Red Flag

Learning How to Listen

Waiting for the weeds to wizen
Yearning for the year of yield
When the willing wheat-class wakens
I mark memories and means

Beware the leaven, I advanced
And they beheld their lack of bread
I go to awaken my friend, I announced
And they posted looks on puzzled faces

Trading trinkets while teaching
Airing my affability
Laying luster for last-days reading
I assigned them a knot my Father guards

So I spoke, “Let the one having no sword
Sell his outer garment and buy one.”
At night? That very night?
What meant my soul by “sword”?
An irony my Father weighs until
He grants a found-one light and sight.
Can my Father keep a secret?
Know you the day and hour?
Can my Father choose a courier?
How sweet the blossom of a flower.

And now a time has come
As my Father uncovers the gem
Through an open ear found attending in an undertone
Pudgy in the books while hearing what he can
Granted a meaningful share as always
In both puissance and frailty as he serves.

He reads through the book of Job
In translation I have guided through the ones
First awakened in the time of the yield
With link lurking in the back of his mind
To the gospel given through Luke
And he reads, “a sword means . . .”
And he ponders as the least of all.

So people of the final days
I cast a message through the trail of time
Search you out my cry
Read you passages simply two
Humor you the commentator
I, yes I, cried silent through my bloody sweat

“Who sires my death?
Must it be the very ones I love?
O my Father, has their sin blasted your heart?
What ask they of me?
That I be reckoned with the lawless?
I rage!”
O beloved salvage
O precious gift I treasure
Join me in my rage, you urchin spawn!
Shirk not what you sired until the gleaming dawn.


_______