I’ve been on a poetry streak of late. I hope you enjoy this latest installment.

Unless a grain of wheat

Dry, fallen and fielded in freshness

of morning, asleep am I and…waiting;

stillness hopes for hoping still.

falls into the earth

Pungent and porous I become

as rain pools upon my sodden back bent.

And, soaked in effluent earth,

the rays of sun force cracks to appear in my skin

and dies,

and the weight of all goodness breaks

my back and bones, splintered

here and there, forsaking their unity

for roots and reach after raw and down and damp.

Silence overtakes silence overtaking me and I gasp out

a final breath, and dark removes

all light and nothingness replaces that which was.

it remains a single grain;

Is this the end? Has shadow, then, become

the defining characteristic of all things?

Am I forsaken, to be forgot and left rotting

in felch and fetid stench of this horrid, hollow hell?

but if it dies,

Heat, the warm and simple liquid light,

intrudes upon nihilo, introducing breath and branch

and with re-membered memory kills the dead,

and life cries out to see the new day.

I am not what was but am again.

it bears much fruit.

But wait, partners here in soft and strange

are bidding, too, this light-ward grasp.

Where once I was, now we are more;

where more was no more than less of one.

I’m currently working on a follow-up book to A Train Called Forgiveness.  The second book is built on the premise that former cult leader Peter Smith faked his death and is still alive.  This excerpt is from the initial draft of the first chapter of the book.

* * *

It was early summer, 2001.  I had just accepted a job in Southeast Kansas.  My wife, Xena, and I were visiting family near Seattle before making the cross-country move.  She’s always been curious about my childhood cult experience, so I drove her to Bonneveldt.  I took her to the old property that used to be Paradise Farms.  I took her downtown and showed her some of the stores that were owned and operated by Peter Smith’s followers.  Most had changed names.  Smith Publishing on Third, and The Silver Frame, a small art gallery on Main Street, had not.

I wondered if Peter Smith’s people still ran The Silver Frame?  ”I doubt they still run this place,” I said.  ”Let’s check it out.”  We slowly stepped inside.  A string of bells hung loosely inside the door.  They jangled as the door swung open and then closed behind us with a small thud.  The shop was filled with beautiful artwork, original paintings from well-known Northwest and Southwest artists.  There was a wide collection of custom-made frames in many sizes and colors.  The shop was colorful, yet the lighting wasn’t right.  ”A gallery should be well lit,” I said.  The Silver Frame was dim, teetering on the edge of darkness.  The darkness was more than a lack of light.  It was an aura, a deep feeling.  It seemed as if someone had lowered a black veil over my mind.  Darkness seeped through the air like a thick, black liquid from every painting, every crack, every corner, exposing the beauty of The Silver Frame for what it really was.  The Silver Frame was a facade.  It was the skin of something much deeper, something unsettling.  In all its colorful grandeur and external beauty, something was amiss.

* * *

You can learn more about At the Crossing of Justice and Mercy and A Train Called Forgiveness at http://www.danerickson.net.