The mountain swallowed the sun tonight
Tugged it down from the sooty sky
Into the smoky red of horizon’s shade
And west into the shadows of Burma
And for a moment there was a fire in the town
Titian on the water, low and light
Between the sandy banks of the Yuam River
Rain-thirsty in the smoggy gloaming
Then the sun slipped into the mountain’s pocket
And all was gray again, until the kindly dusk
Purpled the world and wrapped my town in its arms
And with an indigo lullaby, rocked her to sleep
It is 10:48 and the cat perches on the dresser and talks to me
Great and golden in the glooming of Saturday night, he prowls,
Eyes wild and yellow, he stalks in feral glory from the desk to the shelves, a jungle king
And then climbs the white chair and balances on books stacked precariously,
Asking me in a plaintive voice, too plaintive for a king, “Why?”
I do not know the question, cat. It is time to sleep.
Please, go to bed.
Yellow cat is a pool of gold spilled on the blanket
In the shadowed light of morning that fights the stony dark
Black coffee is a bitter liquor brewed in the dark
In the gray minutes of the dawning hours
Words are pale honey and scalding ebony, coursing hot
Down to my soul, settling deep and warm
Let peace slip down into my soul
Down between the fragments of yesterday’s hours,
And into the fragile bubble that is today.
Taste the silence—
Let peace slip down, let peace slip down into my soul.
There are some things about heaven I don’t understand
But some things I know to be true
That I will meet God when I get there
And that I will run races with you;
Maybe we’ll run to the green, green meadows
Tasting the fresh, clean air
Or walk by the river and talk of old times
And catch the bright butterflies there.
I know they say that you’ve gone far away
But I think it’s just through that door
That door where the shadows have been chased out of sight
Right beside the long river’s shore.
And it won’t be long till I see you again
Just a sunset and sunrise away
So, wait for me there on the edge of the water
Where the dawn of heaven breaks into day.
My Aunt Miriam passed away a few days ago from a 4 year long battle with cancer. Miriam had lived with my grandpa in the house next door for the past 10 years or so. Miriam contracted polio at a young age, so she always wore a brace for walking, and in later years, a walker as well. When I would go home for visits from Thailand, one thing I really enjoyed doing was going with her to her doctor and chemo visits. I look forward to running races with her in heaven.
November wasn’t the kindest month of this year, with deaths, busyness, stress, and lots of cancelled plans. At the end, it threw the Covid bug at me, but I am grateful that I got Covid since it enabled me to spend hours finishing up my latest project. (Even though a large portion of the edits were done lying on my back.)
But now I am ecstatic to announce that my latest book, Dustbeams, is available on Kindle! Victory dance around the room while no one is looking!!! (No one should be looking because I am still in isolation).
The print version should be available on Amazon before too long, although I can’t give an exact date. I will send out another update when that is available. That will be available only on Amazon, but for those in the Hutchinson, Kansas area, there will be physical copies available in a few weeks from Blurb as well.
But for now, Kindle is available!! And because I love my Kindle and because this is my first book on Kindle, this makes me really excited (in case you haven’t noticed the surplus of exclamation points I am using. Normally I ration my exclamation points out quite conservatively).
!!!!
Dustbeams is similar to my last book, Through a Glass Darkly. It contains a mix of poetry and prose written over the past four years or so, with stories drawn from my experience in Thailand, especially in Saohin. One difference between the two books is the section dedicated to Kansas and home, called “Roots,” at the beginning of the book. The Kindle version contains 93 pages.
The edition is available here for $5.99. Below are some pictures of the book in Kindle version. Stay tuned to hear of the print release!
One of the main reasons I put Dustbeams together was as a fundraiser to help pay for my online course for teacher’s training that is coming up in January with Moreland University. After studying the course for nine months, I should, Lord Willing, be able to take the test to get my US teaching license, and then use that to finally get my Thai teaching license. So if you enjoy the book, be sure to leave a review and let friends know!
Feel free to share on social media!
Blessings and Merry Christmas!
