Campfire Stories
campfires crackle as wood
burns bright inside circles
built from stones while sticks
smolder as kindling.
sticks and stones, we are, like campfire
songs that rise like smokey prayers
belted from smokey lungs and plucked
guitar strings broken and bleeding from overuse.
painted ceilings, incense,
soprano voices all rise
reaching for some heaven
i wonder if i’ll ever achieve.
so, my rosary beads, now bloody, from decades
prayed trying to fit better on the kneeler,
hiding my abuse in a boat bunker, and i plead
God doesn’t choose my deck for fishing.
inevitably, hands call me out to the water,
footfall after footfall - i walk … i walk
but soon drown like a loony toon
cartoon when the voices ring inside my skull.
voices - sometimes mine, but, at others,
scratchy records of what i’ve heard said -
repeat and repeating inside my head, but …
where do i go if not to the Lord?
“rock, Peter, my falcon, and traveling bard -
prophetess - just as the rivers and oceans
rest in the calming eye of the storm
quell your anxious rolling in Me.”
breathe in the smoke from the sticks,
stones, and logs. feel the sticky air
wind its way into new lungs, and taste
new wine as it graces your tongue.
“be still, my falcon; I AM your sky.
rest my river; I AM the eye of your storm.
write your words here; I AM your author.
be here; I AM your God.”