My Silent Chair

My Silent Chair

(“Peace be with you, dear brothers and sisters, and may God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you love with faithfulness. “ Ephesians 6:23)

I wait for the next tick of the clock hoping ease
will find my silent chair.
I've always wanted to be more than I am,
better than I appear,
and I alone know the secret places I've stashed
the inky past.
I cannot rely upon my myriad attempts at regeneration;
the cushions have taken my form. I leave my chair but
my dense impressions remain.

How many times have I begged for peace when yesterday's creases
keep stalking me down?
How many loves have I preached only to envy another fleeting and
manufactured fragrance?
How slowly my faith has weathered, the silt below me all parts
of my beginning?

So they ask me how miserable I am. They ask in love, they ask in concern.
But there is no cure and no end to the pain. More than the decade of arrows
to my brain,
the spears to my soul have gouged me far past my prime.
And I have turned towards and away, inward and awry, passion and pedantic;
only to find the same heart beating, the same blood pulsing, and I wonder where
the new creation begins after far too many endings for my taste.

I will cheer for you. Yes, I know the hunger after the crisis,
the ennui after the knife is removed when all believe the healing has begun.

I've started more times than you realize. I've stopped even more. And I can
only depend on what I hope is the love-of-Christ and
the interests of a
few-dear-friends.

I Will Sing of the Freedom

I Will Sing of the Freedom

(“Always give thanks for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 5:20)

It was sometimes the precise language that bothered me,

like indigestion after too many doughnuts. I cannot seriously
thank God
for detention camps and quarantined families.

And to offer gratitude in the name of the authorities who put them there;

who do not see the dark-haired mothers scorched upon the road of escape,
who refuse to hear the broken candles of prayers cut off before the answer

who defy the cries of wrinkled notes with grandparent's phone numbers scribble inside.

You tell me to give thanks, and I will, for families with such life that dare our borders
for refuge and asylum from the eardrum-splitting violence of their own homes,
their kindred villages, to seek a hand to help them across the border
to air with less smoke and more invitations to join the
purple majesties and and golden grains. No one told them

half-way through their journey

that families no longer matter in the land they heard was free.

I will give thanks for mother and fathers, for older brothers and sisters,
for baby girls and boys. I will utter praise for the progeny of the Father
who come to our borders and scale the wall if the must, to find just a speck
of justice on
the other side of the fences.

I will sing of the freedom seekers, I will write the songs that urge them on.
I will thank the Father who loves them forward, the Son, the refugee whose long
and ancient Days are full of families who sought a better home, a greater city,
a place where a woman could decide, right or wrong; and where a man could choose,
up or down; until the seeds took root or the boss cut the check

or until the new land of their sojourn
joined the song and thanked the Father of Life
for the spice, the dance, the song, and perchance,
the greater nation that opens its heart to families
like our families
that once upon a time

placed uncertain feet upon the shores of an experimental nation
that hard-pressed, learned the love of freedom as slowly as a toddler
following its mother home.