But off the links you burn with lust

and destroy your family's trust.

In the forest of the night

you fall prey to what's not right.

 

You're a cheetah who got caught

and it's hurt your wife a lot.

But confession leads to grace.

Divots are to be replaced.

 

When you'd like to play around,
recognize it's out of bounds.

Keep your head down. Think it through.

Tiger, you know what to do.

 

*With apologies to William Blake

Hard Knocks for Amanda
Waiting for the door of justice to open
 
The verdict's in
and the word is out.
 
Amanda won't be home for Christmas
(unless you call her Italian cell her new abode).
But it's not.
Seattle is home.
 
That's the place for which she pines.
A city that loves her and believes in her.
A community that believes her story
and prays for her soon return
all the while weeping.
 
A place where weather proves on a regular basis
that Heaven's tears eventually give way to the
bluest skies you've ever seen
when at long last the sun finally appears.
 
Although dark clouds shrouding our Mountain
attempt to hide the truth,
the truth eventually comes out.
What was wrongly assumed is proven false.
Rainier has been there day and night,
whether seen or not.
 
And so the falling rain of injustice
(that mingles with Amanda's tears)
will, in time, dissipate
revealing the mountain of evidence
that was there all along.
 
Meanwhile, in the bleak midwinter
as Amanda spends silent nights
dreaming of joy in her world,
she is only too aware

of Mary's unenviable plight:
misunderstood and maligned,
slandered and judged,
incapable of explaining the unexplainable.
 

Sadly, she has no Joseph to reassure her
that everything will eventually be okay.
Or does she?
 
Perhaps her carpenter from Nazareth
is a dad and mom and three sisters
who build her faith
and construct her confidence
based upon a blueprint of family love.
 
Loving Father, give this precious child
(so very far from home)
a tangible sense of Your presence.
 
Of all the names by which You're known,
may Your Christmas name,
Emmanuel (God-with-us),
be her favorite name for You.
 
May You be God-with-her.
 

Clemency Wrongly Granted
The crime that preceded the crime

Maurice was granted clemency.
Freeing Clemmons? Tragedy!
Those four (now fallen) officers
are victims of that crime.

A three-strike felon out of jail?
What judge would let that jerk post bail?
Whose hands are bloody from this act?
Why do the worst go free?

Such questions haunt us as we mourn
the ones who died last Sunday morn
while sipping coffee unaware
it was their final day.

The fact that Clemmons was gunned down
does not mean answers have been found.
They're on the loose just like more thugs
unjustly out of jail.

* Last Sunday, November 29, 2009, Maurice Clemmons, a convicted felon released on bail, fatally shot four Lakewood, Washington officers in a coffee shop. After a two-day manhunt he was killed by a Seattle policeman while resisting arrest. Why he was released from a life sentence in Arkansas a decade ago remains a mystery.