
And through the dark and boding deeps
none can be found more fearful made.
His Lord the same Creator‐God
who makes, sustains, and rules man too,
his visage to our eye so odd
that God has hid him from our view.
Our proud and fallen nature would
him too make tame to bid our will,
but God against our plans hath stood,
and strives instead to make us still.
No bridle made with human hands,
no fishing stock of earth’s design
Can guide him ‘bout to our demands,
Or pull him from the loamy brine.
No hook of steel, no tethered maw
can stay him from his ardent path.
No oath of peace emits his jaw,
no covenant will bind him fast.
No seaman’s dart will he endure.
No javelin sharp can pierce his side,
No purchase may his flesh secure.
No merchant’s scale will he abide.
His frolic not disclosed to Adam,
gambol hid from mankind’s eye
below the Kraken’s coliseum,
covert play‐yard whence he hides.
Like all creatures God’s breath bellowed,
one mere brute spawned that Sixth‐Day,
Yet he, unique from all his fellows,
set full apart for Godhead play.
Adam, hewn for Father’s Glory,
image bearer of His face,
tasked with tending this, His Story,
leaning wholly on His Grace.
Mankind God has made for labor,
sweat and mud his chosen plate.
Makes war and peace both on his neighbor.
Curses God, and seals his fate.
This one God has made to mock us,
lay siege to pride, cage vanity.
One gaze t’ward his oily blackness
betrays our trite mendacity.
Armor, in which Maker clad him,
‘gainst our wax‐pale trifling frame,
Starkly bares our fraught condition,
who cannot even our tongues tame.
What chance have we, against this serpent,
his fiery blast and plate‐clad brow?
Our Strength is poured out, courage forfeit,
our vessel swamped at his first blow.
On earth is not one made his equal,
without fear, yet fearfully done,
God who doeth all things right well,
uses to portent the Son.
O Lord how manifold thy great deeds!
In wisdom you decreed them all.
Earth is filled, as well the great seas,
creatures great, and creatures small.
There go the ships, here come the galleys
Dominion Mandate drives man on.
The Lord is high, yet not withstanding,
descends to sport Leviathan.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Summertime, Some Other Time
When I was a young man, and still in High School, I was regularly pressed into attending “Summer School” classes that were supposed to help me beef up my transcript. But I suspected that their true purpose was to keep me and my fellows out of our Moms’ hair for another month, or so. I therefore, only grudgingly took whatever classes seemed easy, and were represented in the schedule, as being dismissed by lunchtime.
Like most of my peers, I hated the very idea of wasting all of those great early summer mornings sitting in a classroom studying ANYTHING, let alone something requisite for College-prep. It seemed so unnatural to get up that early in the Summer (before 9:00 A.M. for crying out loud!), and to get dressed for school in the middle of June.
To be fair, it was the sixties, and we were allowed to wear shorts (not ‘cut-offs’) to Summer School, which wasn’t too bad, but there was still a dress code regarding our hair length, buttoned shirts tucked into the pants, and (worst of all) minimum skirt and shorts lengths for the girls. Ahhh, Summer School. I remember it clearly, if not dearly. I especially remember the Summer of my Sophomore Year.
We trudged onto the lonely campus, my fellow inmates and I, wondering why only those classrooms way out back ever plied their wares in the dog-days of Summer. Being near the athletic fields, our trek to the back of the campus required walking past all of those empty rooms in the front buildings, with their windows and doors splayed open to provide a free flow of morning air in, and to allow the liquid poetry of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Otis Redding, and The Beach Boys out. This was done, we were sure, in order that they might more fully mock our academic plight in their own transcendent escape from the boxy confines of the custodians’ radios, as floors were stripped naked and dressed in fresh wax against the day (months hence) when the rooms would see student pedestrian traffic again.
I remember the smells of heated pavement, salted air off of the back-bay at Newport Beach, and the aerosol interruption of sprinkler-mist from the Football Field. I remember the sounds of actual life in the surrounding neighborhoods.
