Dane Cervine Writes

Welcome

Dane Cervine is a poet and therapist who lives in Santa Cruz, California along the Monterey Bay coast. His website is designed to provide glimpses into his work, postings of recent publications, and links to related poetry activity. Contact Dane at DaneCervine@cruzio.com .

Adrienne Rich recently chose Dane's poem The Jeweled Net Of Indra as the winner of the 2005 National Writers Union (Local 7) contest, as well as his poem Holography for Honorable Mention. She comments that each has a fine sense both of language and the interconnectedness of human lives that for me is at the heart of poetry.

Tony Hoagland chose Dane's poem Accordions & Shotguns as a finalist for the 2005 Wabash Prize for Poetry. Commenting on Dane's poem, Tony says: The sheer volume of information in this poem is impressive--which is to say that all that story is fluently delivered to the reader--but it is really the passion and precision of the final stanza that earns my full attention.

Dane's work has appeared in The Hudson Review, The Sun, and the Atlanta Review, with over 100 of his poems published in a wide variety of small press journals and magazines.

The poet Jane Hirshfield comments that Dane's work in Moving The Dark God's Hand, especially his short poems, are clear-struck bells.

The poet Gary Young comments: Thanks for NEWS FROM A BURNING MAN. The prose poem form seems to agree with you. This is a very strong collection.

Dane's new book The Jeweled Net of Indra was released in 2007 by Plain View Press, and can be purchased at: Plain View Press link to Jeweled Net of Indra

Dane's book entitled What A Father Dreams: Poems of Family, Love, & Aging can be purchased through Amazon.com, from the publisher at Xlibris.com, or from the author at danecervine@cruzio.com.

In addition, Dane publishes a new chapbook every year, including these recent titles: The Last Days, News From A Burning Man, Moving The Dark God's Hand, Speaking In Tongues, and Blue In The Face.

Winner of the 2005 National Writers Union (Local 7) Contest chosen by ADRIENNE RICH

Dane's winning poem chosen by Adrienne Rich:

The Jeweled Net of Indra

Driving down the freeway, remembering Hindu mythology—

Indra’s net, each intersecting weave holding a jewel

reflecting every other facet of every other jewel, infinitely.

Suddenly, I see the hands that paint the white lines,

that lay the black asphalt, hands of a man joyous or lost

soap-scrubbing his body clean for dinner and beer,

for the wife who loves him, hands that hold their tickets

for London to see the grandmother, the hard-drinking

pub matron whose body bore children in building rubble

when the Nazi bombing relented—and if not for that war,

would I be driving now, hands on the wheel, listening

to the radio recount the birth of the child named Tsunami

after the storm that drove her mother into the hills,

would the meager dollars I send to rebuild a village—

minted with the Rosicrucian-eye above the pyramid

dreamed by this country’s founders as the all-seeing

vision of a world where not a sparrow falls

that we don’t know about—would I have known

to send it, if not for the hands that flew the kite

that drew electricity from the skies that made its way

into the flat-screened box that unveils this jewel-linked world

twenty-four hours of every gleaming day, weaving news

with advertisements for clothes made by hands in China

nimbly sewing a dream of Hollywood and Ipod and offering

their bodies one by one for a better future—

while the coal that fumes the electricity that plunges

the needle drifts in air that circles a globe that warms

the icecaps that melt into sea that shifts the current

that loves the wind that swirls from heaven to earth

stirring one storm after another, blowing

its diaphanous passion over New Orleans like a trumpet

sinking the heart so low with blue notes that flood

is a dark cure for what burns—this illusion

that anyone stands alone—stranded

on the roofs of our swollen houses mouthing

save me to a world whose  millions of hands

can turn up the volume loud enough to finally hear,

or flick with a single click the entire interconnected

vision of it all off.

Dane's poem chosen for Honorable Mention:

Holography

Coal country, West Virginia—I walk into a diner,

past the $100,000 reward poster in the window

for the sniper who shot Jeannie at the Speedway.

Our waitress—a poised old dame—

carries herself, effortlessly and without pride,

as the hidden center of a universe, and maybe

like Jeannie, she is, for someone. I open my book,

The Passion of Western Philosophy, wait for eggs,

bacon, biscuits, read about the Copernican revolution—

the earth no longer the center of things,

a peripheral sphere lost on the edge of an endless

black cosmos amid small blazing lights. Maybe

this is what Jeannie’s lover felt—the empty year

reeling out of orbit, no gravity, lost

in a centerless universe blown wide.

