Everywhere I See Him

     

Everywhere I See Him

(“But Paul claimed that Jesus is alive.” Acts 25:19b)

Everywhere I see him;
it once was not so. I could not see
the connections, the instruments were
untuned
and I could not discern the key.

But every cloud holds him now,
every raindrop transports me now
to beats and tones where the divine
is hidden. Up day. Out night. Up beat.
Sing light. Even the
blue notes
move me to cry tears along with him.

I followed, I know that you know,
but the world was divided, music and
spirit
collided
and footsteps were either dung or mud.

But now the world is one,
the most dangerous of places, beauty is seldom
found in the safest faces. The edge of the precipice,
and one foot more,
there I will explore the joy that steps outside of tombs
into gardens where doves sit on branches to greet the sun.

Could it rain any harder? Could my heart feel any dryer?
Yet the agony abates because
the demons I thought once feasted on my defeats
were birth pangs instead. Misery drove me to
break my knees on concrete floors setting a course for
all night prayers that lasted twenty minutes. I was
deflated.

I was not. I was embraced and did not feel it until
the day opened, the fog lifted, the noise drifted into
the dark lake swallowed whole. And I could hear the bells toll
from a half mile over the hill. I hear them still

In jazz and blues, in mother and child, in lemons and apples,
in novels and poetry, in elders and babies. I hear them even
in the voices just as frightened as I once was. But now,

I see him everywhere.