The Winged Rode Each Wave

 

The Winged Rode Each Wave

(“But she answered and said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children’s crumbs.’” Mark 7:28)

The rains would not blow past us,
easterly and swift.
The days simply wrapped us in
bogs and mud and mist.
There were birds that pecked upon the earth,
taking their chances between squalls and raindrops
to find life where no one else looked
to feed their babies whimpering in their nests.

They would not be denied (though we humans
stayed inside). The Master of Water (seas and oceans,
lakes and rivers, clouds and rain) seemed to prevent them
from gathering a to-go meal for home.

The rains settled, dully silvered in the air.
The rains ganged up on the unsuspecting ground,
(though the snow from a week before should have
been a siren of things to come).
The puddles overflowed, the rivulets flowed from driveway
to side yard
to the burn pile from autumn awaiting the flame.

The wind rounded the corner, up and then down,
the Columbia exerting its will on congregants waving their
distended arms, a parade with nowhere to go.

But the winged rode each wave, songbirds soaring like
miniature birds of prey. The backyard was dotted
with sparrows and robins
who would not take rain or snow
as an answer
but met each moment on its own terms.

Something Turned, Something Shifted

 

Something Turned, Something Shifted

(“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17)

He wished to have anyone,
anyone else all to himself;
he was starving for presence,
hungry for acceptance and so
he stood with holy reticence and waited.

Once he had prophesied from stages,
now he stood where he once had memorized faces
and counted their names carefully. He was so
grounded his feet rarely left the earth. And every
annual report would attest to the numbers and
members that underlined every word.

Now he stood where he spoke so much truth and
was amazed that so little happened at all. The
attendance spiked, and everyone liked him well enough.
But the stuff of heaven had too little grit in it for him
to sit on panel discussions about growing numbers or
training soldiers.

He was tired. His soul felt weighted with the stones
upon his chest
that held him in place, magnetized to death.
And from that position there was no escape,
no speeches, no teachings, that would release his
hands and feet
from under the concrete poured around his soul.

The day ended with everyone knowing the pain that
crashed from his body to his brain. And the long night
began
after the audience all went home
and left him alone
to face the wordless dark of stars a million years old.

Something turned, something shifted. Like
monarchs roosting in the cedars,
like sparrows returning to Capistrano,
his words, he felt, were coming home. But they
were
not his words,
they were their words. They were conversation
without answers, dialogue unscripted, hearts and breath
in a dance of winged butterflies in play. He did not
know what to say
when the silence came. He waited. Everything between
the farthest star and the core of the earth
surrounded the moment in lightness and aboriginal atoms
shared by everyone in the earth, the universe.

And there was darkness, and there was light, and God said
(as if the Spirit hovered between and within everything)

It
Is
Good.

More or Less Precisely

 

(Anika Sage Phillips)

More or Less Precisely

for caring health workers and my beloved granddaughter Anika

(“All of God’s promises have their yes in him. That is why we say Amen through him to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 1:20)

I walked into the room and sat down in the maroon lounger
ready for my quarterly cocktail of headache juice.
Something in my brain broke 4,470 days ago
(more or less precisely)
and now I visit the infusion bar for another
in a long chain of failed remedies. The pain
in my head
runs in front of me most days,
digging a rut, a labyrinth
of loneliness…
most days.

I am the new one at this bar where most
are infused with healing poison
to kill the rebel cells that turned traitor
on the cancer patients’ bodies. They visit monthly,
sometimes weekly and call the barkeeps by name.

Me, I’m only here for a headache, and it has been 90 days
since I drank from the newest elixir claimed
to turn my brain around.

One of the angels set my table:
a bottle of water,
a package of trail mix,
blood pressure slightly high,
and a polished steel frame that will hold
the long pour that will keep me there a
half hour or more.
I have never had such attentive mixologists before.
Another angel sticks my arm with a pin
and leaves it there waiting for my cocktail to begin.
Then the third hangs my hope on the frame,
a premix in a plastic bag flowing from above me
into my veins.