There were the occasional sights of friends motoring toward the seashore southward, cars gorged with tanned and reddened teens, gleaming boards of fiberglass, like cutlasses of modern wave-riding buccaneers poking skyward from every portal along their heaving upper decks, as though anxious for the glory of impending battle with Nature’s elements, honed to a sharpness fit only for cutting their salt-surf prey. Chilled cans of bubbled sweetness, adorned in chests of miracle Styrofoam were strapped to the car roofs like rations for some long journey, provisions to slake the thirsts sure to be encountered on this youthful voyage of discovery.
I remember the smiling, fresh-faced revelations of young femininity, teak-tanned from former cruises, replete in pastel colored sundress splendor, sitting beside their young mariner-warriors, providing an astonishing contrast to the impending beach-head melee, an epic contradiction for the eye, majestic figure-heads of sweetness adorning the prows of these sea-bound clippers of surf assault.
The brigands’ own battle cry music collided midair with the emanations from those front classrooms, on occasion echoing in do-wop harmony, but mostly discordant, as ‘Surf’ and ‘Grease’ vied for my audio-attention.
Friends passing by our dungeon-keep, on their way to anticipated adolescent decadence, would glance upon our chain-gang entrance to the hallowed halls of public learnedness, and mark our entry, grist for another day’s milling of indoctrination in unimaginable, un-summer-like subjects.
Lesser lights among them smiled from the corners of their mealy mouths upon our plight, and whispered asides to their glory-bound fellows. Their muffled annotations yielding chortles and catcall-laughter aimed in our general direction from the rear seats of their enameled zephyrs, like broadsides fired from ships thought kindred to us, stinging and bruising us as only a cannonade of hurtful comrade words is able, until spent at our expense, they’d fall about us, steaming, sooty, graffiti smudges of their mockery, staining the stucco walls around.
Closer friends conversely, on seeing and grasping our hapless class-bound dilemma, stared upon us in dumbfounded horror, as though at some profoundly gruesome train versus pedestrian collision encountered unexpectedly along their joy-bound way. Being truer friends, they wished to help. Being merely mortal, they feared the wrath of our tyrant taskmasters within the walls. Being thoroughly human, they merely traveled on, their blank expressions and dull-eyed stares taking on the very hue of our own, sad but helpless; fellow spirits caught in parallel, albeit antithetical worlds. They journeyed on.
I remember the familiar, institutional smells of that one particular class-cell, although in June heat somehow warmer and more pungent than in semesters past; assaulting my olfactory senses, even as sardonic images of what I should have smelled instead, whirled past the windows outside, searing themselves into my optic nerves, a cruel melodrama between what was and what could have been, acted out before me as on some actor’s stage. All of my subsequent higher brain functions became hopelessly distracted from more mundane didactic endeavors, a luckless infraction of June’s outdoor distraction.
Young Swallows stretched their new, and as-yet unfamiliar wings in the blue of the sky-patch visible above the neighboring buildings. A dragonfly, and 2 accompanying Skipper-moths drifted lost into our little mausoleum, and lingered in the shaft of sunlight behind the teacher’s desk. They frolicking momentarily, comparing insect aerobatic skills with their own youthful zeal. Upon suddenly becoming aware of their indoor locale, they seemed to pause midair, and remembering themselves in one embarrassed hiccup of time, they dipped their wings to us as if in silent tribute to our lost souls, then made good their escape. Our spirits allied in that moment with theirs; fellow travelers in the pressing rush of life too short, adventures yet had, dreams untried, and life not lived. Seeing us perhaps prompted them to reflect upon their own fleeting mortality, caught as we were in the inky black arachnid web of classroom- squandered possibilities.
Dust swirled lazily in the sunbeam by my desk. The lonely call of an Ice Cream Truck beckoned from some blocks hence, borne our way on an errant breeze- the exhalation of suburbia, sweet with blended fragrances of grass freshly mower-eaten, and honeysuckle dew just drunk up by the risen sun.
