The Farmer’s Speech

He ran the cosmos

of a thousand acres

from a pick up truck,

mucking through mire

thicker than hell,

subduing snakes with our shovels.

106 degrees

smell of Kool menthol smoke

lacing the slow drenching rain of sweat

and that farm truck,

now a million miles away,

only oasis in sight

with its freon mirage

and overheating motor

beckoned me,

come sit in my cab.

Drink the water

of my false refuge.

That’s when the speech would come,

as though from the mouth of Adam himself,

that very first farmer to know the toil of dust

“Son, you can’t pick your jobs.

This has to be done.”

Speaking sternly into the cacophony of my complaints,

“John David, I don’t mind hard work.

I never have.” and those words

wore me like a cross

“Dammit! My soul would say.

Like a curse that is the cure

running like chemo in my veins.

That speech heals me

And The balmy fellowship

Of the farmer’s suffering

What I wouldn’t give to hear it again.

John David Walt

Ash Wednesday 2012

MORE OF MY POEMS HERE.

I posted my Christmas 2011 poem here. Check it out.

RUNWAY

Made like him, like him we rise,
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies. Charles Wesley

Those moments
after absurd announcements
about seat cushions
doubling as flotation devices,
inching across the tarmac
waiting for flight,

give way to a
condition of spirit
suspended between rest and sleep
Sitting buckled
into a facade of security
escaping into the velocity of Peace.

And knowing
for a moment fleeting,
he made me to ascend;
not to fly
but be lifted.
This must be what it was like.

John David Walt

To increase our love for God we must deepen our love for Jesus.
To deepen our love for Jesus we must increase our love for words.
To increase our love for words we must deepen our love for poetry.
To deepen our love for poetry we must increase our love for symbol.
To increase our love for symbol we must deepen our love for the invisible.
To deepen our love for the invisible we must increase our love for the Spirit.
To increase our love for the Spirit we must deepen our love for God.

(more…)

I recently happened on a few lines in a Mary Oliver poem that stopped me in my tracks. The verse both gladdened and challenged me. They distilled the complexity of daily life into the simplicity of basic instructions. Somehow I believe if I can live by these words everything will work out fine; despite the inevitability of them not always working out in the way I think best.

So what are these words? She places them at the center of a poem called, “Sometimes,” in their own little section. They don’t seem to have a lot to do with the rest of the poem. The three lines come after an initial phrase that captions them. The caption over these 7 little words reads, “Instructions for living.”

7 words……. Simplifying…….Clarifying……….Distilling………..Purposing……………Empowering……………Captivating………….Orienting

And No, those aren’t the 7 words.

So these 7 words…… Can they possibly live up to the preceding prelude of unparalleled expectation? Probably not, but it’s a definite maybe.

Here they are:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

These are the words of Easter.

Your reactions appreciated.

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.

intermingled life and death
fusion of your blood and breath
the human God of Love Divine
heals lineage of our broken line

intermingled joy and pain
behold the son of goodness slain
sealed by stone in earthen mound
while resurrection rends the ground

My Son! My Joy rise up to reign!
The end of death makes suffering’s stain
a work of art in wounded clay
revealing script of passions play

O suffering God grant me a share
to humbly speak the Garden’s prayer
to bid Your life in me be born
my striving temple’s veil be torn

my body now entombed by flood
intermingled water and blood
resuscitated by your death
intermingled with the Risen breath.

John David Walt, Jr.

WHAT IS THE GIFT OF PROPHECY?

Prophecy
like a womb that
hovers over every spoken person
pregnant with words
waiting
not to be spoken into existence
but revealed
released
spoken from the Future
unleashed into Arabic or English
catalyzing the instant
where uranium goes nuclear

or maybe prophecy is like
the cloud and fiery pillar of presence
longing for some person to hear
the silent language of “in heaven,”
searching for one who would declare “on earth”
the shape of its wilderness path.
one who can feel the texture of mystery

Prophecy will employ an angel
but wants to trust a human
whom shall I send– who will go for me
not received like a transistor radio with antannae
can’t be delivered via 62” flat panel Samsung
no phone smart enough to catch it

Prophecy posts a job description
with one non-negotiable requirement
love
particular love
not a feeling
but love with legs that run, arms that reach
unrelenting pursuers
who for the joy set before them
yield only to
nails, wells, and tombs.

jd walt

Visiting the Graveyard

When I think of death
it is a bright enough city,
and every year more faces there
are familiar

but not a single one
notices me,
though I long for it,
and when they talk together,

which they do
very quietly,
it’s in an unknowable language–
I can catch the tone

but understand not a single word–
and when I open my eyes
there’s the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
There are the stones.

Mary Oliver from her collection entitled, “Red Bird”

always remember– creative people read one poem a day. . . . or at least one a week.

Adventures in New Testament Greek: Metanoia

Repentance, to be sure,
but of a species far
less likely to oblige
sheepish repetition.

Repentance, you’ll observe,
glibly bears the bent
of thought revisited,
and mind’s familiar stamp

–a quaint, half-hearted
doubleness that couples
all compunction with a pledge
of recurrent screw-up.

The heart’s metanoia,
on the other hand, turns
without regret, turns not
so much away, as toward,

as if the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so bad
as it is a waste of time.

–Scott Cairns

ENTERING THE KINGDOM

As the boys bones lengthened,
and his head and heart enlarged,
his mother one day failed

to see herself in him.
He was a man then, radiating
the innate loneliness of men.

His expression was ever after
beyond her. When near sleep
his features eased towards childhood,

it was brief.
She could only squeeze
his broad shoulder. What could

she teach him
of loss, who now inflicted it
by entering the kingdom

of his own will?

MARY KARR