I should add (for the reader some years from now)
we are living and breathing in a pandemic, and
I am not the only one isolated these days. The angels,
they all wear masks, as do their patrons, to stop the spread,
and get ahead of this virus that outsmarted most of us.

I could not see the angels smile; they could not see my crooked teeth,
but I watched their eyes sparkle and the third one had curls that
bounced slightly when she talked:

“How long?” she asked. It is what everyone asks. And I tell
her I am starting a baker’s dozen of years now. Her brow furrowed,
her breath suspended like a dream that lasts moments but
is filled with twists and plots and a-list faces you never remember.

“13 years?” she asked. It is what I wonder too. And I tell her
“yes”
while I recount my work history, my retirement, my fear of displacement,
and my desire to visit Ireland someday. And then I say

“But I did take a trip last year.”

II.

And recount my fortnight with the sunshine of my life,
my Anika, my beloved granddaughter, my bubbles, my
too soon growing up girl in the north country, to help
her mom and dad

Go to Asia.

We dropped the parents at the airport, Minneapolis, 15 above.
I borrowed my son’s coat and boots and thick socks and gloves.
We drove back home to plan our 14-day adventure.

We would eat sushi and pizza,
Papa would cook once or twice,
we would eat ice cream and noodles.
Ani would take me to see the sights
on long adventures in the basement with
flashlights, laundry baskets and Hamilton
on the playlist.
We got snowed in on the weekend, a Mid-March
blizzard caught us by surprise.

But, to the third angel I said:

My ten-year old Ani, my smart and sweet one,
took dance lessons downtown and I stayed while
she and her friends practiced in cohorts. There
were arms and legs becoming machines,
twirling hair and flowers made of magical things.

And then it was time
to show what they had rehearsed. Each
troupe in the studio performed for us; whirled
and turned, interpreted the score for us.
I sat in a chair, Ani sat on the floor with
a dozen dance mates.

But two, maybe three performances in she
looked back and up at me, noticed a chair next to me
and slid away from her friends to join Papa for
a while. Of course I smiled.

But then, one of those moments where time and the divine
meet in such warmth that the space between now and then
becomes so thin there is little difference;
in that moment she laid her head on my shoulder and
I don’t mind telling you,
my pain became amnesia. Oh, and she may not
have noticed,
but Papa cried tears that day,
and is tearing up now just telling you about it.

III.

While I was speaking, angels one and two
joined the third angel listening to my story.
I had finished my draught some time ago
and I wished they could make it a double.

I am not nearly so talkative most days,
but today was one of those yes days,
an amen day,
a day when the angels would not depart until

I finished telling my story.

I Wish You Would Walk with Me

 

I Wish You Would Walk with Me

(“And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you whole. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.’” Mark 5:34)

I wish you would walk with me, I wish you knew me,
I wish you would walk to the unseen city with me.

I cannot see it yet, though the crowds chant its name.
I have watched for its gleaming alabaster piercing the sky,
I have heard the words shouted like a hundred spears
to drive demons away.

And twelve years with the same unknown pain has
slowed my pace while others went ahead on their own
pilgrimage. My courage sinks as I see them disappear
across the hill-spotted margin of the trail.

My face is not disfigured though my brain is tangled like pasta.
My eyes are not darkened though they burn like fire.
My music comes slower, my voice has no power,
my days are on rewind, my nights project images
of ghostly winter trees, fingers snapping when the ice
weighs them down.

The detours are as lonely as the singular path I have walked
for decades. I bring up the rear, or turn back, or aside and
can only be reminded that I have cried in wishes, sometimes
in faith that misses the point. And the pain stays; one of
the few companions
that are not afraid of the unheard words I long for.

I wish you would talk with me, I wish you got me,
I wish you would listen to the silence in the dark with me.

I wish you would hear me or heal me. I wish you would
keep me company.

The Words Are My Breath

The Words Are My Breath

(“’Do not be afraid of those to whom I send you, for I will be with you to protect you,’ says the Lord.” Jeremiah 1:8)

One wrinkled brow could send me scowling away,
sunk in the debris of approval’s dregs.
The earth received my tears as often as
someone disagreed and split the infinite distance between
us into degrees of the absurd.
First to fear my failure (and my successes, I think)
I could plead for my life with the best of them
and then recalculate the trajectory of my words.