The Helm’s Bakery wagon rounded the nearby corner, headed East with children in tow, modern Pied Piper in vintage Chevy Panel-truck. Yellow drake with gold-haired ducklings quack-ling nervously behind. Donuts in sticky glazed fists juxtaposed on triple-chromed Stingray handlebars, rounded the block toward their personal, jelly-filled Nirvana.
Summer the distraction. Summer somewhere….else. Summer unrealized. Summer yet unknown. Summer yet un-tasted. Summer beckoning from somewhere offstage. Summer at times screaming for my undiluted concentration like some siren-song crone beckoning from yonder jagged rocks…
But what’s that? Teacher speaks. Reality bites at my ideality, summarily lifting the gory head of my imagined wanderings from atop the now bloodied shoulders of my alternate reality with one fell snap of its gaping maw. Further education requires my immediate attention.
Teacher
She wants to know just what I think
‘bout lesson taught, I start to blink.
What did she say scant moment ago?
Can I address what I don’t know?
I panic for a moment there,
and try to bluff, but my blank stare
gives me away before I can
erect a case for why I am
sitting there gawking out the door,
caught in my reverie for sure,
I vainly feign some thought that’s huge,
but she’s seen through my subterfuge.
I stand stripped of my haughtiness,
and ruminating others’ bliss,
return myself to school’s rude tidings,
and feeling naked, skulk for hiding.
Now teacher turns to other business,
assignments, grades, and weekly quizzes.
Cold water, onto class unwary,
Grim her look, and really scary!
Comes her clincher, half our grade,
will be comprised of efforts made
in research, and study, and typing, and stuff
by midterm, a paper submitted in rough,
then completed and polished and read to the masses
of students around us, the last day of classes.
With no remedy granted, and no quarter offered,
If we want to pass, our full effort we’ll proffer.
Oh the humanity! Ahh, the unfairness,
how can she expect us to quickly embrace this?
The first day of class, is supposed to be easy,
But teacher has tricked us, it really is sleazy.
A paper, an essay, what subject pray, tell?
It’s not like our brains are a fathomless well.
I’m silent, I’m brooding, I’m cut to the quick,
Of all of the subjects from which she could pick,
She’s chosen the one I’m most likely to dread,
The muse has gone silent, full out of my head.
How can she expect me to fill 5 full pages,
With stuff on this subject, submitted in stages?
“Write something ‘bout Summer,” she says through her teeth,
“I’m sure that has meaning that’s hidden beneath,
Your teenage façades of rebellious self-loathing,
You must have some insights that could be worth knowing.”
“So give me your utmost, don’t think it a bummer
Please write me your views on the ‘Deep Things of Summer.’”
“Not I!” I am thinking, I have nothing to share
no analogy, simile, or metaphor’s there.
It’s hopeless, I’m lost, there no hope on this score,
I’m bollixed, forlorn, and confused to my core.
I lament to my brethren my parents restraining
my using this Summer to take Driver’s Training.
Its above me, I’m stupid. I can’t bear the thought,
can’t do the assignment, I’m really distraught.
My blood pressure’s rising, my nails I am biting.
Lord, WHY did I ever take CREATIVE WRITING?!!!
Ahh, the Summer of ’69!
Pastor John
When I was a young man, and still in High School, I was regularly pressed into attending “Summer School” classes that were supposed to help me beef up my transcript. But I suspected that their true purpose was to keep me and my fellows out of our Moms’ hair for another month, or so. I therefore, only grudgingly took whatever classes seemed easy, and were represented in the schedule, as being dismissed by lunchtime.
Like most of my peers, I hated the very idea of wasting all of those great early summer mornings sitting in a classroom studying ANYTHING, let alone something requisite for College-prep. It seemed so unnatural to get up that early in the Summer (before 9:00 A.M. for crying out loud!), and to get dressed for school in the middle of June.
To be fair, it was the sixties, and we were allowed to wear shorts (not ‘cut-offs’) to Summer School, which wasn’t too bad, but there was still a dress code regarding our hair length, buttoned shirts tucked into the pants, and (worst of all) minimum skirt and shorts lengths for the girls. Ahhh, Summer School. I remember it clearly, if not dearly. I especially remember the Summer of my Sophomore Year.