Then, like Nietzsche, killing his own god

in the bleak landscape of a world edged

on the abyss. But looking into the waitress’ eyes

as she says thanks hon for the extra tip,

I feel this universe circling back inside me—

Jeannie, her stalking lover, the beating

of a billion galaxies sounding here,

the thump-thump inside this chest,

the aching muscle at the heart of it all.

CONVERGENCE poems On-line

The Visitation published in Convergence, Winter 2006: www.convergence-journal.com/winter06/poetry_the_visitation.html

Chimera published in Convergence, Summer 2004: www.convergence-journal.com/summer04/poetry_chimera.htm

The Golden Germ published in Convergence, Summer 2004: www.convergence-journal.com/summer04/poetry_golden_germ.htm

MiPOesias poem in Vol 19, Issue 2

At The Entrance To The Santa Cruz Wharf can be found at: www.mipoesias.com/Volume19Issue2/cervine.html

WHAT A FATHER DREAMS at Xlibris Bookstore

Dane's new book What A Father Dreams: Poems of Family, Love, & Aging is described by the poet Maude Meehan: This collection of poems by Dane Cervine is a rich feast. An exploration of the joys and exigencies of family, commitment, parenting and deeply sensual love. We journey through an infinite variety of emotions and observations penned from an amazingly open heart. The lyric quality of this work delighted me.

What A Father Dreams can be viewed at: http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=27334

This link allows viewing of sample poems and related pages.

This book can also be ordered directly from the author for $12 (plus postage) by emailing: danecervine@cruzio.com

Wabash Prize for Poetry Finalist chosen by TONY HOAGLAND

Tony Hoagland chose Dane's poem as a finalist, which was published in Purdue University's Sycamore Review (Winter/Spring 2005):

Accordions & Shotguns

Opal stands with an accordion at twenty-one years of age,

on the steps of the family’s 49^th Street house in Los Angeles.

It is 1934, and the land of angels breaths in then out

like the ribs of her instrument. My father poses next,

little brother, all of six years old, shoeless, grinning,

the world spread out in front of him like an endless field

through which he runs. The back alleys and parks,

strewn with beaten trash can lid shields and stick swords,

Chinese boys behind the market tossing rocks like grenades,

the sand at Venice beach where black kids would wrestle

with brown and the white of his skin didn’t matter

because the city was his, he didn’t need much,

was protected from harm, from the want there was

by dashing older brothers who’d appear as right out of a movie screen,

with their polished white shoes and slicked back Hollywood hair,

letting him reach deep into pocket to fish out fistfuls of coin,

who’d show up the very day the electricity was to be turned off,

lay a few greygreen bills in mothers calloused hands, the ones

that had been up all night wringing & folding in hard-bitten prayer,

the miracles that always seemed to follow after: a pair of shoes,

a bag of groceries. A young boy, he had no word for depression,

neither the 30’s, nor his own that would come later.

There was no such thing as not enough, only the wonder

of what you had, the house where so many relatives came and went,

his bed a couch, this bevy of siblings, lovers and wives old

as uncles & aunts, being the youngest of twelve, the tag-a-long,

and always the next miracle they brought. Like shotguns in the desert,

Opal and Lloyd and brother Leslie out in the Mohave,

cooking eggs and bacon at dawn, cocking their huge, long rifles

loaded with shells—hunting rabbit, hunting what you can still find

when you’re young, and your country’s young, and the war is still

a ways off, and the world’s a swirling dream you can shoot at

in the hugeness of sky and not worry about a thing. Later,

those things would happen: accordion lost with its music;

shotguns emptied, buried in the basement; a war or two

working their way through onto Hollywood screen, and

you’d barely recognize anything—what your life was to become,

what it actually became, the miracle that it is still somehow yours,

that you love it anyway—how you carry the violence like a spent shell

in your pocket to remember, your ribs expanding and contracting

with each breath as though you are an instrument

life is still learning how to play.

Poem in the BATHYSPHERIC REVIEW Spring 2006

Dane's poem Purpose appears on-line in the Spring 2006 edition Monterey Bay's Bathyspheric Review: http://www.montereybaypoetry.com/cervine.html

This journal celebrates writing that is connected to ocean themes, to water, to all things connected with the sea...check it out!