Bright as the day through darkest night
From valleys low to mountains high
You go before me, you go behind me
Untroubled under a troubled sky
Through clouds that unleash stinging rain
On roads under sunfire in aching blue
Where fog shrouds the road in wraithing white
Yet still, still, I am with you.
Only a sojourner in a transient world
Weary on a road ever so long
Only a speck on a river passing,
Only an echo, a fragment of song
Yet your heart yearns for me from the brooding sky
As I crest the mountain in rain-washed hue
All through the winding journey home
Still, oh still, I am with you.
I am not sure how often and how long I have tried to write this poem, but each time, my words failed me. (This is the Purple Poem I wrote about in an earlier blog post). How to explain that feeling of God hand cupping over me as I do the monthly trip from Mae Sariang to Chiang Mai and back on my bike? How to weave into a poem the different emotions of the ride, the different scenes and backdrops? Finally, this morning I was able to somewhat put a tongue to it. Besides the obvious inspiration of those drives, Psalms 139 and James 4:5 were also inspirations for the poem.
I am also currently working on a new book of poetry and essays. I think it’s far enough along that I can say it’s going to happen, but it’s impossible to give any release date right now. I do, however, want to get it finished before I start my online course for my teacher’s license in January, which will take up all my spare time.
Stay tuned! 🙂
Oh, give me the gray autumn winds of Kansas
That steal across the burnt sienna of tallgrass,
Down over rolling plains, close by the Ninnescah,
In November, in November, in gray November’s day.
I wonder if they would know me, those November winds
That ghost from river to prairie to grove,
Where dying Texas sunflowers await the dawning winter,
And Osage orange trees pencil black against the sky.
Oh, give me gray winds haunting shorn fields
And over the umber colors of the riverland grass,
When the sky cups over the brooding prairie world
On a day in November where the south wind dwells.
Now I lay me down to sleep…
Sparrows in their nests lie down
Their heads beneath their wings
The night around them deepens, crouches
Oh Lord, the evil darkness brings!
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep….
Lord, we have seen your sparrows falling
They have fallen from their nest
Limp and torn, with tattered wings
No heartbeat flutters in their breast
If I should die before I wake…
This shadow of death groans dark with fear
These tiny ones are walking through
God of the Valley, Father of Sparrows,
Bring these little ones home to You
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take…
Gather these fledglings close to your heart
Gather them to You, drive fear away
Give them a wide, green, sweet meadow
And new wings to fly in a brighter day
Lord, we have seen your sparrows falling,
And we cannot bear the pain.
Our hearts are numbed by the news of the shootings yesterday in Nong Bua Lomphuu province. A man walked into a nursery and using guns and a knife, killed over 20 children as they lay sleeping during their afternoon nap time. Having once worked at a daycare in Chiang Mai, I can easily visualize everything, and tears have pushed my eyelids all day. Our hearts are heavy with grief at this senseless murder of children, not to mention all the adults that were killed as well.
Lord, have mercy.
I don’t know what happened to it
That poem I was going to write
Instead of trickling through my pen
It slipped into my soul, out of sight
I tried to coax it out with words
Like bribing a puppy with a treat
Yet it was not a puppy, but an elusive elf
It danced away shyly on soundless feet.
And now I live each sacred day
With a purple poem tucked in my soul;
Glimmering, changing, throbbing, alive
Aching, calling, bleeding and full.
The moon tipped over in the clouds tonight
Tipped over in the sky, in the cloud-tossed sky
It spilled down to earth, through the deep-scented dark
In the black-broken hours of the rain-drenched day.
It spilled light on the road-ribbon and light in the field
It spilled light on the tassles of the brown-headed corn
It spilled light on the river as it wound through the valley,
And I caught some, I caught some, moonlight as it spilled.
But even as I caught it, it slipped through my fingers
And glimmered to the ground, light-liquid, pulsing
For only a heartbeat; then it slipped through the ground-cracks,
Slipped down from the sky to the heart of the world.
My hands glimmered strangely all evening long
But my heart ached an ache that could not be told
The ache of a lost love, the ache of a lost dream
The ache of a lost soul gliding through the sky
Words of Light: Grace & Truth for Your Journey Home
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