No Power But Surrender

No Power but Surrender

("So you, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." 2 Timothy 2:1)

Once the pain encircles my day all advice sinks beneath the waves
while the crowds shout from the shore how nice the water is today.
I would float on the crystal Caribbean,
soak in August's alpine lakes
just to view the light from my old point of view.

There are huddles so small that electrons cannot pass through,
moments so long the birds and deer leave only their scent behind;
eyes have focused on silence overridden by bass notes never in the score.
The phone rings; another robocall selling me ways to pay for
an attorney. I would answer, but I've memorized his spiel.
Nights are too short, though syncopated with ghosts who
know everything.

Some of the specters are soothing and drink tea or enjoy my
abstract jazz; my bluegrass grooves.
While others are buckets of words, hot soup on a sweltering day,
undoing the therapy poured out in every lyric.

There are expanses so vast, though I have 2,000 friends,
I cannot see a soul or tree or the horizon where the day should end.
The sun sweats. A high growl lassos the sky and declaims the regrets
that time relentlessly reminds each pulse of my brain.

I would sleep in the shade on a day like this in an East Bay meadow
found only by weaving past the eucalyptus, descending to the stream
and crossing the fallen log waxed with frogs and water and time.

But yesterday no longer exists, though each stab of pain urges
the better days when friends had no answers; only hugs and
chowder and
grilled cheese.

There is no power but surrender left. And surrender may be the
most dangerous power that exists. All this brain can do with its
body of bones is fall back in the ocean, the lake, the meadow;
fall back to a time when, eternity past, all is reassigned.