A Chatty Meander

A Chatty Meander

(“Look to the mountains—the feet of one bringing good news and proclaiming peace!” Nahum 1:15a)

Why we pick up kaleidoscopes to distill our images
and write them down to tell the truth in words that agree,
sentence and syntax,
is a bother of childish nations. Bits of glass cut from
broken art
fall, sounding like sand poured onto hardwood floors,
and refract away the terms of armistice. We would
rather play with bent sunlight than face reports that
reflect poorly upon our character.

I was never a ruffian, not quite a scientist either;
gangs would not have me…short and lightweight,
labs always puzzled me…mix these and those and
hope for explosion.

I had hoped to be a mystic, fighting angels who saw me clear,
or mocking demons for my career. But my fingers never tingled
just so, and dreamwork was shoddy leftover fears and lunch.

I had hoped to be a digger, finding potsherds in the strata,
or explaining remains and copying data into contexts of finds
not yet considered. But I only dug with tablespoons and
found worms to hook a crawdad or two.

I hoped to be a singer, a writer, a voice commanded attention
even when I whispered. But I only wrote in secret, afraid to
step outside the well-scored boundaries set by rules I
had not written…no, not the rules, but my fear of them.

And what I heard at each junction was I did not sing three notes well,
could not afford the room, the board, the academic unrewarded premiums.
My words were too skeletal, my repentant handwriting still illegible,
despite every attempt to clean up the erasures I should have burned instead.

At the end of the road now, too late to restart, cornered by time and excuses,
there has to be someone behind me to do what I should have done.
Speak to the ones who treat the unalike like simpletons. Declare peace is
better than shallow pandemonium (where demons rule the world we thought
we finally had understood.)

Go to the name-callers who use their high-chairs as babel towers
pretending a better view. Brave you instead of weeping me. Face you
unlike hidden me. Love you lest breaking me. Go second now that
I’m too far and far too foolish to think

My

Words

Have

Meaning this late in the day.

Only let the piecework, the quiltwork shout what I
meant to shout from the beginning.
Only let the workshop, the worksheet manufacture
the focus I knew I knew from the calling.
Only let the mountains where the giant telescopes
point to the sky
proclaim to the blind (I, and we, big and bits, whole and
holy, destined and undefined)
peace, Peace, PEACE

In the valley (unless you’d like to pay another dime
for the kaleidoscope’s rhyme-plastered lie.)

Peace, Peace, PEACE

In the valley (for you and me I pray).