A Poets World

It is often said “A dog is man’s best friend” yet how truly undeserving are we?
Dogs want nothing but affection, to serve, to love, and become a part of our family.

A dog is man’s best friend but is man a dog’s best friend?

Would we adopt “a friend into our family for years then abandon them in the still of night?

Would we adopt a friend into our family and purposely teach them to aggressively fight?

A dog is man’s best friend but is man a dog’s best friend?

Across this great nation day after day, man’s best friend cowers in the corner of a cage waiting. “Nobody wants me. I’m alone and frightened. My will is broken and my spirit deflating. If you don’t come soon my life will be taken.”

What horrible thing did this poor creature do to deserve such a terrible end but to be at his master’s side like a faithful friend.

Many believe there are no dogs in heaven but I believe dogs are heaven sent. Perhaps it is God testing our hearts to judge our love’s extent.

A dog is man’s best friend but is man a dog’s best friend?

Do we really deserve the devotion and astounding forgiveness that our dog’s lavish on us day by day?

I say … “No way! No way! No way!”

When the final leaves have fallen and the cold northern winds set in, autumn turns to winter as is always must. Life is relentless like that.

The aging patriarch claims his title to widowhood after the death of his wife of 56 years. While he knows she is finally at peace, he nonetheless feels a void, like a page turned yet not fully read. So many things seem left unsaid.

He often finds himself in the predawn hours awake and unable to sleep. Do not burden yourself with compassion, or worry cast, for these are his quiet hours to reflect on his days, present and past.

The holiday season is near, Thanksgiving and Christmas are cherished memories but his role seems different now. A subtle change, but the family host is now the guest of a new generation. The tree smaller, the decorations less grand, the spirit diminished; a new season at hand.

Oh how grand it would be to sit before that old Christmas tree. With a wood fire burning in the yuletide hearth, a picture that still warms the widower’s heart.

When the holidays recede into yesterday as they always must and winter reaches it’s bitter peak, time stands still for many who dream of unimaginable possibilities for their lives. A new year, a new beginning, a new day for young husbands and wives.

The days fly by without meaning, barely remembered by the elderly man. The dials on the clock of life spin faster and faster with advancing years at hand. You too will feel life passing faster in the days of your golden years.

I am that aging man, finding peace with the widower’s lot. I take each day as a blessing, grateful to still read that racing clock.

Why do these conflicts go on for hundreds and thousands of years? Senseless battles that can only bring, pain, bloodshed, and tears.

Mourn for the shed blood of the Lambs of War

Can coveted land, a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or ideology ever be worth the shed blood of even one child? Can the slaughter of these innocents on the altar of war ever be reconciled?

The shed blood of these lambs of war cries out to the world for an end to this madness. No God nor tyrant nor doctrinal code is glorified in war, only futility, heartbreak, and sadness.

Weep for the shed blood of the Lambs of War

The ghosts of a dying child in a Vietnamese village, a blood-soaked orphan in a war-torn Korean hut, and the broken remains of an orphaned child lying filthy and bleeding on a Palestinian street.  These innocent children cry out from the grave, for their tortured lives they will never complete.  Lord, I pray, hear my entreat.

Stop the shed blood of the Lambs of War

You, pariah, are an enemy of the people. You have no love but for that of power.
You wear the essence of hatred like a crown. Your guile masks nothing and reveals everything. You sit at the foot of your enormous table, speaking words dripping with your neighbors blood

You dream of glory as the Czar of your empire while your wickedness pours out in a flood. You are the father of evil who poisons your critical sons and daughters who dare to renounce you. The world is watching the torture of innocents lying dead in streets of rubble and mud.

How can your people embrace you in nationalistic pride? Is the truth of your evil so easy to hide? History has known many like you, murderous tyrant and Hell awaits you with open gates

Yet there is good and kindness in this world. The question that plagues us is whether humanity and compassion will triumph over apathy and fear.

Will good people stand up or hide as the time to act now draws near. Have we learned from our past what has cost us so dear?

Our gracious Lady Liberty sheds a tear for this land now ruled by hatred and fear.              In cities, riots and indignation now rule the streets of this once great nation.

A dark chapter begins with the turn of a page.

Tyranny reigns where freedom now wanes. Great America is at war with her own and the seeds of discord are sown.

Do you feel the seething rage?

Is this what we have become? We proclaim black lives matter, blue lives matter, all lives matter; yet we fail to accord human dignity. Why do we hold to our hatred and bigotry?

Do you feel the burning, fiery hate?