At the time I most needed a hand under my drooping head
the abyss echoed back every word that had curled back onto itself
and poked me in my dreams unsolicited. I saw myself.

I am troubled about the words that melt in the rain,
the promises spoken to air,
and bare ground with no promise of clumps of grass
or daffodils.

And yet I know the sun will have its way.
I know words are the spirit’s DNA.
I fear shallowness in my attempts to keep the
loneliness at bay.
Yet I cannot stay silent, the words are my breath
exhaled
and my spirit
unveiled.

The bruises of preselected subtraction
remain. I avoid certain domiciles and domains,
but have ceased to try to explain
the way spirit moves from Beginning Word
to beating heart
to breathing lungs
to tears and then droplets of words
that are silenced by some
and by others are heard.

She Dressed Her Soul Well

 

She Dressed Her Soul Well

(“Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice.” 1 Samuel 2:19)

Habits are the vestments of the soul. Every holiday
we knew
a card would show up in our mailbox,
a day before Thanksgiving,
a week before Christmas.
Birthdays and anniversaries
a card would arrive with the address inscribed
by an unshaking and elegant hand.
Always signed in love and always sent in
a colored envelope to suit the occasion.
Even when we moved a thousand miles away,
there in a borrowed mailbox we picked up cards
from a saint who had practiced the artful habit.

I do not know how many thought of us in our exile,
perhaps dozens, perhaps every day, perhaps with tears,
perhaps hoping to say they wish they had done more.

But one, with a habit nurtured with 80 years of life
sent us air for our lungs,
hope and steady friendship
sealed in simple paper.

How long had she sent friends and pastors,
nieces and nephews,
children now adults,
the hope that someone still remembered,
the smile at seeing the same signature
of someone who adopted armfuls and never
forgot them
through deserts of Decembers?

She has dressed her soul well
though she would never think
a mere pen, paper and calendar
could ever make a fashion statement
noticed by anyone.

Standing Right in Front of You

 

Standing Right in Front of You

(“Jesus said this because the people were saying that he had an evil spirit in him.” Mark 3:30)

You have him standing right in front of you,
the one without the loaded gun,
(No, I do not have a gun).
the one who eschewed the sword,
(Lord of peace, king imbued with grace).
You have him kneeling right in front of you,
the one with the washcloth in his hand.
(No, I do not boast of loss).
the one who disdained the crown,
(Prince of the found and lost).

And still we ignore you, too quiet for our own tastes.
And still we mistake you, too subversive to be a saint.
And still we see demons where healing is measured
in bushels of liberation to the underserving back alleys
and sad mistakes
and perpetual retakes
and weighted heartaches
without ever entering the high stakes
steeples we have erected to point far above
the places you selected to dwell.

We will learn to dissolve our high-minded walls
when we lay down our calls for doctrines to referee
every notion encapsulated minds have formed.
(if they said demons inhabited You,
what prevents us from saying worse about the
least of these?)

Meanwhile we load our rifles, grab our clubs,
march into a garden where a man has been praying
all night long (far after the last refrain of the last psalm)
and demand proof of his identity.

We see demons everywhere when demons have circled our
unrequited thoughts and pulled them tightly around us like
a hat band squeezing our brain. Little room remains to see
the world, the divine,
the image, the new wine,
the healed, the holy
in the feet of one who walks the backroads
slowly, ambling through our souls, one at a time,
and healing those we have left behind.

Open Fire Breakfast

 

Open Fire Breakfast

(“Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Isaiah 55:1)

Did you ever have one of those skillet breakfasts
in the forest cooked over an open fire? The eggs
and cheese and ham and peppers
sometimes cooked at home
but never tasting better in the smoke and resin
and dew. Even a tuna fish sandwich
tastes better outdoors.

Did you ever camp next to someone who motioned
you over
and shared that frittata with you, ashes clinging to
the cast iron pan? If you talked, I am sure
you do not remember the conversation now,
but the taste of kindling and coffee last
at least a decade or two.

