"Do you come in peace?"

~ a poem ~

Seven times the wonder &

the reckoning speak out into 

her story, its repetition like the gallop

of a warhorse heading into battle to find

idols afield (forever breathless), among emptied

clay pots to condemn the living. Horsemen cry, Zimri!


from every mount, every manned chariot. His sons 

have set the table, and who eats with anyone 

more than given family— lifting glasses,

lifting voices above the din— as dogs

devour fallen scraps? The laughter 

will not last for those who do 

and do not come in peace.

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NOTES

*2 Kings 9:17ff asks seven questions about peace. Yet the stories in it are extremely violent. But guess what? Naboth is avenged. Jezebel meets her end. The next chapter will chronicle the end of Ahab’s line — the wicked king we’re introduced to at the start of Elijah’s story in 1 Kings. There’s a full-circle feel to this point in 2 Kings, as far as the lives of Elijah and Elisha. Elisha’s death is recorded a couple chapters later, in 2 Kings 13:20 (just about the simplest telling one can imagine, until a corpse gets thrown into Elisha’s tomb and comes back to life!).

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*Next Wednesday, Eeeeek! is the final poem in this series. Thank you for reading along with me, for commenting, for sending me emails, for buying me coffees. Now that I’ve completed all 33 poems (a nod to Dante) for this poetry collection, with the working title,“Yahweh Loves a Desert,” I’ll continue to edit and refine, and to seek a publisher. Pray for me! I believe this series deserves life beyond this newsletter!

*The top photo was taken at a lovely church in Minnesota, Restoration Anglican. I had the joy of speaking at their women’s retreat this year, on — you’ll never guess — the topic of Questions. I loved this stained glass in their sanctuary. It’s a simple image, but so many stories from the Scriptures spring to mind — the fulfillment of them all is probably the Wedding at Cana, when Jesus turns the water into wine, but it also takes me back to when Elisha tells a particular widow to borrow empty jars from all her neighbors, and to “pour out” from her own small jar of olive oil, into these collected jars. She “kept pouring” and they were all filled! This whole Prophet series project has been a kind of pouring out for me, and while I do indeed feel somewhat emptied and lost as to what I will write next, I have received so much in this work, and so I’m also filled up.

— for heaven will have / its overflow. You have / only to receive.

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p.s. I changed my profile pics here, but it’s still me! I recently chopped off much of my hair, and the pics I had on here were from more like 2 years ago, so it was time. In the primary one, I’m wearing a dandelion crown my son made for me on a butterfly walk we took together a couple weeks ago, in The Dismal Swamp (yes, that’s its real name).