Taken by Surprise

Taken by Surprise

(“You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not take that to mean that you can do as you please. But work for each other because you love each other.” Galatians 5:13)

I was taken by surprise at the wild night and the demise
of floodlights pointing the way to the boarding house location.
I knew dozens who danced in abandon, waved at random faces
appearing in the crowd. They shout so loud that one man’s prayer
is swallowed by vocal improvisations, out of tune, out of time,
discarding rhyme, stepping over the swooned on the concrete floor.
Freedom was a dancer who mollified mentors while untying the knots
that taught apprentices the steps.

Turn up the volume, vibrate the walls,
let God pick up one end of the earth, if it please, and whip it like a
locker-room towel until the seas reach peaks and mountains flow
low beneath the feet of unreachable depths. God is not hindered
by social norms or costume codes on the walls of institutions of
higher learning.

So we, free as He, vacate every convention, except our personal inventions;
the cures that medicate loneliness every time we turn down the lights
and leave the dance abandoned on the floor, concrete cold once every
body has left alone, home, rays extending from a fixed center,
and the farther we fly, the farther our neighbor.

I was taken by surprise at the handful who, though free as God Himself,
wandered the after-streets, checked the littered corners, sleep in their
eyes, cramps in their calf and thighs. They were sad and smile complete,
these few of freedom’s elite who knew when the carnival shuts down
there must be a few around to be just one degree freer.

I was taken by surprise by the looks in the eyes of those whose freedom
let them linger, renewing the wounded and enjoying the gravity that
pushed them closer to liberty’s labors of love.