Water that Runs

Water that Runs

(“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.” Jeremiah 11:7)

Before I thought about the morning moving on

so quickly and afternoon racing toward the final turn

I could swear I had wasted another day. There is

a pillow on the couch where I lay my head, a case

washed twice a week, and a blanket with occasional shreds

where the quilt has dropped a thread or two. I sleep till

noon, I wish.

When I do not, on Monday most, I choose a movie near 10

and watch till noon. The pillow holds my thoughts, the blanket

my security and the cat, white and black, visits me prone,

nesting upon my chest and, face to face, insists she is queen

of the moment. Who is to say she isn’t.

It is impossible to tell now, lazy or pain. I would rather

putt a green or cycle the hills, the afternoon valve to release

the cooked-up schemes of my swarmed imagination.

See here, the way I trust. The way I used to. A drive to the ocean,

tennis with an ever-drooping forehand, or just hardcopy

and coffee

where the shards of afternoon are pieced on tables of conversation.

Why should I bow to electrons that strangle the proper music and dance?

Why should this phantom (there is neither mass nor matter) make each

thought chatter while outside rivers and sunshine are a chef’s perfect savor?

But the vise grinds and my brain whines at a ghost that hitchhikes my neurons.

The passenger is invisible, the itinerary a drumline from eyeball to eyeball,

cervical vertebra to dura mater; it does not matter that it will not kill me;

the unknown traveler has squeezed my arms past uncle.

Here are the pieces of my afternoon, a few forgotten invitations,

a commercial for shampoo and a movie about a speed jump-rope athlete;

it is all so fleeting, and yet I move through mud with the few thoughts

I can capture,

still (sometimes, some not) enraptured in this drought by

the streams of water that runs from (somewhere, always here)

throne to (all) His own.