Blizzard Blindness

 Blizzard Blindness

(“But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’” Matthew 14:27

Some storms are diseases,
deadly or benign.
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
long for
what was subtracted by the pain.
Who will hear the anguish, who will cross the line
between judgement and smokescreens,
who will resign their executable proverbs,
who will sit while the blizzard blinds every
direction out of the isolation. Who will be the
echo, who will assuage this flirtation with madness?

The highway was lost in the white-out and blowing
snow.
The bearings were lost, the directions frozen against
the windshield and the ice grabbed the jeep from
underneath and behind.
He would rather steer clear of deer than
inch through the drifts and snakes where the
asphalt broke more metal and steel the winter before.
If he slowed down it only meant
longer on the frozen path that whistled and cawed
like laughing ghosts. He held the wheel tight.
His knuckles were white. And the ditches were
camouflaged, the ditches were the dump grounds where
vehicles rolled like dogs in their sleep. Six inches from
the ditch on the right,
then six from the one on the left;
the road would not let go of him,
no one heard his voice and fear. The road
was clearly his enemy.

We slide from one storm to the backdoor of
a stranger’s house. We are slick in the ways
we substitute armaments for fear. We sweep away
what everyone knows,
so no one can see that
we all cry out in the storm alone. We all
cry out. We all deny the moans when face
to face
with the barely brave.

So we wait for the echo, we wait for the voice,
we wait for the choice to be afraid on the road.
We move in silence, we sit alone, we dig the oars deeper,
we weep or break the wine glasses on the kitchen floor.

And this, we simply implore and want to hear the
words again that only the frightened transcribe:

“It is I. It is I. Do not be afraid.”

Drenched in Rain and Wine

Drenched in Rain and Wine

(“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid again. In his joy, he goes away and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Matthew 13:44)

My thoughts are drenched in rain and wine
while the sun and shade play in shadows and shine.
Everything is, and if everything was, then I could say
all is well
on a day when frowns are immodest.
Faces from every town,
voices from every conversation,
the store that sold 50 kinds of hamburgers,
the coffee shop that served espressos 50
years ago,
the tiny toes of my first-born son, and the fear of
getting it all wrong.
The playful pranks of my second born, and watching
him grow full wit.
The dance that began upon the birth of our unplanned
and only
daughter, and wondering how I stumbled upon such joy.
The wife I met when she was only a child,
and the child that still resides inside her. I only hope
I have not, in my pain, in my dark demeanor, in my
trespasses and sins
stolen even a single laugh that was lavishly rationed
upon her.

I do not know. I have no artistry in this. I stumble.
I mean,
I stumbled into all of this. While snow-and-dust
sandpapered the prairies; while gales-and-gusts whip
up the mighty river; while songs are sung (the ones
in melancholy minor keys, my delight) I tilt my head
to wonder how I ended, given so much pain falling,
and stained recalling of misconvenience;
I wonder how I found this treasure and why
its simple contents are indexed in my heart;
my bucket list of joy.

The Pain Descended Like a Metal Plate

 The Pain Descended Like a Metal Plate

(“There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.” Ecclesiastes 2:24)

The pain descended like a metal plate,
boxed my head and locked it away. With
all the extra weight
the trail was longer than the day before.
My vision crashes like needles and fog,
I turn a corner and am startled by a puddle
from this morning’s rain. It had not happened before;
I hope it will not happen again.

I have asked before, and still have no answer,
where is the key that unlocks the crushing pressure
nearly cracking my brain. I’m given an
hour
a day for recreation and find time only to recline
to keep the fire away.

I would meet you for tacos, I would. Or coffee and
croissants. But no one knows the hours when the
warden unlocks my cell. I can hardly invite you to
my unkempt ramblings and misfired hope.

I would bring a bottle of wine. It’s true. Or your favorite
Irish whiskey. They are my habitual escape. I forget
I don’t have the combination to free me, and believe me,
I’ll laugh and smile for a while. But I’d rather grin because
I can move my head or my neck or my shoulder without pain
again. Still, I’ll bring the bottle.

Can I send this to you in the mail? It is too long for a text.
If you read it would you understand? Would you think it best
to
bring a chocolate donut to my door. You know why I have
not
visited you often enough, don’t you? You know how my
entire body
is imprisoned by the cold steel of a decade of pain.
You know, since I solo nearly every day, the time may
be short until, insane,
I stop trying to understand anything.

You don’t need to have the key to visit me.
You don’t even need bread. Give me the wine of
your company,
and a few stories from our friends.

Stars Pouring Milk

Stars Pouring Milk

 

I want to see it the way you are seeing it.
I want to hear the sounds of your hidden scars.
I want the silence of a corner booth,
a glass of wine and piano music playing
songs we do not know.
I know it is not the way you planned it.
I know it seldom is.

I would add your pain to mine,
I would join you in the cloudy thoughts
that seep in so unexpectedly. I would
sing you the lyrics we both forget so well.

