The Trees Seemed to Ignore Me

 

The Trees Seemed to Ignore Me

(“God was pleased for all of himself to live in the Son.” Colossians 1:19)

I.

Don’t ask me how I am,
there is something crumbling from
within my heart today.
The foundations are cracking,
the mud walls are melting,
the roof is leaking,
and this has sent me into a panic.
full.
stop.

I used to feel chosen,
don’t ask me how I feel today.
I once felt cozy and ready to sing
for anything that came to mind.
Now my fingers cannot find the chords,
my feet stumble over the rhythm,
my heart only knows the lyrics from
love songs 50 years ago.

I used to love exploring,
don’t ask me where I’ve gone today.
I once followed the Tuolumne River,
I once climbed Sunset Crater,
twice I sat at the annual folk festival
in Manitoba, finally dancing in hippie earth
tone fashion.
Two decades behind me, the festival has
moved underground, or perhaps
disintegrated into.
thin.
air.

I’ve driven through blizzards to
deliver a teenage daughter to her father
70 miles away who was dying of cancer.
I once tried to dig to China with a
tablespoon in my backyard SoCal.

This is exactly how I’ve been,
the slow crumble of stumbling years
and the trusted signposts no longer useful.
So, hollow within, and losing my bearings,
the emptiness unleashes its harshest poetry
within a brain that already is quick to hear
the distressed and aged wood of blame, regret,
and failure.

II.

Even the trees seemed to ignore me.
The mourning doves only stared at me.
The breeze deceived me into thinking
the next day would be easier.

But, finding only a speck of golden silence,
I heard the footsteps of god in the
easy branches and blooms of the apple tree.
I heard the whisper of god in a cat
meowing from behind the brush pile.
I heard the song of god in uneven time
in the wind that changed key so often
it actually sounded like me.

Kenosis. Emptying.
Filling. Completing.
Incarnate. Proximate.
Are the earth, the moon, the sun,
the mud, the ducks, the rabbits, the planets,
the roses, the snakes, the thorns and
rivers all
the generous emptying of god into all creation?

And pain, will I find the divine there?
And suffering, from top to bottom,
god has not rationed suffering,
has not risen on a jeweled throne above it,
but entered into, nailed his very body to
the angriest pain and stayed until cruelty
was finished.

If this is the god of the universe,
then perhaps my crumbling heart is
the perfect sanctuary to meet the
enfleshed one.