My wife and daughter dream silently upstairs
while I read stories about other worlds
on the couch.
The silence of Job plays backward
in my brain, echoing in the kind of misery
only those dieing of starvation know.
I can feel the Holy Spirit, a tow truck
dragging my broken down Chevy of a soul
back out of the Denny’s parking lot
and onto the crippling life-giving highway.
With no room left for worthless calories,
I can but pack my diet full of meaning meat:
sacrificial anonymous giving,
powerlessly vulnerable honesty,
loving people what they are, knowing they were made for more
If this were a movie, this moment
would happen at sunset.
If this were ancient Israel, I would
build an altar.
I walk out under the stars, slinging out poetry at
the Present One, Who never once sat on the couch
except to tell about the stories He’d lived.