Emerald Street Writers

The Emerald Street Writers are a longstanding poetry critique group that I've had the privilege of belonging to for a number of years now. Amazing poets all, I plan to profile a number of them on these pages with sample poems and links to their publications. Here's a picture of some of us at a typical critique group (though we have quite a number of Emerald St. "alumni & friends" not pictured here...Click on the picture for a larger view.

Several of the Emerald Street Writers (Phil, Len, Julia, Marcia, Maggie) are founding members of Poetry Santa Cruz (which also includes Dennis Morton, Tilly Shaw, Robert Sward), and sponsor a wide variety of poetry readings and activities in Santa Cruz County. Peruse the great web-site at: www.baymoon.com/~poetrysantacruz/

In addition, several Emerald Street Writers (Len Anderson, Joanna Martin, Julia Alter) are also members of the Hummingbird Press publishing collaborative, whose excellent books bring some of the best writing coming out of the Monterey Bay into print. Peruse their web-site, and additional excellent poets, at: www.skyhighway.com/~hummingbirdpress/

NEWS FROM A BURNING MAN Chapbook

Every year for the past decade I've produced a chapbook of that year's poems, and hosted a reading at my home for 30-35 folks. This year's chapbook is entitled News From A Burning Man, a collection of mostly short prose poems inspired by the work of fellow Santa Cruz poets Gary Young and Joseph Stroud. Click on the image for a picture of the cover...

Download news_from_a_burning_man_cover.doc

Here's two sample poems:

Rainbow Gathering

  Modoc County, California,1985

After graduate school, my brother took me to a remote corner

of the world near Nevada, where we pitched our tent

next to a pair of  astonishing rainbow women: nude

except for a feather here, a crystal there. Democratic

latrine pits in the open air, no one able to hide

their shit. Food for the asking, mushrooms, spirits.

After, not a shred of garbage anywhere. But it was the circle

at dusk, a mile-wide circumference of Om that still haunts—

how at the edge of the meadow the plateau plummeted

far down into barren desert below—how I’ve lived

with the memory like a ghost-limb ever since.

News From Burning Man

  Black Rock Desert, Nevada, 2004

After forty mile an hour dust storms, any water

you’ve brought simply turns your body ashen.

Thirty thousand techno-anarchists, some of them

your neighbors from back home, offer to paint your penis, 

cheek, torso in colors the desert only dreams of.

The bottomless night is when the real work begins,

pursuing Dionysus down endless tunnels the devil

himself has yet to conceive. But when the Wicker Man

burns---huge tower of corporate cardboard lit

in the dead of night---it is then you know

there is hope, that the world may yet be saved.

To order a copy, simply email me at danecervine@cruzio.com

BRANCHES QUARTERLY On-Line Poems

The following two poems were published in Branches Quarterly:

Omens: www.branchesquarterly.com/2.2/CervineBennett.htm

A Birthday Reverie: www.branchesquarterly.com/2.1/Cervine.Lyon.htm

RED RIVER REVIEW On-Line Poem

This poem appeared in the Red River Review:

HONEY: www.redriverreview.com/A55656/RRR.nsf/0/36760dcc236312eb862568d0001f72c9?OpenDocument

Poem in THE SUN Magazine

My poem ENGINE appeared in the November 2005 edition of Sy Safransky's THE SUN:

www.thesunmagazine.org/november2005.html

Here's the text of the poem:

Engine

The Los Gatos parking lot is filled with Lexus,

PT Cruisers, & Hummers. Housewives angular & tan

stream by, eyelids creamed & lined, optimistic breasts

nonchalantly pointing straight ahead, past the men

striding confidently with their cell phones

plugged to ears as though listening to somebody’s gospel,

or mutual funds rising, or another country falling.

Emerging, then disappearing again inside sleek metal

& fiberglass cocoons, pistons fire in each cylinder of heart,

spinning the world’s crankshaft, powering this endless rotation

through the void. There is always

someplace to go, something new to want.

And the young single women slide by so unencumbered,

radiant, untested by weddings, births, the thought of death—

engines humming beneath hips, cache of eggs to spill or grow.

