I Feel This Shroud

I Feel This Shroud

It happens too often and I feel this
shroud will never be lifted, a burning cloud
that has sifted every memory until they lose
all meaning.
Once I could count on the smiles across from me,
but now I look away wondering if I will be
unfurled.

I try to take it in stride and stop reading the thoughts
of nebulous origin. My worry does not serve me well.

Those old connections are frayed, and I stand displayed
as if everything inside me has been revealed without
my permission.
The mountains were steeper than I remembered
and my steps smaller upon the muddy ground.

I’d start a conversation, but I run out of words to say.
I’d sing an old song, but the copies are aged like autumn.
I’d play along just to fit in. I’d list my reasons for awe
that I once displayed like a badge on my forehead.
Tonight I just can’t see how this loneliness can
lift any time soon.

But I also am weary of writing these tomes of melancholy.
They are true, I know, but so are the bright eyes that
smile back when I was looking down at my feet.
My conversations end with awkward pauses hoping I
have not repeated
phrases from just a week ago. While others are
building planter boxes for a future Spring
I sit darkly writing and wishing something would bloom
again.

Do you remember when I could walk down the
hallway to the auditorium and everyone would know
my name? Now I saunter and wish I could feel the same
as those days at eye level when everyone was my friend.

I should take a nap and start this day over again.

Never Be a Day

Never Be a Day

(“You changed my mourning into dancing. You took off my funeral clothes and dressed me up in joy.” Psalm 30:11)

I have seen the pockets where you hide away your pain;
I know you’ve prayed for darkness to cry the day like pain.
You have wanted to dance again and feel guilty when you abstain.
You’ve wished you could drink an elixir to make you love again.

Every time you peek out from your hidden cave you’ve made,
every time you let the sunlight catch your eyes,
you hope and imagine it will be different, things will change this time.
But within days the gloom sets in again and you knew you shouldn’t
be surprised. You cannot even count on sleep to be your friend.

With me you can hide if you want. Or I will turn down the lights so
you can let your tears drop unseen. Or I will reach inside your
pockets and remove a stone or two. I would heal it all if I
could.
I would change the wounds backwards in time before the
first evil befell you. I would mend the seams where the
violence
caused your voice to cease its beautiful song.

If I could I would hold you forever; if you let me,
I would blow away every sore and scarred place you
hide so well. The days would shine again; your eyes
would take the lifeline and sparkle again.

So, when I ask if you are ok, you can share one of those
pocketed stones with me. There will never be a day
when
I will turn away from anything you show me.

That We Would Stay

That We Would Stay

(“He told them, ‘My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’” Matthew 26:38)

Sadness makes me slumber and pain makes me crazy;
and I could not choose which one I would lose when you
told us you were grieving far greater than we understood.
Perhaps it was the wine with dinner,
perhaps it was the dinner itself;
Or maybe it was the evening fog climbing the mount to
the garden where we had come.

All we wanted was clarity and all we had were pronouncements
we never quite understood. But we could hear it in your voice
that sounded vacant and your eyes red with pleading.
We had spent time with you before, just the three of us and
you,
but tonight was different and the air was heavy with discontent.

I promised to do anything for you my future and present Lord,
but though my spirit willed it, my will was drowsy and heavy
with the construction of a home on what felt like sinking sand.
We wished we were angels and could wing our flight above
the garden to watch out for the coming gloom.

Crushed with grief you said. To the point of death you said.
And we barely heard or understood. It felt like the nets of
safety
were badly torn and every evil was about to fill the massive
holes
that kept classless horror at bay. And all you asked us was to pray.
All you asked was that we would stay.

I Thought it Was Courage

I Thought it Was Courage

(“Peter said to him, ‘If they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away!’” Matthew 26:33)

I meant it when I said it; I thought it was courage and
never entered my mind it could be hubris. You were our hope,
our royal, our King, our divine deliverer and we were just waiting
for you to ascend the judgement seat where you would dismember
ever inch of empire. We knew you would bring some kind of coup,
a regime change, that would set us truly free.

I didn’t understand then, sometimes I still miss the meaning;
but I didn’t take your words into me and only thought this would be
a victory march up to the temple walls.

I wasn’t alone in my over-glossed promise, all the others backed
me up. We thought we could ignite it by some sword-play and
one of us cut off the ear of a palace official. And all you did was
reach up and heal that mercenary.

I wanted to look you in the eyes and see the fire burning that
would consume every adversary of empire that kept us under its thumb.
We only heard the bells ring from another time to announce
the call to vespers and long-robed mendicants praying on
bruised knees.

