You Paced Yourself Well

 

You Paced Yourself Well

(“Look to the Lord. Always look to him.” 1 Chronicles 16:11)

You’ve drunk it down, sweated it out and
once you would have laid down your life.

You’ve thrown food to the winds,
confessed your sins and mildewed plans
while every syllable from the solo act,
every word from the invited speaker,
hitched your thoughts to higher dread.
You listened and fell, your soul escaping
the hell you thought was part of the discount package.

You hated the ritual, this routine of bleeding
your prayers on moldy carpets until someone closed
the back door. You were alone; you had stayed long
enough until only the custodian heard you wriggling
to leave like a worm on a hook.

You hoped one day it would stick, one time the proof
would enter you like a beacon or a knife. If not god,
at least a bishop or an elf might see the effort you
put into your piety. The only think you hid was how
you wished mystics were more forthcoming about the
emptiness of groveling.

You paced yourself well, hoping to complete the
marathon once, if not twice. Now too old to breathe
so deeply, you hoped the buckets filled with your weeping
impressed anyone who knew anything about seeking.

Where was God in the straining, in the agony and paining
over mosquito thoughts and missing the maker’s marks?
Outside the ward where you slept and ate, where knee-pads
sealed your fate,
there were donuts and black light posters,
poets and belly dancers. There was
the morning breeze
that swept up from the warming sod.
There was the museum of modern art
and a café where friends joked about naming
their newsletter “The French Press”. But mostly,
entirely, easily, openly

There was God.