A broken tulip

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Birds perch above the unlit neon signs
of small businesses shut down. Skewers crown the signs
forbidding small warm bodies from building homes there
so birds rest instead
on the convenient spikes
between overhang ceiling and bright plastic
before they tip off like deep sea divers
dropping low to take off.

Look at the birds –
even without a home they rest –
so much more may you
who the Father loves more than they.

This is an unkind April
chilling the deck outside which wears ripped paint
exposing wood as if it were designer jeans.
We need the cold for the small yellow onions
I push an inch below fresh-turned soil in lines
like so many miniature golden domes.

These ungenerous times force isolation
in the season of Passover, Easter, Ramadan.
Suddenly monotheists of the world see
their commonality and April is gathering
kind conversations all over the worldwide web.

We are all holding on to hope, to a divine hand,
to each other. “Thank you for this mercy,”
the ancient Celtic prayer goes, “that I am a stranger
and a wanderer like the fathers before me”
like Abraham
like Isaac
like Hagar
like Ishmael.

To the Muslims in our city sheltering in place –
may your Ramadan be indeed generous
for God is truly great.
Tonight begins Ramadan and a forty day fast
of devotion, recalling the gift of the Qur’an
…….and today Jews continue counting the fifty day Omer
between Passover and Shavuot
between becoming a free people and meeting God on the mount
to receive the Torah —
…….and Christians are finished the forty day Lenten fast
when Genesis is read, when we fast to recognize our own exile,
to join in Christ’s Passover freedom when death passes over and we pass through
high waters only to journey again forward
counting the weeks, the wilderness wanderings
until Pentecost and the pouring out of the Spirit.
Jews, Muslims, Christians
we are all counting days and reliving stories now

we all believe
that though there is no solid home for our souls yet
there is a God on whose palms
birds perch to rest, to dive away, to swoop and swallow
the invisible insects of twilight, then to return.
We believe he loves us
more than the birds.
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