Recalling the Loma Prieta earthquake

Twenty-five short years ago
the Golden Gate rocked to and fro
as San Franciscans weighed their nerves
upon the Richter scale.

At 5:04 the clocks stood still
as cable cars crawled up Nob Hill,
their passengers quite unaware
of what had just transpired.

At Candlestick the wick went out.
The Bay Bridge Series was in doubt.
Whose fault it was could not be hid
and what a fault it was.

The San Andreas was to blame,
a fault whose power can’t be tamed.
A fault whose shadow lingers still
and will not go away.

The Big One’s waiting in the wings.
The day will come when sorrow sings
a mournful dirge in light of what
lies flattened on the ground.

Being stalked by the beast known as Ebola

Emerging out of Africa
a deadly plague has grown.
It’s a monster that’s now threatening the world.
Ebola’s killing thousands,
heartlessly destroying hope
in the lives of men and women, boys and girls.

And because of Thomas Duncan,
we can’t simply shrug it off
as a tragic epidemic “over there.”
This grim monster is among us
breathing fire and belching smoke
and we’d best not just ignore it but prepare.

As Ebola stalks our nation
taking hostages at will,
we must dig in and courageously take aim.
What it takes to slay this dragon
are precaution, meds and prayer.
On our knees we’ll find the means to douse its flame.

Taking a closer look at Yom Kippur

This is a holy holiday
when all my Jewish neighbors pray
with gratitude that God forgives
our failure to achieve
the standard holiness demands
engraved in stone as His commands
and written in a moral code
that’s known to one and all.

Atonement Day (or Yom Kippur)
attempts to clarify the blur
that keeps us all from focusing
on what we should confess.
For all have sinned. We’ve fallen short
and plead “no contest” in God’s court.
Ironically, forgiveness comes
when we admit we’re wrong.

Atonement calls for sacrifice.
The debt we owe demands a price
and Jews and Christians both concur
the currency is blood.
But where these two faiths disagree
is who the lamb of God might be.
A random sheep from someone’s flock
or David’s sinless Son.

The bottomline is more than the price tag

No boots on the ground,
but there’re drones in the sky
not to mention the airstrikes at night.
This crisis with ISIS
is cause for concern
as we partner with allies to fight.

On the frontlines of terror
we dare not shrink back.
What’s at stake is the life we have known.
The freedom from fear
and the freedom from want
and the freedom to reap what we’ve sown.

The cost of this conflict
cannot be contained.
The price tag of freedom will rise.
We must stop these beheadings
and we’ll pay what we must
so to purchase the peace justice buys.

There’s spanking and then there’s spanking

A football player whooped his boy
and lost the right to play.
The issues are not black and white
(or black and blue). They’re gray.

My dad would use his belt to spank.
My mom used her hair brush.
My grandma made me eat some soap
when I was prone to cuss.

My grandpa used a willow switch
to teach his children grace.
Instead of lashing their behinds,
he said “I’ll take your place!”

While kneeling down, he bore his back
to take their punishment!
And in the process truth was taught.
A lesson Heaven sent.

To cause a much-loved father pain
hurt more than getting spanked.
And as my mom related it
I saw how faith was banked.