Priest

The job of a priest and I’ve known a few

Is to lead in prayer wherever the place;

To hear the need, the hard moment of grace;

To visit, revisit, where need is new.

The call to repent, the word to partake

Are the priest’s to make whenever the time.

The morning breaks open in its prime,

The evening is everything at stake.

To preach to comfort, to show, to uplift

From the source – the gospel’s present tense;

To be as nothing in serving the other;

Is the priest’s example, undercover.

Poetry bottles up the common sense

The priest uncorks as everyone’s gift.

How

Stronger still, their feeling upward registers:

How we wished, till it came true not as thought.

How we closer danced, and all that dance brought.

How we bought, then lived with those signatures.

How we travelled through lands with famous names.

How we tripped, with a landing like floating.

How we cried, minus the sugar coating.

How we got real, dear, about old flames.

How we walked the dog with cute agility.

How we cut up, wore out the tiny scars.

How we found truth once it talked back to us.

How we played guitar, an added plus.

How we blew the horn that sprayed tiny stars.

Old refrains they sing with nobility.

Silence

Depend on orations of silence welling,

Words you will never allow to surface,

Their gut feeling got, unsubtle difference

From those you transform daily to spelling.

Near to the source of beauty or terror

Where another’s words hit, where it hurts most,

Where the scene renders up your speechless boast,

There where there’s simply no margin of error.

Place is no obstacle for these orations:

In the crowd, loud, proud, in the dense café,

The bedroom, the beach, the railway carriage,

Teasing fine meaning from the big barrage,

Some sense from the strange, weird from au fait,

Your orator known through slow resolutions.

Chicago

Imagined in mind’s intense now or never

A birdsong thought become see saw ship thought,

Cries that are caught, old language come to naught,

Handclap thoughts law binds up, ocean severs:

That is mute saxophone startled to life

Again, timber instruments working waves,

Voices contained anger English of slaves,

Percussion raining down calm on strife.

I never want it to end this sound retelling

Of lost lives, forgotten names, water’s edge

Forced into presence, soon too to be ago

As the Art Ensemble of Chicago

Closes tried testimony up on stage,

Departs to ovations for silent dwelling.