I want to hear your hurts, though it may be
I have heard them one thousand times before.
It never matters if you repeat them,
it never weighs on my mind.

Your story is my story. And I guard it
in the archives of my heart. Your sadness
is my sadness. And I see it like stars
pouring milk across the midnight sky.

We will sit until your hands warm up,
we will talk until our hearts beat to
the same rhythm, the one the universe
gives in ebbs and flow of seasons, tides
and ocean waves. We will weave our stories
together,
a quilt of crazy choices, and someday laugh
at everyone who never showed up
when our faces were red, and we bled
in front of them all. We, you and I,
will stay far later than last call.

I want to sit back and sigh. I want to
never
say
goodbye.
I want to defrost the fear and
find the few who do not care
that our stories have such sad chapters as these.

I want to know that, between every slowly pronounced
word,
lives a prayer and a love that is always heard

In the silences we wish other people had seen.

People Walk Right Over Him

 
People Walk Right Over Him

(“’Is it right to heal anyone on the Sabbath day?’ they asked him—hoping to bring a charge against him.” Matthew 12:10b)

While you colloquy and cant about
Sunday Mornings
there is someone who is housing impaired
ditched behind the house of worship
and grasping whisps of dying grass just
trying to get to street level again.

But who would want him; clothes smelling worse
than a cat box,
noxious fumes would fill the room.
Who would want him; so much surgery to stitch his
soul,
unroll the gurneys and send him to urgent care.
The Lord’s business happens in
this
building,
and we must not be interrupted by a case of
idleness gone to seed.

“oh no one says that. no one talks like that at all.”

Then why don’t you make a few calls,
search the tall grass,
take your offerings,
bake your good breads,
and find the leaking trailer where
despair and anger have damaged a mere man
in pain who never planned to forsake baths for
weeks at a time. He never imagined soggy socks
midwinter, and never asked for the isolation that
stumbling in the snow brings. People walk right
over you and
notice nothing until spring.

“oh but how should we know. we could not know about the hidden ones.”

Haven’t I just spoke to you in this short tome?
Haven’t I described him, (half of you know his name.)
Don’t you remember how he comes for coffee and donuts
and leaves before anyone can shake his hand?
Don’t you see that sheep limping and lost
are the mission statement of the Shepherd’s own?

Of Puppies, Children and Autumn Days

Of Puppies, Children and Autumn Days

(“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.” Matthew 11:25)

Mid-November in a Pacific Northwest village
along the Columbia River there is a neighborhood where
dogs and children run free and kids play basketball in the
middle of the street.
There are netted trampolines where the
boys and girls squeak
and dogs named “Winnie”
and
“Simmie”
and
“Kitty”
visit each other’s yards.
(Though the chihuahua is ferocious and rumored to be
demon-possessed, her owner knows she is only a child
protecting her new home from the giant monster puppies
that live either side of her.)

Two brothers smile at the old man in the middle,
moved here in pain and resigned to never move again.
The older, maybe 13, loves Kitty the chihuahua, ignores
her hackles and brings puppy Winnie over in hopes
they will play. The oldest of the trio of pups,
the chihuahua only cuddles with mommy and daddy.
But the neighbor boy may know something the rest of us
do not;
how to lure the love out of a silly little brown dog.

The younger brother skips just like puppy Winnie
and laughs through the wet grass in mid-Autumn.
His name is Cooper and the old man in the middle
told him his name means
“Barrel Maker”. He smiled. Ran and told his mom.

And they both waved at the man who loves having
children and puppies cut across his lawn on their
sunny day adventures.

Tin Daisies

 Tin Daisies

(“To find your life, you must lose your life—and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39)

Everything we need has already been found;
every stretching tree was once a seed in the ground.
Every friend, (you know your name)
has entered time to greet you again,
and all you thought you needed was another
new
face
when the souls of the beloved have
never changed.

That which cannot be tolerated has already
evaporated into healing rain.
That which cannot be comprehended has daily
communicated the artwork in and out
of the frame.
That which was unspoken has
filled our hearts at last.
That which was broken has
first been recast as tin daisies
welded by an artisan. Sand
and sparks,
the arc of the sky inspires darkness
to unveil everything the day had not
yet revealed.

And I hear your footsteps a dozen years removed,
and I hear your voice a thousand miles from here
singing the sweetest blues from
the pub where birthdays are marked,
where adulthood began.
And I stand and wonder that we have found

Anything at all.

Untitled

Untitled

(“The rich and the poor are met together; the Lord is the Creator of them both.” Proverbs 22:2)

I.

He wandered the galleries
circa 1970
of the New Berkeley Art Museum.
The gray concrete Brutalist building
housed Warhol and Pollock,
and in a shaded enclave Richard Brautigan
read,
with easy inebriation,
his newest poetry. It was magical in the 70s;
He was 15 in 1970.