To the winds of contempt, our flag is unfurled. We have shamed Great America before the world. We have demeaned our allies and praised evil tyrants. We build walls where we once welcomed hard-working migrants.

Do you feel the darkness of contempt in this age?

Do not hold to what we have become but what we could be if united as one.

E Pluribus Unum

I wait with the finality and stoic weariness of old age.

The days have been a blur in the ever ticking movement of God’s eternal clock. I have tried to see the world through the eyes of my friend, a cautious black crow who sometimes trusts me and other times not.

I wait in broken humility as the curtain closes on this earthly stage

Like the crow, I have lived in high places watching the world with boldness and power. Yet fear has always been but a breath away; there are others stronger than I, who have tempered my boldness when I would dare to venture from my lofty tower.

I wait in weary patience, accepting, yet still I am burdened as I turn this final page

My friend, the crow, consoles me in the beauty of his graceful flight, yet always watching, careful, and cautious.  Does he ponder his days as we troubled souls when we approach the coming night.

I await the inevitable, my creased brow and tired eyes bear witness to these last days

The majestic crow in all its black splendor lives simply each day untroubled by what tomorrow may bring.  He seems to mock my troubled soul.  Oh, prideful man, are you the master of your destiny?  Can you change your legacy or ever avoid the surety of death’s final sting.

I wait with troubled spirit.  Oh, deliver me, God, from my anguish I pray.

Do we come into being by happenstance?  Do we leave as though we have never been?  No; scream into the void of waiting blackness “my life has mattered”!  My head is held high yet I am humbled as I look upon God’s eternal expanse.

I wait, my yesterdays gone, my future cast in God’s mercy. I wait in hope in my final days

There is no peace or solace among the statues of stone.
Only memories of times past and the pain of ages gone by.
No hope is found in the quiet moments spent there all alone.
Can reconciliation ever be gained by statues that mystify?

What abject futility under the sun, those memorials made by man.
Honour is a privilege of the humble, bestowed by a sovereign God.
How beautiful we find those enchanting statues created by human hand.
Their graceful lines thrill our hearts and by their beauty, we are awed.

Be careful where you seek the peace that calms your heart so troubled.
The solace found in idols of stone are fleeting and always entrap the soul.
You are left with woe by works of stone that in the end must always crumble.
Those mystic works of granite can only disappoint and never make you whole.

God curses those elegant statues created with mortar and stone
They cast their cold and lifeless eyes on the sad and weak who seek their solace.
They call out in silence with lifeless lips to draw the vulnerable who stand alone.
If at all they had a heart, it would be made of stone and filled with malice.

My spirit is kind and healing.  Bring me your broken hearts and shattered lives.

I am mighty among the Nations on earth.  Gather your wounded behind my torch and find a land where your soul can revive.

Here is the soil where your forefathers stood, full of hope for a better tomorrow. They have paved a way through blood and tears so that you may come to lay down your sorrow.

My spirit is kind and healing.  Bring me your broken hearts and shattered lives.

I proclaim the truth that all are created equal, with freedoms fought and died for. You are welcome to come and find rest for your soul as you gather here at the foot of my shore.

Heed not those who resent your presence there has always been good and evil.
Their hurtful words and hateful tone are the marks of the weak and deceitful.

Stand behind my torch. My spirit is kind and healing.  Bring me your broken hearts and shattered lives.

My curse will fall on the wicked who build their walls and construct their cages with a will to imprison the weak and oppressed.  Their own fears and insecurities will give them no peace or rest.

Have they forgotten that they once stood behind my torch? Even to them I once whispered:

My spirit is kind and healing.  Bring me your broken hearts and shattered lives.

I am magnificent, expansive and grand.  There is always room for those who come to the shores of my beautiful land.

Do not turn the poor and the downtrodden away. My spirit is kind and healing.

Bring me your broken hearts and shattered lives.

As the days draw near and the time is at hand, who will mourn the angry man?

He looks at his world and wags his head. He sits in judgment of the weak and unfed. He is rather to be pitied than despised.

A cold heart is the reward of enmity; compassion the gift of the wise.

He praises himself for his success over others. He views the poor as weak and lazy. Surely they are the product of their own bad choices.

He is blind to kindness and humanity; as the oppressed cry out he is deaf to their voices.

As the days draw near and the time is at hand, who will mourn the angry man?

He would tax the poor to build a wall in pursuit of false security. He surveys his land with rheumy eyes and malice that cannot be fully disguised. Oh fool, where will your riches go in the end and who will mourn for your pitiful soul.

This angry man praises himself in pride and empty self-righteousness. He stands in the pews and prays in eloquence. Yet his soul is filled with the cancer of malevolence.

