Perhaps I Will Hear a Voice

 

Perhaps I Will Hear a Voice

(“Then she stood behind Jesus’ feet, crying, and began to wet his feet with her tears. She wiped them with her hair, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” Luke 7:38)

I.

What no one knew is that I would
have stayed there all afternoon.
Perhaps they assumed I had grown weary
of mud on my feet; so very tired that I
had thrown everything away they though I believed.

II.

I heard your voice in a dream last night,
a voice I had not heard in forty years.
It sounded just the same as I remember,
only it was me-in-the-dream that heard the words
and not my waking ears. Still,
something was broken and
something healed
at careless sentences and curious
memories. There were fevers and living room corners,
my brother and the one high school class we shared;
was it world history?

So many question my departure; so many minimize my pain.
I am sorry that I had to dig so deeply into the archaeology of
my dreams
to hear easy laughter from the wrong side of religion.
I have no idea where you have gone, but I can find others
without trying
who have dismissed the crying in my soul. And, as in
all dreams, you were not you,
you were me,
and met my ache with simplicity.

III.

What no one knew is that I could
stay here forever.
Though they cleverly reeled me in to
their angry godless Jesus,
I can only fall awake-asleep,
and weep,
and repent for salting his feet
with my tears.

And now my heresy grows
as I stay where I can never leave.
He has reduced me to essence only.
It is lonely here. Perhaps I will hear a voice
awake I recognize from down the years
tomorrow or today. I still break,
I still heal,
I still have stories I am not allowed
to tell.

But I have stayed in the place where
my stories are safe, my proofs are optional,
and the voice I hear is spoken in things
more solid than

Dreams

or

Doctrines.