How the young men revel, penises purring under red hoods,

bent on roaring down the road. Or the aging beauty in pink pants,

blue star shimmering on the curve of each bouncing cheek—

doesn’t someone love her like a secret, like the only one

worth having? Sometimes

there’s just too much speed, something in you careening,

looking for more, always more, cylinders of the heart

wanting to slow, to meander past these opulent hills

into the great brown fields of the San Joaquin—

so much space you almost feel lonely for the small

huddled towns, could almost start again—odometer

counting down the years, the ones that are left,

numerals fluttering languidly towards zero.

Porter Gulch Review Poems

Dane was chosen as the 2006 Porter Gulch Review POET OF THE YEAR, and his poems have appeared regularly in this Santa Cruz journal from Cabrillo College since 1997. The following link will connect you to on-line versions of the journal from the year 2000 forward:

http://www.cabrillo.edu/publications/portergulch/

Dane's poems can be found in the following editions and pages:

• 2006: Good Friday (page 61); In Praise of Women & Men (page 68); Where The Grass Is Greener Still (page 91)
• 2005: Engine (page 120), later published in the November 2005 issue of The Sun
• 2004: A Crack Between Two Worlds (page 60); Grateful Deadheads Talk Trash At The Cafe (page 124)
• 2003: Norte Americano (page 59); Oh Say Can You See (page 82); This Is My Body (page 168)
• 2002: Blue In The Face (page 41); What We Cannot See (page 57)
• 2001: Sex On The Kitchen Floor (page 36)
• 2000: I Am A White Man (page 87)

In addition, the Porter Gulch Review's pages include a wide spectrum of some of Santa Cruz's great poets, including a number from my Emerald St. Writers group, Poetry Santa Cruz, Hummingbird Press, and others. Worth exploring these great pages for poems, short stories, and great photos and art work.

Facets Magazine Poem

My poem What The Rain Brings, Leaves was published in Facets Magazine and can be viewed at:

http://www.facets-magazine.com/VolIVIss4/cervine.html

Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets 2004

The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets 2004 is a great collection of work from a wide spectrum of poets living in the Santa Cruz and Monterey regions, published by Chatoyant Press. You can peruse the photos and bios of included authors (including myself) at:

http://www.montereybaypoetry.com/poets_directory.htm#C

My poem Every Last Bit Of It is on page 18 of the hard-copy, which can be ordered from Chatoyant Press at:

http://www.chatoyant.com/press/index.html

Porcupine Literary Arts Poems

One of my favorite small press journals is Porcupine, published by Buz and Vicki Reed in Wisconsin. Three of my poems appeared in the volume linked below:

http://www.porcupineliteraryarts.com/vol8-2.html

The first poem, What Infinity Can Never Bring, was also chosen by Dennis Morton for broadside publication and dissemination during National Poetry Month at our wonderful independent bookstore Bookshop Santa Cruz: 

What Infinity Can Never Bring

I love the old men gathering at Beckman's Bakery,

the hobble in the step of one, the sad eyes of another---

the joy of company that brings them together over coffee,

bagels, regrets. Even now, their conversation still lingers

on children, grown, scattered: my daughter's an alcoholic,

says one, mine's unemployed says another. But then,

in the next breath they are on to other loves,

simple passions---as only the old can do,

eyes ablaze with finitude's fire.

Buddha Hanger

A rusted hanger abandoned,

melting into black asphalt under rain.

Beauty only the holy can see, and for a long moment

I do---the oxidizing metal turning orange as a sun

lighting the horizon, a last goodbye.

Having held a warm coat, someone's favorite shirt---

or perhaps anonymous in a warehouse,

bearing a dress identical to thousands nearby,

waiting to be loaded, to find a home.

What more could anyone desire---

to be of such practical use,

to bear the beauty of others,

and when forgotten, to lie in the rain

content, letting go.

Would You Recognize the Truth if You Saw It

A small boy with blue glasses

pokes his head round the corner of the black metal newspaper stand,

stares. I crack the smallest of smiles, enough to send him

giggling for cover---till he reappears inside the empty black cage,

pokes his head through, stares at me again. This time,

I look him full in the face, radiate what gave us birth

those eons ago, this ecstatic recognition of being,

the surprise of it all. Gazing back through oval lenses,

never blinking, he radiates back---as though it was still,

all of it, just beginning---that there was endless time

to love your life this much.

