The Holy Spirit took Him to the wind and sand,
Left Him alone in dry air
To meet the Devil.
Forty days He fasted,
Must have prayed,
Alone.

The Devil knew just where to find Him,
Rolled up in a whirlwind,
Did he?
Or slithered he up,
Wind in his face,
The Serpent, from behind?

The conversation followed,
Enough to raise my hair,
"I've been given total dominion
Of earth and sky down here.
The glory is all mine."

"Unlimited my power
Within the earthly plane,
And all of it you'll have,
If you but praise my name."

The Devil said his piece,
Then waited,
Plotting Jesus' pain
For invading his dominion
For bringing Glory down.
He proffered ease of life
And Earth's opinion,
The greatest things he owned
To tempt the Chosen One:
A monstrous devil's game...
Risk every earthly thing
For the Knee of the Almighty.

Jesus spoke:
"Satan, get behind.
Worship only God, your Lord,
Serve no one but Him."

So Satan took the two of them
To the top of the temple spire,
"Fall free from here,
Let angels catch;
Subsume human desire!"

Jesus answered quickly,
"You shall not tempt your Lord."

And so the Devil left Him,
The Tempter's power, blown.

And so began
The Savior's journey
Toward a humble Cross,
The Gate Post to our Home.

(A Psalm for Protection: God is apt to keep.)

My soul, rest comfortably in the Lord;
No harm shall come nor evil befall.

The watchman watches to protect;
The burden of security rests upon him.
Always alert, he does not sleep
Because he is the watchman,
And the goods are left to his charge.

God, the faithful keeper,
Mightily shielding those in his care.
He neither slumbers nor sleeps,
But his eyes faithfully watch everywhere.

For a year or possibly more,
Decompression begins:
Purging electricity, electronics.
Fall away, Internet, Oh!
No more cellular,
**** the television set,
Except, perhaps, a radio,
Lest I totally forget....

Hello, paper,
Hello, books,
Come off the shelves;
Lose those ***** looks,
Warm again before my eyes,
Feel the press of my writing stick.

Thoreau, the fakir,
Left the social order
Just a year,
Though just how far
He really went
Remains foggily unclear,
And the fact that he returned
Suggests that Nature
Left him feeling burned.

So, like a diver,
Rising from the deep,
I'd take a while to meditate,
To let the busyness-es go
And put electric dreams to sleep.

Hello Poetry!
I have decided to keep
My poems here.
Rather a few be read
Than keep the lot
Penned up waiting in a sales ring
With no buyers,
Starvation coming....

Children, fresh as bib lettuce,
Green and tender,
Stand before me in my rocking chair,
Pearled new teeth,
Wisping hair, golden, brown,
Embarking up a stair way
That I am going down.

"Papa, can we go out to play?"
I look out the window
To see the kind of day
Before I say,
"Would you like to take a walk?"

As she emerged from years of abuse,
Became aware of the ******* he'd placed,
She knew it was time to go,
Filed the papers,
Moved in with a friend,
Tried to see another end.

Love does not die easily;
Her heart yearned
Some better way,
But ends must come
When there's nothing left to say.

She left everything to him;
He'd forced his will in choosing every piece:
Furniture, fixings, knife and fork,
Appliances, decor, automobiles....
She wanted none of it anymore.

Love does find a way
To die, though the dying may be slow.

"It's good we didn't have any children,"
His mother said. "We didn't muddy up
Our pure Norwegian blood line."

Love finds a way to die.

We trudge the fetid jungle,
Thinking our green way
Must be an overgrown trail.

Dampness pervades our clothing,
Soddens our shoes,
Drips from leafy branches,
Fails to cool us in the tropic heat.

We ascend gingerly,
Hoping for cooler air,
Realizing the immensity of time,
Of memory moving on ahead.

Shrieking birds unseen
Foretell dooms imagined:
Snake and lizard fangs,
Feral creatures' claws and teeth,
Unseen traps waiting to inflict
Sudden deaths or slow.

Silence arrests us,
As we stumble to a cliff,
Gasping for air,
Longing for coolness,
Stopped in our breath as we see....

Climbing the ranges ahead of us,
Above, and arching up and down,
The great dragon's crenelated back
Undulating over the mountain ridges,
Disappearing into the past.