We trudged onto the lonely campus, my fellow inmates and I, wondering why only those classrooms way out back ever plied their wares in the dog-days of Summer. Being near the athletic fields, our trek to the back of the campus required walking past all of those empty rooms in the front buildings, with their windows and doors splayed open to provide a free flow of morning air in, and to allow the liquid poetry of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Otis Redding, and The Beach Boys out. This was done, we were sure, in order that they might more fully mock our academic plight in their own transcendent escape from the boxy confines of the custodians’ radios, as floors were stripped naked and dressed in fresh wax against the day (months hence) when the rooms would see student pedestrian traffic again.
I remember the smells of heated pavement, salted air off of the back-bay at Newport Beach, and the aerosol interruption of sprinkler-mist from the Football Field. I remember the sounds of actual life in the surrounding neighborhoods.
There were the occasional sights of friends motoring toward the seashore southward, cars gorged with tanned and reddened teens, gleaming boards of fiberglass, like cutlasses of modern wave-riding buccaneers poking skyward from every portal along their heaving upper decks, as though anxious for the glory of impending battle with Nature’s elements, honed to a sharpness fit only for cutting their salt-surf prey. Chilled cans of bubbled sweetness, adorned in chests of miracle Styrofoam were strapped to the car roofs like rations for some long journey, provisions to slake the thirsts sure to be encountered on this youthful voyage of discovery.
I remember the smiling, fresh-faced revelations of young femininity, teak-tanned from former cruises, replete in pastel colored sundress splendor, sitting beside their young mariner-warriors, providing an astonishing contrast to the impending beach-head melee, an epic contradiction for the eye, majestic figure-heads of sweetness adorning the prows of these sea-bound clippers of surf assault.
The brigands’ own battle cry music collided midair with the emanations from those front classrooms, on occasion echoing in do-wop harmony, but mostly discordant, as ‘Surf’ and ‘Grease’ vied for my audio-attention.
Friends passing by our dungeon-keep, on their way to anticipated adolescent decadence, would glance upon our chain-gang entrance to the hallowed halls of public learnedness, and mark our entry, grist for another day’s milling of indoctrination in unimaginable, un-summer-like subjects.
Lesser lights among them smiled from the corners of their mealy mouths upon our plight, and whispered asides to their glory-bound fellows. Their muffled annotations yielding chortles and catcall-laughter aimed in our general direction from the rear seats of their enameled zephyrs, like broadsides fired from ships thought kindred to us, stinging and bruising us as only a cannonade of hurtful comrade words is able, until spent at our expense, they’d fall about us, steaming, sooty, graffiti smudges of their mockery, staining the stucco walls around.
Closer friends conversely, on seeing and grasping our hapless class-bound dilemma, stared upon us in dumbfounded horror, as though at some profoundly gruesome train versus pedestrian collision encountered unexpectedly along their joy-bound way. Being truer friends, they wished to help. Being merely mortal, they feared the wrath of our tyrant taskmasters within the walls. Being thoroughly human, they merely traveled on, their blank expressions and dull-eyed stares taking on the very hue of our own, sad but helpless; fellow spirits caught in parallel, albeit antithetical worlds. They journeyed on.
I remember the familiar, institutional smells of that one particular class-cell, although in June heat somehow warmer and more pungent than in semesters past; assaulting my olfactory senses, even as sardonic images of what I should have smelled instead, whirled past the windows outside, searing themselves into my optic nerves, a cruel melodrama between what was and what could have been, acted out before me as on some actor’s stage. All of my subsequent higher brain functions became hopelessly distracted from more mundane didactic endeavors, a luckless infraction of June’s outdoor distraction.