Sacred Fire Anthology

My poem This Burning is included in the anthology Sacred Fire, which can be purchased at:

http://www.sacredfeathers.com/FIRE/contributors.htm

The poem was inspired by the true life story of a father I met at a mental health conference in San Diego, and my subsequent drive home through a night-blaze in the hills north of Los Angeles:

This Burning

In the dark ahead, it floats like an orange mirage,

eerie flame of light in the hills that surround Los Angeles

like taut, brown undulations—driving back from a conference

about youth, abused & neglected—how the world swims

in alternating waves of fierce light & infinitely dim

shades of despair. The plenary speaker with his grim tale

of childhood—the rapes, the abuse—how the system

saved his life, foster parents lifting him up

far enough to stand on his own DNA & the mysteries

of karmic spirit carrying his story to the New York Times,

his work to three presidential citations for excellence.

And the road winds higher through the night as the orange glow

grows brighter, flames lapping the black outline of swelling ground—

still too distant to be afraid—but the awe growing.

As when I met Azim—Persian born in Africa, educated in England,

financial consultant turned crusader against the violence

that took his son in the streets of San Diego, college student

delivering pizza unfazed by the bogus address

in the run-down neighborhood, the 14 year old gang-banger

waiting for him with the gun, told he’d become a man

by taking the other one down. And in the aftermath,

Azim finding the 14 year old boy’s grandfather, saying

my son’s death must come to mean something—

how they banded together bent on saving at least one more,

and another, then another. How his eyes burned

as I shook his hand, thanked him for his story,

told him it means everything—how I drove silently

in the night into the heaving hills afire, so close now,

not knowing if there would be a way through,

the black asphalt road leading inexorably

into the smoke-orange flame of the grapevine,

the only way out being through—and there it was,

the fire-break, the very road I was on, separating

Hades’ heat on one side from the quiet untouched hills

on the other. In between, in this eerie safety

of windshield & engine & wheels, I see

there is but one way to travel this world,

and it is towards, not away,

from this burning.

Working Hard For The Money, POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Two of my early poems were included in the anthology Working Hard For The Money: America's Working Poor in Stories, Poems, and Photos from Bottom Dog Press. They are Radar, and Lions After Slumber. Use this link to the publisher to order the book:

http://members.aol.com/lsmithdog/bottomdog/cat.dog.htm

Use this link to view the two poems: Download working_for_the_money_poems_by_dane_cervine.doc 

New Poem in CONTE

A new poem of mine entitled The Magic Trick appears in the on-line journal CONTE. Take a look at the following link: http://www.conteonline.net/issue0203/p01.shtml

POETS AGAINST WAR

Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry, and is a website that many poets have submitted poems to. The link below leads to the following poems: What We Have To Offer; What We Cannot See; Peace March; and All Hallows Eve. The line breaks didn't always work right on the web page, so please forgive...consider submitting your own poems if you haven't yet.

http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/displaypoem.asp?AuthorID=354

The Jeweled Net of Indra CONNECTIONS

The Jeweled Net of Indra is the poem listed at the beginning of my web page, as well as the name of my forthcoming book with Plain View Press. In keeping with the spirit of this poem, a google search turned up this link where the poem was used by Victoria Safford of the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota as the basis for a sermon. I thought it an apt connection.

http://www.whitebearunitarian.org/sermon06oct08.pdf

Then, in the San Francisco Shambala Meditation Center Newsletter (Nov/Dec 2006), the poem showed up on page 2 in the Dharma Art section, submitted by sangha member David Asbury...a very nice graphic reproduction of it. View it by clicking on this link:

Download newsletter.pdf 

Here's another connection, where the poem shows up on Stumble Upon:

http://mlekas.stumbleupon.com/tag/blog/

The poem SIN, mentioned by Edwina Trentham in BEAD Interview

Sin

The worst part is failing to kiss the ground each morning.

Or the cold pot of resentment stirred and simmered

well into the evening. Everything else comes from this,

grows.

It wouldn’t be so bad if such immense portions of good fortune

weren’t squandered each hour, minutes the long dead

would ransom eternity to regain.

Even now, ripe apples lie rotting casually about the floor,

single bites taken from each—there is no worm, no snake…

only this failure to praise.