They took you to the judgement hall, the began to interrogate
you. The stripped you and whipped you and stripped your back
of flesh. And that was when I became afraid.

I watched it all from the outside warming my hands by a
welcome fire. And they thought they recognized me (I wish
I had hidden my eyes) and insisted I knew you. How did they
know? How could they tell?

But it took a young servant girl, a whisp of one, to get me
to curse and deny you full-throated.

And then I heard the crow. I wanted to sink, to melt between
the cement cracks. I wanted to see you, I wanted to tell you
I never meant it, I never wanted to let it come to this.
So I ran and hid. I heaved in silence. I didn’t trust myself with
even the slightest sound for fear I would say the same things
again even in the solitary darkness.

I was afraid I would never see you again, never speak with you
and hear your words that set me free.

I lumbered to the street where the criminals walked carrying
their crosses
on their backs. I waited, not knowing how long before
I would see you once more. When you passed by, I saw your eyes
and I hope you saw mine. I hope you saw the sorrow, the regret,
the self-loathing that led me to admit I was less than I imagined.

I saw your eyes and could not decipher them. Was that disappointment,
sadness, pain? Was that affection hidden behind the tears welling
in your eyes?

I know you, I knew you, and I shall know you more. Dearest
Lord
forgive the mud I found myself rolling in only to
protect my tiny self.

A Dozen Webs

A Dozen Webs

(“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Matthew 25:34)

This foggy morning, I spotted a dozen different webs strung from
mailbox to support. The strands were braids of diamonds made by
dew drops hanging still.

You gathered us in the way you usually do, to teach us,
or send us out again for miracles’ sake. But you instead
said we were blessed by the Father, and now we are inheriting
the dream that has been dreamed from the foundation of the world.

Did we feed you when we filled the bellies of the hungry?
Did we give you a drink when your throat was parched?
Did we welcome you, stranger, even if you came from across the boundary?
Did we round up a new suit of clothes when you were naked?
Did we sit by your bed, holding space for you in your illness?
Did we visit you in prison even though the paperwork was tedious?

You told us every time we did any of this that we were doing it to you,
even if they were the least, the smallest, the last in line. We had
no idea it was your mouth we fed, your thirst we quenched, your hope
reignited. We only felt like we were doing what we could for
the suffering in the world.

And you called us the “nations”. Sheep or goats.
And you called us “sheep”
Other nations were goats and did nothing to alleviate
the pain of people trod down by systemic hatred.

It is nations you look to do this, isn’t it?
I acted like an individual, but you long to tear down the
systems that hold people hostage, that call them freeloaders,
that name them illegal, that mock the spectrum of their autism,
and spew invectives at the queer nation that carries Christ too.

In a couple of hours the webs will not shine so brightly;
the dew will evaporate once the fog lifts and the sun shines
on them.
Maybe they are there to remind me that sometimes waiting
is waiting far too long.

My Agenda

My Agenda

I laid my agenda down on my desk and noticed
there was nothing empty there, no plans for the
day.
So I got myself up, hung my body on the hinges and
let it sway with the ebbing and surging of the wind.
I never meant to spend all the daylight there;
I was waiting for someone to notice me and
invite me to town.
That’s when it occurred to me that if I blinked
one time too many I might miss the
Wave of the white-gloved hand that saw me
breathing slow.
I let myself down and wrote in my calendar:
“Tomorrow I will just hang around.”

It Has Been Too Long

It Has Been Too Long

(“God is faithful, by whom you were called into fellowship with his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:9)

It has been too long between steps that
lead to your house. I visited years ago and
still have the memories misting in my mind.
We both grew bolder with age.
What could we talk about that we didn’t
already suspect? Predilections of piety
sometimes shamed our silly expectations
that someone might buy us lunch.
For those who thought it all was certain,
for those who had answers to every question,
we only kept our silence and waited for something
less extreme.
We longed for a baptism that would make the
circle larger. We knew it younger and
wondered how it splintered now.

Do you remember the halcyon days when
pretense
had not yet been learned? Do you call to mind
the ways that finished the days when we walked the
two miles home from school? We took the bus
a couple of times when we were freshmen.
Sometimes we hitched a ride with the girl from
down the block. I think we both fell for her and I
doubt
she remembers either of us now.

It has been too long since we shared a glass of wine
together. We let it breathe. The last time I saw you
a machine was doing the breathing for you and I hope
you know I came to visit you. I muddled my way through
the Lord’s prayer three or four times holding your hand
a day before you left for good.

It has been too long and now only lengthens like
the shadows on an autumn afternoon.