As the days draw near and the time is at hand, who will mourn the angry man?

It is only God who can change a heart. It is God who mourns for this man.

Pray that God will break this heart and take away this man’s anger. Because, as the days draw near and the time is at hand, only God will mourn for the angry man.

It is said, “it takes a village” but where has the village gone?
Why has hatred cast its foul cloud over the land?
Our children are dying; brothers and sisters perish in the violence of madness.
Evil rises from the mist of dawn.

Where has that village gone?
Oh God, where are you? Where is your merciful hand?
Righteousness only a shadow of yesterday now remembered with sadness.
Will the wicked still mock the sanctity of life? For how long?

Oh God, where are you and where has that village gone?
Is there no safe haven from the lethal acts of a wicked man?
Your sanctuary, now a slaughterhouse, a place of light suddenly filled with blackness.
Oh God, where were you, when in death your faithful fell down?

I know in whom I must trust and in faith, I will surely live on.
But Lord please forgive this weak soul who asks:

Oh God, where were you and where has the village gone?

Soldier’s Plea

A young man was angry at the very God he denied. He was torn and weary; too many days in the desert sand. There was too much blood, shed by human hand; and for what?

A civil war in a foreign place where the innocent often died. One oppressor defeats another; a people cursed by evil hands. Violence, oppression, a war-torn landscape, a desolate land; and for what?

The soldier’s heart ached for home, he was troubled, hurt and broken inside. The torment of war, fear, sweat, and emptiness proved far too large a demand. His broken spirit was crushing, more than any human could stand, and for what?

He survived the bloodshed where comrades perished. “Where were you God?” he cried. Where were you when my brothers died in that cursed foreign land? A place where too much blood was shed by evil human hands; and for what?

God’s Reply

Faithless man, who are you that you should cry out to me in anger? Was I the reason innocents died? Where was I when innocent blood was shed? Where was I, you demand? Where was I when your brothers died in that cursed evil land?

I wept with you and mourned for those who died. I stood with you always at your side. You cry out and ask “for what?”  There is only one answer to this senseless plea. The only peace you will ever know will come when you fully lean on me.

When we reach those silver years, our days can be empty and idle; reflective, depressive and filled with regret over lives that should have been.

There seems no hope for a better future as our paths are set for the final destiny, a cold tomorrow filled with sorrow. Our day draws near but when…when.

Too many funerals and too many friends have been torn away from our lives; the heartache of loss tears at our souls again and again and again.

Oh mother and father I mourn the loss of your loving comfort and protective hands; holding and molding in those years back then.

Oh Lord you warned “when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you loathe to go.”

Is this my time? Is my life only to be filled with woe?

The days of summer have passed by autumn and finally to the bleakness of winter gray as surely as the hair of ancient men.

These are the silver years, the final act as the curtain prepares to close. My Father reminds me of His promises as I shed my last tears.

In the end only He can mend the broken hearts of those silver years.

How does a man ascend to greatness as a king to a nation chosen? Though you my king were but a ruddy lad, your path was surely set in motion.

What is it that defines the greatness of a king? Is it bravery or valor?

You my king were incensed with a faithless nation cowered in fear before their foe. You challenged a giant with only a sling and propelled a mortal blow.

What is it that defines the greatness of a king? Is it spirit?

Your Father’s spirit goes before you as your enemies fall before your sword. What is it that God saw in your heart when the anointing oil was poured?

What is it that defines the greatness of a king? Is it righteousness?

Surely it was not righteous that a king should take a soldier’s wife then take his child and end his life. Certainly it was not right that a king should send his faithful servant into a hopeless fight.

What is it that defines the greatness of a king? Is he superior in being?

Kings are only men. They may be right or wrong, weak or strong. Yet kings are merely mortal men who walk in the shadow of mortal sin.

What is it that defines the greatness of a king? Is it his strength or weakness?

The king who above all else has a heart for God walks with the power of Moses’ rod. It is never the strength of human flesh that determines our weakness or greatness. It is not the battles we have won or lost or the even the suffering and human cost.

What is it that defines the greatness of a king? It is what God finds in the human heart.

Photo from City of Marysville.com

A time in the past on a midsummer day we placed our blankets on a hill in the park.  Oh the cheerful sound of children’s fun and the memories of days in the summer sun.

Along the swift flowing St. Clair River, freighters lazily churned their way.  People along the shore often waved and sometimes sailors would too. Our land bound minds often pondered anew what life must be like for that freighter’s crew.

In the late afternoon the charcoal smoked as hotdogs were turned and fires were stoked. These were simple times in days now gone where families talked and dreams were spawned.