Young Swallows stretched their new, and as-yet unfamiliar wings in the blue of the sky-patch visible above the neighboring buildings. A dragonfly, and 2 accompanying Skipper-moths drifted lost into our little mausoleum, and lingered in the shaft of sunlight behind the teacher’s desk. They frolicking momentarily, comparing insect aerobatic skills with their own youthful zeal. Upon suddenly becoming aware of their indoor locale, they seemed to pause midair, and remembering themselves in one embarrassed hiccup of time, they dipped their wings to us as if in silent tribute to our lost souls, then made good their escape. Our spirits allied in that moment with theirs; fellow travelers in the pressing rush of life too short, adventures yet had, dreams untried, and life not lived. Seeing us perhaps prompted them to reflect upon their own fleeting mortality, caught as we were in the inky black arachnid web of classroom- squandered possibilities.
Dust swirled lazily in the sunbeam by my desk. The lonely call of an Ice Cream Truck beckoned from some blocks hence, borne our way on an errant breeze- the exhalation of suburbia, sweet with blended fragrances of grass freshly mower-eaten, and honeysuckle dew just drunk up by the risen sun.
The Helm’s Bakery wagon rounded the nearby corner, headed East with children in tow, modern Pied Piper in vintage Chevy Panel-truck. Yellow drake with gold-haired ducklings quack-ling nervously behind. Donuts in sticky glazed fists juxtaposed on triple-chromed Stingray handlebars, rounded the block toward their personal, jelly-filled Nirvana.
Summer the distraction. Summer somewhere….else. Summer unrealized. Summer yet unknown. Summer yet un-tasted. Summer beckoning from somewhere offstage. Summer at times screaming for my undiluted concentration like some siren-song crone beckoning from yonder jagged rocks…
But what’s that? Teacher speaks. Reality bites at my ideality, summarily lifting the gory head of my imagined wanderings from atop the now bloodied shoulders of my alternate reality with one fell snap of its gaping maw. Further education requires my immediate attention.
Teacher
She wants to know just what I think
‘bout lesson taught, I start to blink.
What did she say scant moment ago?
Can I address what I don’t know?
I panic for a moment there,
and try to bluff, but my blank stare
gives me away before I can
erect a case for why I am
sitting there gawking out the door,
caught in my reverie for sure,
I vainly feign some thought that’s huge,
but she’s seen through my subterfuge.
I stand stripped of my haughtiness,
and ruminating others’ bliss,
return myself to school’s rude tidings,
and feeling naked, skulk for hiding.
Now teacher turns to other business,
assignments, grades, and weekly quizzes.
Cold water, onto class unwary,
Grim her look, and really scary!
Comes her clincher, half our grade,
will be comprised of efforts made
in research, and study, and typing, and stuff
by midterm, a paper submitted in rough,
then completed and polished and read to the masses
of students around us, the last day of classes.
With no remedy granted, and no quarter offered,
If we want to pass, our full effort we’ll proffer.
Oh the humanity! Ahh, the unfairness,
how can she expect us to quickly embrace this?
The first day of class, is supposed to be easy,
But teacher has tricked us, it really is sleazy.
A paper, an essay, what subject pray, tell?
It’s not like our brains are a fathomless well.
I’m silent, I’m brooding, I’m cut to the quick,
Of all of the subjects from which she could pick,
She’s chosen the one I’m most likely to dread,
The muse has gone silent, full out of my head.
How can she expect me to fill 5 full pages,
With stuff on this subject, submitted in stages?
“Write something ‘bout Summer,” she says through her teeth,
“I’m sure that has meaning that’s hidden beneath,
Your teenage façades of rebellious self-loathing,
You must have some insights that could be worth knowing.”
“So give me your utmost, don’t think it a bummer
Please write me your views on the ‘Deep Things of Summer.’”
“Not I!” I am thinking, I have nothing to share
no analogy, simile, or metaphor’s there.
It’s hopeless, I’m lost, there no hope on this score,
I’m bollixed, forlorn, and confused to my core.
I lament to my brethren my parents restraining
my using this Summer to take Driver’s Training.
Its above me, I’m stupid. I can’t bear the thought,
can’t do the assignment, I’m really distraught.
My blood pressure’s rising, my nails I am biting.
Lord, WHY did I ever take CREATIVE WRITING?!!!
Ahh, the Summer of ’69!
Pastor John
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)