Lamplight

I imagine a circle of poets standing

in a Paris park late Sunday afternoon

in Summer, accordion music wafts

across the garden as day fades 
into dusk,

and orange lamplight slowly floats towards

their unspoken words, each face illuminated

as if a veil through which they’ve been gazing

lifts for one simple breath and grateful

flags of full surrender, of friendship, shimmer 
over the green and solid ground.

Orange lamplight offers itself

Across the empty room

Where stillness surrenders

Its tired backpack of yearning,

Its daily dangers and vigilant stance,

And where unveiled Presence waits
To welcome every tattered flag

Of every refugee, no matter
How scattered, how bent,
How battered, how torn.

PARTNERS IN CRIME

                

He pilfered the tan angular rock shaped like a miniature Alamo

from the nearby mountain where it languished, a hard patriarch with arms that spread above the surprising lake where retired men steal away from their wives to float and fish for a few hours in small boats in this parched micro-climate a few miles from the Mexican border. Transports it to his suburban home in the aging Subaru Forester, plunks it outside in the dirt of the narrow back yard where it now shares morning’s gold glint of sunlight with the blue, red and seafoam seahorse painting, a true fish out of water fading from the same sun, five feet tall on a beige concrete wall, his signature work purloined straight out of a dream of a shared picnic table, cerulean skies, greenest grass and tiny flying ocean creatures whose male members have snatched the gestational function from their female partners, dream images looted from more than twenty years’ ago, when he awoke splashing in a fountain of laughter, the kind of hilarity and barefooted freedom only summertime children know, the dream and he thick as drunken blundering thieves, perhaps proving plunder does have its own rewards.

before the visitation

Emerging from Clouds

VISITOR

ANOTHER VISITOR

         The Visitation

              Sky fills

with three or four seahorses.

Everything blue, green and shimmering,

            everything.

Tiny fathers who mother
to life the unborn, float across

our field of vision, radiating pure joy.

They are a July rainfall,

surprising us completely

here on top of a picnic table,

our two mothers taken by cancer years’ ago.

I roll over, come home into morning’s

body, happy the only word I know

or can say.

                    When She Trudges

into your church, your bar, your school or favorite café

pushing a metal cart with junk exploding, greasy hair

and ancient odor, a stink that shocks your upturned nose,

will you gaze into her crusted eyes, see yourself

reflected there and think, I too am hungry,

confused, alone?

Or will you thank your stars and paltry god above

for healthy kids with new haircuts, your job, your

car, 401-k and heated well-stocked home,

as you falsely buy what you’ve sold yourself—

that I'm not her, then numbly turn away?

    Tonight
     
orange lamplight
floats through
the quiet room
in utter stillness

like a quenching glass
of darjeeling tea
on the corner table

simply waiting 
to become 
an offering--

an offering embedded
in presence shining

for all thirsty wanderers
to lighten their travails.

these pilgrims who've yearned
through years of toil and 

risky travel for one 
embodied drenching.

and now stand, tired 
backpacks on the ground,

at the cusp of a moist,
shimmering contentment
under a rising sun.

  Minneapolis Visitation

Living with the front door open,

this room of clattering forks 

and spoons overflows 
    
        suddenly

into pure sky, great surprising 
silence.

An old couple sits alone

in the cafe dawdling over 
eggs and toast. Worried 

faces dissolve at once into spacious 

blue forever, a completely new arising.

Facades of fear transform, become

the biggest Love I have ever seen,

a mirror of all horizons
rings in joy,

sings strong and shimmers.

Welcomed to reflect in classroom, 
cafe, car or office, tucked between 
earth and heaven we're right here, 
              astonished,

then gently beckoned clear through 
                beyond 
    these unknown open doors.

 

        bedtime

Yes, the bed was soft,

like silk, last night.

Sheets so cool they could

have been water. The pillow safely

under my head, a reminder of all

that’s good in the world.

Tucked in cozy and warm

under a nest of covers,

these welcoming layers

blanketed my mind from steep

drenching rainstorms of thought.

The body thankful as it leaned

into rest, the promise
of sleep’s quenching

replenishment

soothed like a friend curving

quietly beside.

As the day’s scattered,

tattered shouts diminished, I fell

slowly down, easing
completely

into dreamtime’s green earth

of the sweetest unclenching.

(2008--revised July 13, 2017)

Real Faith

Real faith
     is
knowing

in our
deep
bones

through
   empty
       space

we are forever

       free
falling....

Our hearts,

  
  (hidden)

    
  quiver

like a drop

of precious
mercury

as we

     descend,

bidden and unbidden

time and again,

into the supple

arms of this

 spacious

befriended

moment.

Peter J Lautz

April 30, 2017

Prayer Poem

May you rest easy in 

afternoon's hammock

 

woven from the care

and kindness

of friends

 

and always awaken

replenished,

 

a cool breeze 

kissing and 

caressing

your skin.

 

May the generous

hummingbird fly

 

from flower to flower

in your green garden,

 

each sweet second

another surprise

 

for bright eyes

ready

to hear,

alert ears

primed

to see

this singing

this great light

shimmering silver

all through

and out of

the drifting

darkness.