Brautigan paused. Or maybe he finished.
The students who drove through the Caldecott Tunnel
could not be sure.
Some of his poems were scratches on parchment,
some rambled the east bay hills. But, after he
put the last drop of whiskey to his lips and
sat down to light a cigar,
the curious teens wandered the galleries again.

He wondered at some of the installations,
walking around pop art and soup cans
and curious to their meaning,
looked at every label in the gallery.

Untitled.
There was more than one. Un
titled.
And questioned the creativity of
leaving off the name.
For him the title was a gateway to the meaning,
a miniature explanation of the dots and explosions
on canvas or melamine sculptures. There was no one
to ask
when the card read
un
Titled.

He vowed to write an anthology of poetry and,
right in the middle of his collection,
leave one page blank except for the title:

“Untitled”

II.

Half a century later, labels mean less.
Perhaps we come into the world as the perfect
artistic medium.
Perhaps we do not need the titles. They may not
be
gateways to meaning at all,
but a tin box lithograph with “sardines”
on the label.
The name tag was affixed so early
the artist’s name has been forgotten.

Another Happy Heretic

 Another Happy Heretic

(“Go and learn what this saying means: ‘It’s mercy I want, not sacrifice.'” Matthew 9:13a)

She was shunned because she
loved people
more than she
loved their god.

Imagine that. A rat in the church
for all that time who refused to
be crammed into their rigid frame
and hung on the wall.

She wore her hair long. The men did not.
She wore her dresses long so the men would not
be guilty of lust. Every time she complained,
they said,
“it’s bad company you’ve been keeping. Now,
go seek the Lord and learn to fit in.”

She could not shake her love for people,
and the god they applauded was always throwing darts
at the unsuspecting. The music was nice: some-times.
often: not.
It could have been her blood shed; that’s what she heard.
It should have been her death, till she looked her
neighbor in the eye and
realized how absurd was the thought that kept everyone
in strict mean time and away from the devil’s chords.

So she, shaking, scathed, praying that god was not
the tyrant she had been taught,
slipped away, cut her hair, posed at the camera,
took a selfie. And smiled.

Then she took her neighbor a piece of pie,
and gave the server at lunch a tip, a grin.
A chance to begin again to be
simply human. Though her stomach was twisted,
her heart churning like a dragster on the quarter-mile,
she knew she could wander in the wilds safely
and love people

More than she had loved their god.

It Was a Fast Train

 It Was a Fast Train

(…to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:3b)

It was a fast train that got him there,
it was a straight line from fame to desertion.
No one knew his name, no one noticed the lines
in his face
etched over time, etched by tears like iron fillings.
He had studied. He had memorized. He had written it
all
down
and hoped that his journals would suffice to answer
the critics who were saddened that his trip took him
so far out of his previous circle.
There were curls of smoke; there were headdresses
he remembered and colors he could not describe.
He knew that every chance he got
he would listen carefully, he would diagram
the plot
for anyone who wondered how the hell he ever ended up
so far from pressured versions of sanity.

Someone else had paid the ticket; they asked where
he wanted to go. He did not know.
East was hungrier, west was warm. South was
catchier, north was torn.
But he could ride for days without interruption;
he could think for hours without answering a
single question
about his intentions. He wished he had written
more of it down.

He didn’t mind the passengers; they had no expectations.
He tried to sleep but found the dreams were scarier than
the visions of wakefulness. He only wanted a glass of wine,
a friend to break bread, and a hand upon his forehead that
understood the changes of time;

The changes of seasons;
the range of opinions that any one person can have.
He fasted once or twice; his menus were spartan.
He looked for an eye, a smile, a wisp of hair caught
by surprise. He did not like to dive into himself

Until

He arrived and heard that all had been cured by
manna, by oatmeal, by simple fare and
dimpled children who never asked him why.

Fill My Heart with Song

 Fill My Heart with Song

(“I tell all of you with certainty, not even in Israel have I found this kind of faith!” Matthew 8:10b)

Fill my heart with song, teach me lyrics from
beyond the border/land. We will walk together,
we will bask in the sun, we will not notice if you are
immigrant or native son.

Teach me your language, let me hear the slides
and staccatos. Teach me your colloquialisms,
colloquy around the campfire as the waves come
crashing in.

Gale force winds/sing louder.
Sea gulls ascend/sing sweeter.
Sea lions play/sing abandoned.
Feet on the sand/sing magnetic.
Head in the clouds/sing ecstatic.

I would fill my pail with the horizontal rain,
I would circle each raindrop with a permanent marker.
I would paste it on the cliffs as an installation of hope.
I would surrender deeper, find the glint or confetti
and trade it for silly talk and sweaty debates until
their value increases. Did I mention the languages
that wrap the globe in miracles and melody?

Let my mind never be filled, let it always have room for
low-rent districts and the dialects that have been forgotten.
If you are the last speaker, I will walk with you hours
a day
just to learn to say
how loved you are, how your cadence shifted
my metrics decades ago.