Not Going Anywhere

Not Going Anywhere

(“And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’” Isaiah 6:5)

I think I’m staying here today, and I’m not going anywhere tomorrow.
I’ll sit in the same straight-chair, and I’ll insist there is no sense in
following
the very next dream that pulls me in.

I think I’m unable today, and I’m not lifting any stones tomorrow.
I’ll pretend I’m the very same, and I’ll resist the boundaries that
hem me in
the next time a dream comes calling.

But whether the air is musty, the sidewalks damp,
the sky squeezing the last drop of sorrow in my lap,
the sod is mud, the mulch is dry, the neighbors are shut-in,
the tress are naked and scrawny, and last year’s nests
are a ghost town in their branches;

Whether I write or speak, whether I ache or cry,
I still wait for the letter that will bring
love from a friend or money from the government;
sometimes it’s all the same to me.

That’s why I’m staying here today, an island in the desert,
an exile in the wilderness, a wild mind constrained by
suburban pain, a broken heart never fully mended and
words like arrows from my mouth that sound like
icicles sub-frozen and sharp.

So I pull my chair up to the table,
I walk the neighborhood in a well-worn circle,
I cry over voices in my head,
voices overheard,
voices simply over. And I send a text out
randomly to see where it lands.

Still I have heard, sure and I still know,
the whole earth is full of His glory,
and the embers are on the altar; purge and glow.
My lips are ready for the burning,
my mouth for the purging,
my heart for the urging to know the Love
that surrounds the air, expands the sky,
and does not insist on oblation from
a man who is knocked down already.

But I bow anyway, I’m not going anywhere today.