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satellite radio

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

april gave us springtime and the promise
of the flowers and the feeling that we both
shared and the love that we called ours but
I can’t help but have my suspicions ‘cause
I ain’t quite as dumb as I seem; tell me how
can you stand there with a broken heart
ashamed of playing the fool but isn’t that
the way they say it goes just forget all that
and give me the number if you can find it so
I can call and tell them I’m fine and show I’ve
overcome the blow; doctor my eyes have seen
the years and the slow parade of tears without
crying now I want to understand; no, I can’t forget
the feeling or your face as you were leaving but I
guess that’s just the way the story goes, baby
come back any kind of fool could see I was
wrong and I just can’t live without you.

Peace,
Milton

chiffonade

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

I’ve heard tell of those who rolled cigars
in Havana and how they would choose one
to read each day, the others making up his
share of the quota so they could hear stories
that took them beyond the little rooms where
they rolled leaves for the pleasure of others.

I live in a town built on the stories of those
same leaves. Tonight, in one of the rooms
where they stacked and sold tobacco, I cooked
dinner for those who had stories of their own
to share with one another. And I brought
leaves of my own—basil, fresh and verdant.

I gently pinched to stem off each leaf, and,
as I was taught by those who told me kitchen
stories, I stacked the leaves and rolled them,
much like the Cubans, I suppose, and then
sliced across my herb cigar, letting the leaves
fall in tender strips as the blade rocked

back and forth, releasing the fresh smell of
sunshine and friendship. Even on the drive
home, my hands carried the aroma, the
smell almost indelibly infused into the
crevasses of my fingerprints. I breathed
the story in once more, and then exhaled.

Peace,
Milton

what’s for dinner

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

I like to know what’s next as much
as possible, so when they call and say,
“We need you to work a dinner Saturday,”
I wish they would tell me the occasion
and the menu, just so I have an idea of
how to prepare myself to prepare the meal.
I think differently for salmon than sirloin.

Catering, for the most part, means cooking
blind: going to the gig to finish what those
in the prep kitchen have begun, following
their list, counting on them to have done
their jobs, relinquishing any wish for control
or simply being informed. I don’t know
what’s for dinner until I start cooking it.

In the restaurant, the menu means I know
what I’m cooking, but not for whom, leaving
me with an equal measure of uncertainty.
Fair warning is not an ingredient in most of
life’s recipes. Still, I know my hands and my
heart, I know how to get ready and remember
the key is not ingredients, but intention.

Peace,
Milton

waiting for the plumber

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

One could wish for a day that was carbonated,
words rising effervescently, even effortlessly
to the top, bubbles of hope bursting on the
surface. Today is not that day; nor yesterday.
I’m waiting for the plumber to come find the
block on our main drain, somewhere between
here and the street, underneath the growing
grass and the nascent hasta, underground
where the words are trapped in the sludge,
unable to bore their way to the surface, or to
flow through to the drain under the street.

One would think, in these days so full of
friends and family and meaning, the real
struggle would be to keep the words from
coming; how could I keep from writing?
My life goes on, breakless and brakeless,
trading exhaustion for expression, even as
my heart fills up and overflows. My body
stops and my mind races on; my brain
finally tires and I toss and turn. Be still,
I say, but I can’t. Instead, I pace the house
looking for words, waiting for the plumber.

Peace,
Milton

everyday

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

if it’s going to be fresh
then it must be done
everyday: today and
tomorrow and the day
after that. most of what
we think of as life and
cooking is preparation,
or at least that’s what
we call it. in fact, the
chopping and peeling,
the slicing, marinating –
all of those things we
think of as “the getting
ready” are really the
show: one long act of
love and labor that
puts the plate on the
table or makes room
for the moment when
we get to say, “I love you”
to one another — fresh
everyday.

Peace,
Milton

symphony

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

I turn down our tree-lined streets,
the empty branches reaching skyward
yearning skeletons just now beginning
to show signs of new life, the groans of
creation tuning up like an orchestra
preparing to play a new symphony.

Yet, the trees have not been silent all winter.
Their shadow song is harder, but a melody
nonetheless. The strains of pain and silence
are not easy playing or listening, yet an essential
movement to inform the resurgent joy that
comes with recreation, reawakening, rebirth —

and I am Nicodemus, wondering how we, as
collective Creation can carry all our weight
and worry back into God’s womb and come
forth singing a new song. Biology breaks down
in ways melody does not. We aren’t going
back, but forward, from womb to womb,

birth to birth, song to song, from God to God,
moving symphonically from stark to lush,
from solo to emsemble, from pianissimo to
forte and back again. Newborn babies cry –
as do widows and orphans, the homeless and
the hopeful: tears are our shared melody.

Peace,
Milton

algebra

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
2

Brilliance with numbers is a curious thing. Paul Erdos, a Hungarian who died in 1996, used to travel the world and stop briefly at the offices and homes of fellow mathematicians. “My brain is open,” he would announce as, with uncanny intuition, he suggested a problem that, without realizing it, his host was already halfway to solving. Together they would find the solution. (“Let’s Talk About Figures” The Economist, March 22, 2008)

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24: 30-32)

algebra

I got lost when the numbers changed
to letters and Mrs. Gibbs refused to give
me directions: “I don’t answer stupid
questions,” she said, and closed my brain.
I can still hear her shouting down
my attempt to understand algebra,
or seeing it as a way of understanding.

