Author: robertalanrife

I have spent the better part of my life as a professional musician. Primarily, that has meant the fun and challenging world of church music. Most recently, I have transitioned out of my role as worship and music director for Yakima Covenant Church, Yakima, Washington to global service in Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm a singer-songwriter, liturgist, poet, and writer. I love words. I love to read them. I love to write them. Most of all, I love the many intersections, like a sacramental tapestry, of life, liturgy, literature, the arts, and spiritual formation...oh, and I love haggis.

Porch Poems IV

On By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

shooting star

 

We undo our top buttons

We undo our top buttons

on pants not meant for this;

dinner was too good

not to undo

the buttons

of our

pants.

 

A shooting star this dark night

A shooting star this dark night

has taken up her place

among the sky gods.

She jealously

separates

night from

day.

 

Night love

Your breasts, so full in this light

beckon me toward you.

The porch light’s burn low;

but our passions

cauterize

the damp

dark.

 

Afterward

This morning you look at me

and the night before laughs

at our warm, tired limbs;

our happy souls

and bodies

soft from

love.

 

Goodnight to this night

We bid goodnight to this night

and all she had to share.

The porch chairs, still warm,

hold stories told

tonight, for

you and

me.

Porch Poems III

On By robertalanrifeIn Words...always wordsLeave a comment

Ducks in the cattails

Sometimes I think I get stuck

like ducks in the cattails,

grinding out their path;

their bodies, tired,

their wings, trapped,

their sight,

gone.

 

Cleaning out the shed

There are days when tasks are hard,

like cleaning out the shed.

I always find more

stuff I don’t want;

lost things that

speak of

me.

 

Crazy Uncle Roy

Medicine Hat, Alberta:

there, crazy uncle Roy

reached under the porch,

pulled out a snake,

grabbed its head

and kissed

it.

 

Snakeskin Boots

I grew up in Calgary,

where cowboy hats are cool.

I was cooler still

with snakeskin boots

my uncle

made for

me.

 

Staring at Sunsets

Shared, the wafting summer light

azure-orange, brightness

unfailing, obtuse,

with promises

of happy-

ending

days.

Porch Poems II

On By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

 Cigarettes and ice cream

Some things don’t fit together –

cigarettes and ice cream,

sex and TV Guide,

you and goodbye,

fear and love…

unloved

child.

* * *

Football scores and cowboy boots

Football scores and cowboy boots

are how he learned to dream.

Touchdowns meant for us,

 and boots that fit,

are all he

needs to

smile.

* * *

Windchimes

Such a clanging song you sing,

invading our quiet,

pensive solitude.

You remind us

it’s alright

to sing,

too.

* * *

Post pork ‘n beans

Filling up the stale, night air

and stealthy as a hawk,

come unwelcome sounds

fraught with danger,

poison stench;

our peace?

Gone.

* * *

Starlight fantasies

Posthumous luminaries

pursue the evening sky,

Starlight fantasies

spill out their seed

and lighten

every

pain.

Porch poems I

On By robertalanrifeIn Waxing Poetic2 Comments

the porch

Front Porch

I think I have a mem’ry

of something wide and strange,

with depth of field and

softness, wielding

timely smiles

and old

songs.

 * * *

Sunset Surprises

We’ve been here now for two hours

relinquishing our dust.

It falls like evening’s

slowing moments

fit for love,

this done

day.

* * *

Banjo time

We came to sing and play tunes;

fingers itch to play and

puncture the fatigue

with notes that spray

our faces

with cool

joy.

 * * *

Too many stars

Too many stars are breathing;

unscented, sky candles

point the way to night

and solitude

and whisper,

“please don’t

go.”

 * * *

Counting costs

Little do we understand.

Here, we wait, embracing

what little we see.

How grandiose

these virgin

dreams, how

chaste.

Picture from www.knowingthedifference.com

A Prayer After Epiphany

On By robertalanrifeIn Prayers & Liturgy9 Comments

Lord of the blind and those who will not see,

replace our black with grey;

our grey with white;

our white with light;

and all that is not what it seems will become what it must be.

 

Lord of the destitute and drawn-out,

lance these boils of sin-soaked pain

in the brine of salted, holy blood;

revive what we never knew was dead;

that the winds might catch your scent – the fragrance of grace.

 

Lord of the convinced and righteous,

remove from us our certainties;

our ambivalence toward ambiguities;

our reticence to swim in the waters of paradox;

that the world gets to see your way in us, not our way with you.

 

Lord of the fractured and forgotten,

seek out the silenced voices encased in amber

where no one hears their desperate choking;

no eye sees inside their deceiving exteriors;

find them and with white hot love, melt their prisons.

 

Lord of the shiny and gleaming,

scratch our taut and brittle surfaces;

add the character of time to our faux beauty;

send us the numbing ache of obscurity;

so that your gentle glow outshines our brash gleam.

 

Lord of all that lives,

plow the musky mutations from our once-breathing gardens;

unbalance our stiletto lives that teeter precariously;

releasing us from our cramped smallness;

that our spirits may once again yawn and stretch into life.

Remembering

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic18 Comments

To those who have graced my life with their presence and friendship. You know who you are. My rose-colored sentiment reaches out to touch your faces.

He sits in his den, writing to unseen friends

with fingers deftly reaching out through keyboard strokes

to other faces elsewhere – washing dishes,

rubbing the dog’s belly, changing diapers, making love –

he knows not what.

* * *

Will the clicking sound of these tiny letters

sufficiently churn his insides out? Reconfigure

his heart, itchy and bothered, his

stories, stale and old, too long in storage?

His ideas grown too certain for the pitch and yaw of good friendships?

* * *

Candles burn more quickly in good company,

their scent, unnoticed; their light, unheeded.

But their gentle presence is the necessary accoutrement of delight,

the required prelude to fellowship and laughter

in dimly lit rooms made lighter by other eyes.

* * *

In the intimations of the evening he gives a sigh

and with one last look at a screen, long dark,

he remembers. He steals from the back shelves

a glimpse or two of those he cannot see, rendered pink

in the red and white of dreams.

Winter’s feeding

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic4 Comments

birds of winter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She picks at this and that, her beak sharp, her aim impeccable.

Her friends gather around her, cheering her on, or competing

for last year’s garden’s last release of freshness, slow dying.

 

She forages, undeterred by her bickering counterparts,

intent on stealing what little there is to glean.

Deep and hungry throats extend upward, awaiting

 

what choice morsels, newly culled from the stingy earth

are forthcoming; gathered gifts from a mother’s maw.

From small bits of winter’s old have sprung spring’s new.

 

Here it is we find ourselves,

deciding what goes and what stays

in our frantic efforts to stay the course of time’s uneasy, forward lurch.

 

How easy to stumble over the tiny nests

found hidden under forgotten branches of earlier efforts.

There, life and hubris kiss to produce our next steps.

 

This new precipice, the hungry days of leaning

into a grey wind with unseen destination,

cannot deter this year’s meal from last year’s waste.

 

Photo from www.bbc.co.uk

 

Opportunity

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

liberonetwork.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

The day has nudged me with her prêt-à-porter greetings,

dried flower wish lists fit for nothing more

than the plastic, manikin smiles of little men.

Still, a molded smile sits nicer on the face

than dishonest eye-shadow hiding eyes

looking for their own freedom.

When time has pressed her hand in yours,

take the hint of friendship.

Her loyalty is straight and plumb-line true

but has a short shelf-life.

Speak, or the moment is already gone.

Photo at www.liberatonetwork.com