An Invitation to Play

An Invitation to Play

(“All day long I stretched out my hands to a people who disobey and oppose me.” Romans 10:21b)

There are things I used to see only
from the corner of my eye. There was dancing
on the next street over,
there were puppies at the construction site.
There was handwriting I refused to read,
there were songs I set aside.

I never locked my doors, but I built my
walls high to
support the roof, to protect my head from
anything falling un-alphabetically.
I had categories for principles, labels so
the contents would not surprise me. I knew the
names by the languages I heard.

With my door closed tight, I lost sight of
the way the soul shines outside my structured steeples.
(Did I tell you I built my walls? That is not true.
I moved into domiciles manufactured well before
I moved in.)
I was never a carpenter. I occupied land and
closed the door.

It did not take a hurricane. I’m not sure, but it
happened as the earth shifted below the floorboards.
Overnight, over time, over my head, leaning over,
my walls fell and met the wet ground, all four sides
around.

And I saw.

The dancing was an invitation to play.
The puppies were prophetic, the handwriting
poetic. The songs were
nursery rhymes and soap bubbles I had locked outside.

I had lived in a house of mirrors, seeing only the images that
glanced back to me.
I rebuilt a house, a home of windows.

Today was the last day in my well-paneled home.

If I Sit There Silently

If I Sit There Silently

(“We do not know how to pray or what we should pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays to God for us with sounds that cannot be put into words.” Romans 8:26b)

What’s it to you if I sit there silently
while someone wails at the back of the room?
What difference does it make if my songs are wordless,
and I play in a minor key?
I used to think it was spiritual,
now I think it’s just mischief,
to stay one minute longer in prayer
than the ones who sweat for an hour.
What’s it to you if I’d rather hear
the air sing like wind than
repeat another verse of a brand new hymn
that begs for attention, that grovels like sand?

Once the noise dictated my definitions,
once the clock measured my piety.
Now the silence I always welcomed
welcomes me. I’ll sit with you in this
loneliness; I’ll picture that face that crafted
yours and
count every reflection a prayer,
every tear holy,
every laugh a prophecy,
and every raindrop the beginning
of a sacred dance.

What’s it to you if my notes are
indecipherable?
What’s it to me if I don’t remember
pronouncements well?
What difference does it make if I
still limp after a thousand voices have
declared me healed? What difference does it
make if
I’d rather be invited to a meal?

Once the miracles distracted me,
once I had to see ice burn and flame.
Now the morning fog welcomes me to
capture the name that has
been perfect in me day one until
the final benediction.

The Trajectory of My Ennui

The Trajectory of My Ennui

(“’For I am the Lord who acts with gracious love, justice, and righteousness in the land. I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 9:24)

The trajectory of my ennui
landed me at the corner of the sea.
I was too late to see
the tidepools and their creatures.
I wondered where the other seekers had landed.

The tide was up full, the sand lapped up
the foam and held the captured seaweed to
compliment the scalloped design flat until
the cliffs that rose above it all.

I tried to compose myself, I tried to understand
how I had missed the very
thing I longed for; how I began my mission
thinking there was so much more.
I shook without thinking, there was no one else
on the shore. The wind salted my day and I had
nowhere else to go.

The language of the waves was incoherent as
they hid craggy black homes of the
sea anemones and urchins. Nearly neon,
their green and purple sheen waited below the
atonal words of the tide’s uncovering.

A line of stone, a short-wall and a bedrock
cornerstone,
outlined the ruins of an ancient fortress. The
foundation was filled with
water and sand.
Once built to protect the legal citizens,
It was now a haven for starfish and hermit crabs.

I Saw What You Carry

I Saw What You Carry

(“So then, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1)

You walked by and I saw what you carry,
I saw the burdens, the load heaped on you from
far before I knew you. I saw the weight on your
face and around your eyes, the gravity that draws
you down.

The voices you hear are not your own,
or god,
or conscience,
but lyrics of dissonance that have cast
you aside.
Your song is higher. Your melody is sun
and wine. Your story is timeless. Your place

In this world

Was infested with thorns when
poppies should have covered your days
from hill to pond, from pond to horizon,
from horizon to sunsets inhabited by
butterflies.

I will shoulder the load for a while. I will
rewrite the lyrics.
I will find a place, a meadow or a beach,
where you can lay some of them down.
I will reflect the way the light plays off your face,
I will let you see your original portrait in my heart.

Lay them down. Breathe the daylight. Believe you
are flawed and fabulous, free and no mere accident.
Lay them down. And this moment, this second,
this tiny universe of time,
feel the hands of all who have loved you
and leave the others behind.

