Across the track, a rail yard worker
big innocent bear of a guy, beer
belly, embraces his girl. She’s
a conductor, comes up to that belly,
reaches arms not quite around
his back. They separate and embrace
three times while the train prepares
for departure.
                           Across the aisle,
a mother and son. Lights out, change engines,
they play Mercy. Squeeze fingers until one
cries mercy. The son still too small
to seriously challenge his young, athletic
mother. Ask and answer questions, laugh
and cry mercy, she draws and he colors
the features.
                         Unless a society
expects its fate to be better than its past,
it will strive to make its present
immutable as possible.
Optimism is a way of exploring failure.
It says there is no law of nature
or supernatural decree preventing progress.
Nearly all failures, and all successes, are in
our future.

Eternally accepted in God’s Son,
His righteousness now credited to me,
I’m pardoned, justified, set fully free.
By grace through faith, hesed is ne’er undone.
No merit of myself on which to stand,
my works of flesh and law won’t favor earn.
But God Himself in Christ, I’d finally learn,
had satisfied each holy, just demand.
And by same grace through faith that justifies,
Christ’s working out His righteousness in those,
by covenant before the world, He knows,
e’er keeps, upholds, protects and sanctifies.
Because in Jesus Christ I am approved,
from trusting in His love I’ll not be moved.

In hollow valleys, off the distant peaks
Down in the dim woods, braiding canopies

In the quietude of slow-dancing leaves
Through the howling and raging of the winds

Across plateau of no growth or decline
along blind, chiseled cliff, a cul-de-sac

In the triumphant reach of high summit
Between the rocky canyons of defeat

Grace at every gaze despite long travails,
dazed in wonder, never cease to amaze

In the bone-parched deserts, devoid of life
Out of flowing streams, rivers without strife

At the depth where lights dwindle to nothing
On familiar shore radiant weathering

In jubilant rejoicing when love wins
Even through the painful cuts as it stings

At the plain of anxious waiting and doubt,  
In tiresome striving to glorious thriving

As it always has, Mercy will carry
Crushed, it wont let me be; though tears may tarry

As true as the Trinity
And Christ's divinity,
And as heavy as gravity,
My total depravity
Is undeniable.
But God created me justifiable,—
Me, who's more of a Don Knotts
Than an Isaac Watts.

it's such a wonder that
these hardness and roughness
make me softer and gentler

after i fathom the devil's story
the downstream is a sea of mercy
wisdom unravels the impurity

and someday when you laid down, wrinkled
i'll say no curse, but apology
and pacifying eulogy

for i hope you'll land on grass too, not fire
and we left with amnesia of the bad blood
only peace and party in our eternal world