Up on the ball field a game was now over and the teams slowly walked down the hill.  A group in the bandstand with drums and guitars prepared for a concert under the stars.

What better way to wind up a day with memories of fun in that midsummer sun?

They know I am coming; I sense that, though their tongue I have yet to learn.
I live in the warmth and protection of my own private ocean.
While angels look down in patient concern.
Oh healer, do not become my executioner but greet me with caring devotion.

God’s angels smiled, as I am welcomed with arms opened wide.
Though nurtured in childhood, I still rebel in my years of adolescence.
I have scorned those who have loved me through a veneer of youthful pride.
I have tested patient souls. Only later am I shamed to repentance.

A young husband and father, my future seems wide and open.
The years stretch before me with endless paths in my uncertain journey in life.
While there are days that surely trouble my soul I’ve always tomorrow to hope in.
These are the years that shape me, as promise and hope battle fear and strife.

Was time my foe? For wasted days and unpursued dreams whom shall I curse or blame?
In vanity, I pine over what could have been and I know there are no new tomorrows.
With anguish, I mourn over life passed by. The years I can never reclaim.
As my years fade, dreams fade too in the abyss of ancient sorrow.

Listen to the words of this tired old man even though you count them weak.
Live with purpose and caring in a way that would please your Maker.
Does it matter how high you’ve climbed that mountain of human feat?
Our memories honor the one who gave; soon forgotten is the taker.

The woodland path wound through birch trees looking pale and dead in the morning frost.
An old man bent with the ravages of age hobbled along with his gnarled wooden staff.
He had walked this way every day of his youth but now seemed uncertain and lost.

A hare watched curiously from a short ways away and spoke to the man at last.
“I know you sir, I’ve see you come this way many times in the past
Why are you now confused? Follow the path to the lake and look right
There you will see a welcome sight”

“I’m obliged” said the man to the hare and travelled along his way.
When he finally reached the lake it was very late in the day.
But there indeed was a welcome sight; his tiny cottage in the fading light.

The next day along the forest path the man saw that very same hare
He was caught and distraught  in a trapper’s snare.
As the hare struggled to set himself free the man knelt down on his twisted knee.
One good turn deserves another, I think I shall bring this hare home for supper.

At the window of my cottage on a cool, damp, foggy, morning,
Stood a Raven clad in white. I’d never seen such a sight.
How could it be? The Raven is a black bird you see.

But there he stood feathered in white; red eyes burning like coals.
He stared intensely for the longest time then spoke quite clearly;
“My name is Providence and I have come to bring you a warning”.

“Am I descending into madness?” A white raven speaks as though a prophet!
Yet there was something in this raven’s eyes; I stood there fully mesmerized.
Like a bird of prey he did not flee but as I watched drew near to me.

“My name is Providence” he said again “and I have come to bring you a warning.
In six days’ time I will come again and claim your worthless life of shame.
What is the legacy of a fool? That he has rejected the Lord of Life.”

“Is there no hope White Raven for a man such as I? No mercy that I must die?”
“Yes” said he “if you love The King and bow to his royal throne.”
Then as quickly as this white raven came I found myself alone.

Should I heed the warning of this white winged harbinger?
Was any of this even real? A white raven; How could it be?
The Raven is a black bird you see.

Ravens don’t talk or certainly bear warnings;
Perhaps I’ll feel better tomorrow morning.

At the approach of dawn on that day, the mist rises quietly from the forest’s floor.
An old stone cross from a crumbling headstone peeks through the parting veil of night.
The time draws near with the steady cadence of that pale horse of death.
To what merit will this man’s work be weighed, when wrong is measured with right.

The man walks to that old stone cross, seeking solace in that place of the dead.
But there is no solace for this man of works, only fear and dread.

He listens, more pensive, to the steady beat of the hoofs drawing near.
Out of the mist a black horse comes steadily in a cadence of doom.
The rider carries golden scales and the man cries “weigh me for I am worthy”.
The rider passes and whispers. “These scales will not measure man.
Your rider comes soon”.

The night parts and the gray of dawn unfold this man’s last day.
The deathly quiet of that morning mist, shudders in the cadence of that pale horse of doom
“Your rider comes soon”.

Behold a pale horse comes in the mist with death holding its reigns.
The old man trembles but proudly cries out “I am not yours; weigh my deeds!”
The rider proclaims “there are no scales to bear the weight of your empty claims;
Only He, who you passed by, as He wept for your pride in vain”.

“Now reap your harvest, man of works. Come meet my master in his prison of flames”.