The recipe in your kitchen and the
one over the coals
are identical.
But one tastes so free, stays so close to
your memory.

And so, we savor the divine. An invitation. A fellow
pilgrim disguised in flannel. I only wish you, my friend,
had invited me in.

Dance on a Comet's Tail

 

Dance on a Comet’s Tail

(“For by one Spirit all of us—Jews and Greeks, slaves and free—were baptized into one body and were all privileged to drink from one Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 12:13)

If I could put on the asteroid belt or
dance on a comet’s tail I could show you
all the constellations are just stars once
your perspective has changed. I never could name them;
the dots never connected and all I saw were spots
in the sky.

But small as they seem
they are farther away
than you dream in a lifetime of fantasy.
If you could wrap your arms around Mercury
or Venus you would still see only
scattered and shimmering dust in the void
that smells like rust or rice,
maybe burnt carbon if you could breathe
hard enough.

Hug Mars the next time you are on the way
to display your vast knowledge of divine plans
and the meaning, the beginning, the purpose (we’re
listening) of life. How deep are the footprints
of the average citizen seen from the closest wanderer
to earth? How long will they live while the light travels
across multi-verses to your rods and cones?
And who will hear your pronouncements, crimson
and dry, across the spotted night, broadcast like
a bursting firefly. Might you find another theme?

Once you have finished your preamble,
perhaps you can scoot up to the table where
the rest of earth’s miscreants
laugh over our shared experience

and sing the Celestial jigs and reels that began
before the Spirit
brooded over the face of the deep.

On Keeping Score

 

On Keeping Score

(“Then Samson called to the Lord, ‘Almighty, please remember me! God, give me strength just one more time! Let me get even with the Philistines for at least one of my two eyes.’” Judges 16:28)

Tell me what I do not know,
show me what wells up like mud
from a storm drain. And we shall
call it
god.

More or less,
strength is not in hair or prayer,
thick arms or armaments,
ornaments or hurricanes,
certainty or artillery.
A thousand battlegrounds filled to the brim
cannot replace an eye or help you begin again.

 Because we have heard it said an eye for an eye,
we have seen it played so loud an ear for an ear,
we have forced the issue until everyone is dead.

Instead we are invited to offer the cheek,
to trudge an extra mile,
to take off our shirt
and give it to the thief who stole our coat
right off our backs.
Not exactly a winning strategy.

We should let our hair grow long again,
rehearse the vengeance prayer again
until god finally answers and the pillars
fall again
while the waters mourn with blood.

Or we can lose our taste for keeping score,
stop wasting our moments in violence and storms,
roll out the carpet for villains and ruffians,
set the table for democrats and republicans.

“Almighty Lord, please remember me,”
until I remember the newer words that replace
hotheaded folklore and
contested cold wars
with postwar restoration and
renewed adoration of the King
of kings
who opened the temple doors
to saints and sinners,
losers and winners,
Americans
and
Philistines.

Holy Amnesia

 

Holy Amnesia

(“I, I am the one who wipes away all your sins. I do this to please myself. I will not remember your sins.” Isaiah 43:25)

I do not want to boast about privileged visions
or untrained prophesies,
but I have sat upon park benches when the sun barely
reached the ground. Alone beneath the sky,
breath like ghost clouds,
my heart with so many holes it contained
the gravity of the universe.

I have seen

Birds approach; gray, rust and deep sea
toy soldiers eyeing the ground. Above
and alone
a woodpecker hunts the bark; castanets
to waken the mourning doves pairing up
for winter’s work. They have been here before.

Taken to the extreme, all I can imagine
(after the tears have dried following my last disaster)
is stillness that entices a robin, then two,
to come within inches of my mud-encrusted shoes.

Do I deserve their friendship? The seafoam and
salt from the beach past the rushes seem to say
everything I need to hear.

I wander from the longshadow bench toward
the ocean chanting creation’s ancient song,
and I sit upon a boulder
while my perforated heart beats the refrain just
beneath my hearing.

The whole universe is reclaimed, renewed,
and I, along with it, inhale the thick evidence
that sand and sun, sin and whims, have been made
One
in holy amnesia.