This is one of my favorite poems, I suppose, published in Freshwater by Edwina Trentham. I was surprised and pleased to see her refer to the poem as one of her favorites too in an interview published in BEAD. See the full interview at:

http://www.beadreadingseries.com/trentham-interview.html

REMEMBERING, in the Atlanta Review

This poem was published in the Atlanta Review's Spring 2006 edition:

Remembering

The gourd mask hangs on the wall,

round mouth hollow, speaking nothing

but what one hears beneath the ear drum,

like the sharp red feathers of the Mardi Gras mask,

longer black plumes rising from the eyes

as question marks:  who do you see?

I take each mask from the wall,

one for you, one for me—

peer through holes into the mirror:

we are changed. Another looks back

through feather and gourd, shaped

by them, something different

than wife, than husband—

a dark chimera, a luminous being.

There are alleys angled within,

numinous as an Orleans night,

bright trumpets, somber trombones:

any turn taken a new music,

how the blues began, like us.

Is it only a question of laziness,

that we become so little of ourselves?

Or fear, the mask we can’t see

beyond.

Bending the tri-fold mirror around,

we are reflected in endless variation,

each face beckoning, sighing,

relenting.

We are always more, never less.

Two Poems in THE BIRMINGHAM POETRY REVIEW

The following two poems were published in the Winter/Spring 2006 edition of the Birmingham Poetry Review:

After the Amputation

At ninety-five in the nursing home,

Aunt Opal says I don’t know where my leg is,

and my mother replies someone’s taking good care of it.

Her dead husband, forgotten. Her small house,

not even a memory. But the body knows

when something is lost: how the spirit, severed at birth,

has trouble staying in skin & bone.

Floating On The Wide, Blue Sea

I remember Uncle Bob’s chair in the Long Beach apartment

where he’d settled with Aunt Opal after the war—

the trundle bed opening from the wall,

the blue vinyl box of toys, the prune juice each morning—

how I’d sit in his lap nights listening to the radio,

feel the weathered blue cotton of the denim shirt

he always wore, remnant of his Navy days,

the way his eyes would drift far away into the stories

Opal whispered in the kitchen, about why he was so silent—

buddies floating in the blue sea, the way war sinks you even deeper still.

New Poems in the Monterey Poetry Review

You'll find a number of new poems on page 8 of the Fall/Winter 2006 edition of the Monterey Poetry Review:

Holography; The Last Days; Dark Flowers Speaking; Seeing Too Much; Obscurity; The Devil's Blues

http://www.hartnell.edu/mpr/index.php

Sex On The Kitchen Floor

The following poem was published in The New Laurel Review, and the Porter Gulch Review...it's a fun favorite, read in a variety of forums including Mary Orr's (a local Vipassana Buddhist teacher) Flesh & Spirit couple's workshops. The poem also appears in my book What A Father Dreams:

Sex On The Kitchen Floor

Can’t say I’ve done it

but there was that time

behind the boulder on the beach

on the steps at night in Venice

somewhere on the Interstate between

Phoenix and L.A.

in the field while our horses wandered home

naked in the car while 18 wheelers rolled by

fooling around in the bathtub

and then there was Greece again and again

the time with that rope but we won’t go there

unless blindfolded which isn’t a bad idea

but the bed’s a pleasant place to land

so I keep coming back there

and does it really matter anyway

even the missionaries

with their singular position

must have had it good enough

to call it sin.

Why I Love Fundamentalists

Here's another quirky poem I like, published in several venues, based on a true life experience as I visited my in-laws in Indiana. In this day and age of polarizing blue/red states, conservatives and liberals, this poem expresses a bit of the category-busting opportunities that often surround us...

Why I Love Fundamentalists

I was playing basketball at the corner hoop

in Madison, Indiana, stroking the ball

like it was the grace of god on asphalt

in the parking lot of the Nazarene Church

when he cornered me, the preacher

guarding my escape till he could find

out who I was

just visiting my father-in-law

down the street

and his face lit up like Christmas

wanting to know if I knew the Lord

or was I lost, so I faked left

my father was a Nazarene preacher,

I’ve got several going back

generations on my mother’s side.

He warmed to the task of finding out

if I was walking with the Lord now,

so I started dribbling fast but couldn’t

escape the fact that at that moment

I was the center of his whole world,

he felt my life for all eternity

hung in the balance of his broad hands—

and that my next decision would be

the most important one I’d ever make.

This is a rare experience in life, to be

so fully in focus, someone waiting

on your next act with each breath

and I basked in it,

but didn’t want to lead him on unduly,

so took a shot fro