I was on the other side of the desk
when a student said of Shakespeare,
“This is like algebra,” without closing
her brain or her heart. She was right
and I was already on the way to seeing
that “to be or not to be?” was not
a stupid question, nor a solitary one.

Jesus walked the Emmaus Road and
asked, “What are you discussing?”
and they began explaining the algebra
of resurrection, even though most
of the equation was still unsolved.
Jesus broke the bread in two and
their hearts open and on fire.

Conventional wisdom would assume
a poem should be a bit more algebraic
than this one, I suppose. It reduces
rather quickly to wonder what we
might find when we see questions
as serendipitous rather than stupid
and answer, “My heart is open.”

Peace,
Milton

what april means

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

A poem is like a ball park
(or is the park like a poem?):
some precise measurements –
the height of the mound,
the length of the base paths,
the size of the ball –
yet each park is its own,
each outfield shaped by
Green Monsters and short
porches; the rules apply and
no two are exactly the same.

The batter who can hit one
out of every three balls is a
success; true, also, of the poet:
one out of three ain’t bad.
And, every so often, the
right words come, lining up
the way Manny locks in
on a high fast one and swings
for the fences, dropping
his bat and watching in
wonder before he runs home.
Pure poetry.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There are new recipes here and here.

these things

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
4

I spent the weekend leading a youth retreat for a church in Virginia where a good friend pastors. The group of fifteen included kids from seventh through twelfth grade. They are kind, gentle, fun, and welcoming people. The weekend was scheduled to take the word retreat seriously: we have a few sessions and a great deal of free time, which we used walking together, talking together, playing guitars together, and consuming an inordinate amount of junk food.

As I was driving up to meet them — it’s been a long time since I drove north to Virginia (well there’s the opening line to a country song if I ever heard it) – I kept wondering how a teenager thinks about following Jesus in this overwhelming world, so I decided that’s what I would talk about. In the second session, we looked at the Beatitudes. We read them and then I asked, “Who are the poor in spirit?”

One seventh grade girl raised her hand, which she does every time there is a question, and she said, “I think they are the people who don’t know how much God loves them because they don’t love themselves.” There was an audible “Wow!” in the room and we all congratulated her.

“If that’s our working definition,” I said, “then what are they inheriting if theirs is the kingdom of heaven?”

Another seventh grader raised his hand. “I think of the kingdom of heaven like a big table where everyone gets to eat and there’s always an empty chair for anyone who wants to sit down.”

From what I learned about the kids in the group, they were well acquainted with grief. One kid’s dad just got back from Iraq and is a good candidate for the lead role in a remake of The Great Santini. The girl who talked about the poor in spirit pretty much described herself; the boy who talked about God’s extravagant welcome incarnated it, despite his own struggles and sorrow. There was plenty of pain to go around. Plenty of love, too.

The other thing I did as I drove to Virginia was listen to music. I burned a few CDs of songs my nephew, Tim, gave me when he was here and didn’t get through too many of them because I kept listening to one made up of original songs by him and his older brother, Ben. They call themselves, “The Olive Tree”. On the way home, I put the CD in again because I wanted to hear one song in particular, “These Things,” which Ben signs, hit me hard because I knew the back story. His aunt, on my sister-in-law’s side of the family, died of cancer last year, leaving a husband and two small children. Here are the words to the first verse and chorus:

my aunt she died and left my uncle dying in their room
the morning weighed a million pounds and he could hardly move
two children in the house somewhere who won’t come down the stairs
wondering what will life be without their mother there

he hits the door and hits the floor and give anyone a call
and I’m listening to his sister talk to him right down the hall
words of resurrection love and pain through the tears
and I hit the road to take for granted my mother’s still here

I think about these things
I don’t know what they mean
is there joy in suffering
I think about these things

it’s gonna be alright
it’s gonna be alright
though the darkness holds tight
we’re locked into the light

I called him to make sure he knew how the truth of his poetry had hit me – particularly the last two lines:

though the darkness holds tight
we’re locked into the light

Harlan Howard said, “Country music is three chords and the truth.” Though Ben and Tim write in a more alt-country vein, they prove his words.

When I left town, I thought I was going to speak. Thank God I had time to listen. It was when I did my best work.

Peace,
Milton

to mac

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

“A good storyteller speaks a melody; in conversation there is melody.”
Mac McAnally, in conversation at Blue Rock)

You’ve talked to me for years
and I’ve listened. Does that
count as conversation? I can
still see myself walking out
of Baylor Records with a copy
of Nothin’ But The Truth tucked
under my arm; I spent the better
part of the next week listening
to you sing and wishing I knew
your language. All these years
I’ve kept quiet, except to pick up
my guitar and sing your words
from time to time. Does that
count as conversation? And now
I see you sitting and talking
with my old friend – we’ve
listened to you together for a
long time – and he got to talk
back, and to keep listening.
I watched from far away and
imagined myself pulling up
a chair. It’s my job that kept
me from getting there; I
think you might understand.
I’ll have to settle for that,
and that I can keep listening –
oh, and say, “Thank you.”
I think that counts.

Peace,
Milton

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