Kissed Faith good-bye,
Stepped into the night,
Met a man on his way
To the Forest.

Faith behind him,
Uncertainty before,
Wavering on his way,
Brown faltered on.

Such a cloud of witnesses
As to keep him from this path!
But then they met him,
One by one,
Catechist and Minister,
Deacon and Elder,
Murmuring and gibbering;
Wise fools wending their way
To meet him
In a clearing, deep.

Pink ribbons falling,
Snake-head pointing
Feet now stumbling,
Then running before
In a wind of curses.

Firelight red,
Congregants cowled, silent,
Save the voice of Faith,
The near-initiate.

"Faith, Faith!
Look to Heaven!"
Resist the wicked one."

Woods silent;
Devil, fiends, fire ... gone.
Only Goodman Brown
To stagger home.

Ironic morning sight:
Smiling faces of Salem town,
'Gainst downward gazing
Goodman Brown.

While the world
And I
Mourn Kobe's passing,
On nearly the same day
Jihadists invaded villages...
West Africa,
Burkina Faso,
Alamou.

Villagers ordered out
Into the open areas
Gunned down,
Slashed,
Murdered.

An attendance question opens,
"What happened in the world?'

Kobe Bryant is gone.
Private helicopter crashed.
The world is on its head.

We hang our heads
In mourning.

Jacque's turn:
"My village was
Attacked Saturday.
Forty people killed.
My wife and children...
There.
The people are fleeing
To the capitol,
Ouagadouga."

[Awkward, this revelation.
How will I ever justify
A week of Edgar Allan Poe?]

We bow to pray.

Cataclysm of cataclysms,
The End of ends,
The death of Death,
To hell with Hell.

The Devil and his minions,
The Dead outside the Fold,
Subsumed in Fire,
Truth consuming liars.

Outside the flames,
The Great Relief,
Absence of Pain,
Forgotten Grief.

Cosmos free of all that's fey,
Night consumed by glorious day.

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....