About

Eight children they crossbred, his lord highland thistle and the wild Irish rose, now both dead:

Primus.  Famine driven, two-sided Celtic queen, teller of the oldest legends remembered to crossbar the fee.

Secundus.  For love’s thorn and her lover’s name, this Gaedheal graced daughter fled rearing storm to embrace love’s flame.

Tertius.   In a waterless place by winter lust thought lost at war, he came at September’s cost to settle scores.

Quartus.   He said, “She bore eight children like eight bedsores,” but oh how his frost-bitten soul yearned for more.

Quintus.   She spun and toiled through docket-dried days with needled faith and threaded rage.

Sextus.   A distant star shone brightly wry, she labored to drain darkness from the evening sky.

Septimus.  Her strength resists all that’s shallow so by God’s stay of grace she insists, all escape the gallows.

Octavus.   She turned trouble thrown into beauty born, never left to be forgotten or hidden, helpless or forlorn.  

Mold infested, kitchen thickened, passive pestilence under said, countered workshop bursts of terror searches intermittent spread.   Doubled portioned broths of froth doubled fired, double fed, shocked this flock of Irish-Scots grave-name marked to embark, sired to defy what they learned to deny with childish dread.  

With none privy to the whole display each learned to discretely sway, repeatedly betrayed by the perennial rhythms of perse-lipped penance, the last color for life’s resistance to decay, absent any arched embrace to hold them up or end the fray.  

Thunder-storm matted, second-guessed shattered, panic-pressed scattered, clandestine blessed if not molested or battered, they stepped out from the Valley of the Winds as if to amend what they had been given. From different angles of attack they turned their backs on the black-winged angels hovering over Whittier Road with their shudders nailed open, decrepit colonial windows left uncovered, whose dark attic eyes never close no matter how weathered.   

Hope decayed, shrouded in the dresser drawer, the bleached and starched, left to rot, sheeny-white linen cloth remained stored, folded like a flag for a fallen veteran entombed to match the mausoleum decor.  The last rites candles hidden with it were never lit for the unpaid slave and her singing hypocrite.  Their peace upon us comes when we entrust them to the One who sets them free, when we face together one by one, the One they so strangely struggled against yet sought so hard to see. 

I live to hear said among us with parents dead, what they dared not whisper to one another even in their marriage bed.   Whoever forgives lives not in danger from latent, unchaste fear; and distilled anger need not conjure fermented courage to fight for things held dear.  God help me (and He does), i loved them as i loved the seven once and now love the six.  They taught us to read like scholars and think like poets, to appear unbothered and leave unnoticed.   .~ pass through daily battles in the war already won, hoping only to make it through what’s already done.   Nevertheless, no matter what I begin or however it ends, as one of the eight, i always arrive a little late and a little unnerved, dying to be thankful for all .~’ve received and will never deserve:  baptism into the Body of Christ, my wife, my sons, close friends, my family of birth and the many good things of this bountiful earth. 

Who am I? 

A wretched sinner worthy of eternal torment in the burning flames of hell. 

Who am i? 

i am lightweight, easily worked, going backward susceptible to corrosion, nevertheless found in abundance in combination with the other weak, low and despised elements in the world, even things that are not that God chose to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 

Who am .~? 

.~ am a worshiper of the Great Destroyer of the wisdom of the wise, living to behold Him who thwarts the discernment of the discerning. 

In the name of the Father,

in being

I am sinner;

and the Son, 

in this world

i am stupidus;

and the Holy Spirit, 

in New Creation

.~ am saint.