Moss-Covered Rocks

Moss-Covered Rocks

(“We are like clay jars in which this treasure is stored. The real power comes from God and not from us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7)

What did you expect to find underneath
the moss-covered rocks? What might
crawl out
from crouched tunnels in the mud?

We wait hours for the sun on our face,
we sit in steel-backed chairs wondering
how much blood they will take
to test our disease.
How we pass the time,
how we cross the generational lines,
how we turn our faces and
align our minds toward darkness or shine,
how we offer up questions or
resign the debate with silly answers
no one believes;

How we measure the invisible waves
all decides, destination or journey,
how wide our world is and
how far we can see.

What did you expect to find up above
the world so high? What might
crack the night without making a
sound?

Enclosed by medical appointments,
grounded to the couch for more than a day,
it is easy to see time leaving us behind.
And we wish for more candles, or
shorter distances,
or instant telepathy that would
play our affection completely for
every person and every place
that brings them to memory. Some
have launched me like a dad lifting
his daughter to the sky.

Angels never masquerade; it is we who look away.
Happy boys who tell the patients in the waiting room
that he
hopes they have a good day,
and nurses from your hometown
appear like something solid yet
surreal.

There is more to find in a child’s smile
or an advocate’s laugh
or the life that teems beneath the soil

Than time can ever fill.