“When someone accuses you of something, try to settle things before you are taken to court.”
- Luke 12:58a

Some days drip melancholy like mollases
over peace not made.
Some blue mornings grieve like widows
over family feuds.
Some fair hearts wait to hear the telephone ring
with renewed embraces of forgiveness on the line.

We’ve laid it all on the line,
bet the bank on our righteousness,
and failed.

So we hope for shallow sunsets and
memories of our good deeds to ease
the nagging drip from the faucet of our
unfinished mercy.

Unsettled, alone, consummate in our pretense,
we let the sunset send sunbeams into our neighbor’s
kitchen window where they climb the lightshafts to the
source in joy.

And we nurse our disturbed righteousness
without blinking an eye.

The morning wakes pink upon the reconciled but
drips blue for the perfect.
proper.
few.