One Side to the Other

One Side to the Other

(“But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:4)

Moving, I am told, one side of the head to the other,
the sounds of sea, a step into the river
can rip the loops apart that repeat the hurting tracks
over and over, D.C al without Fine; and find the chord
which resolves the pain.

The child still cries (he is nearly 60) at the angry hands
that red imprints that faded quicker than the picture stuck
in his brain. The soldier shakes (he is home now) at the shells
and mortar that nearly ripped his barracks and comrades; it
was just the neighbor shutting his car door.

For those who remember vinyl long-play with scratches
that sounded like wax paper crumpled beneath the hi-fi,
the needle sticks in a groove deeper than the rest
and won’t let the two bars finish, won’t let the 3 ½ words
complete, the over and the over and the over and the ove

er and

We are brains and we are minds, we are spirit and we are muscle,
we are wired hard and scratched by misuse; we are puzzles not yet
assembled, we are garage sale jigsaw puzzles bought on faith that
all the pieces are present.

I am told there is music in the spheres, truer than the rewinds
our past lives have struck into our casting; and moving, one
side of hearing to the other,
we may find the lines rewritten, circuits rewired,
memories of smitten hopes soothed by the chords and words
written before the hands that brought affliction.

Endure to the end, the story which sings its death and sting
rises to release us from the refrain we’ve repeated to the verses
of life Christ created for each ditch, scratch and vein we
thought each blow had depleted.