You walked by and I saw the light in
everyone’s eyes that
twinkle because of you.
You were never meant for ice, though some
have left you cold. And this season,
this turning, this inexact point in time,
feel the hearth of all the hearts that
would warm you forever,
because they have seen you

Walk by too.

The Eyes We First Loved

The Eyes We First Loved

(“Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16)

Faintly the sounds of the vinyl spun
as we believed we knew all there was to know
of love.
We danced longer so our parents wouldn’t call
us home too soon.
We loved sandalwood, we wore paisley,
we adopted patios on summer nights
as our own.

But we have forgotten the names of those
whose eyes we first loved. We have traveled far
beyond the five-cent coffee and
newspaper kites we learned to fashion after
school.

But we remember the faces,
we remember the spaces, barely inches between us,
as we navigated parks with sloping hills,
as we wondered if holding hands was a portent
of something more.

Some of us cry as much now as we
did then,
some of us more.
Some of us try to call the same number that
we remember. Was it 415 or 213? The area codes
have changed.

Our houses were built so closely that
we talked through the windows to the girl-next-
door. Our houses were larger than life,
our flower beds were planted by someone before
we were born.

Did you ever ride your bike to visit the girl
who lived just far enough that your calls were
long-distance? Did you remind the night that some
names
are never to be forgotten?

We marry, have children, raise them to be better
than we thought we had been. But maybe
we lost
our way when we gave our first pet dog,
the one who danced around our two-year-old grinning;
when we gave our first dog Princess away
to a farmer so she would have more fun
chasing rabbits in the fields.

We should have kept her. We should have found a way
to acquaint a gray merle Australian Shepherd
with houses that were now smaller than we remembered.

A Loop Through the Cemetery

A Loop Through the Cemetery

(“Whoever would follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” Mark 8:34b)

I nearly stayed in bed all day with
pain and darkness
binding me and
reminding me
there was no one to talk to until
late afternoon.

I am sorry for my moods. I am sorry I am lost.

So, I walked past an empty lot
with lots of empty spots for forthcoming homes.
Stay tuned for developments.

I am tracing circles and arriving nowhere.

So, I looped through the cemetery,
read the names of a dozen friends and
one name glued to a niche where
my best friend’s ashes are shared with
another. I think he would rather have been
alone.

I am tracking far too slowly. My hips ache.
Dollops of snow anchor the hills to the
river below and crystals above.

Four white-tail deer found their lunch
just outside the cemetery fence. I knew they
would leave once they saw me,
but I approached anyway. They turned their
backs on me
and disappeared into the woods.

So, I followed the road to the top
of the hill
where the douglas firs shade the slush
on the shoulders. I hoped to see a face,
but turned around to start back home.

I nearly stayed in bed all day;
did I mention that? The pain never left,
the darkness turned to sludgy silence,

I sat down and wrote these words and
could not bring myself to understand
what good my dying would do.

I do not mind the solitude, but I was not made for
loneliness.

Cenotes & Dreams

Cenotes & Dreams

(“The sun will no longer be your light during the day, nor will the brightness of the moon give you light, but the Lord will be your everlasting light. Your God will be your glory.” Isaiah 60:19)

There are darkened dreams in the depths
of us like
cenotes in the Yucatan.
We dive until our oxygen runs out,
our eyes unmasked see forms and shadows,
and we awake to misinterpret them.
We saunter halfway through our day
trying to remember at noontime
the swirling plot from midnight. We make
sense
of so little during the day.

Sometimes we compose our own understanding,
we narrate the dialogue, but never write it down.
We practice it well into the afternoon until it
morphs into something
that sounds like the first song we heard
on the radio, the first song of the summer,
and interpret it until evening.

We pass it around like pieces of pie,
we insist we have salvaged the story from the
bottom of our muddy dream.
It becomes our banner. It is wrapped around
every breath like Christmas bows until
it defines us like labels on
tin cans full of vegetables.

And when we hear only silence,
(may the reader beware)
we pretend we have heard announcements
from the sky.

We take to our blankets, close our eyes,
ache for rest,
while meaning slips through our fingers.
Perhaps the snow will cover everything
we thought we knew. Perhaps tomorrow
will be a day
without shadows. Perhaps we will see
the unseeable then.

What All the Writing Was For

What All the Writing Was For

(“Stand up! Shine brightly! Now your light has come! The Lord's glory has risen to shine on you.” Isaiah 60:1)

It wasn’t the suffocating clouds that stopped him from breathing,
nor the ice wind that circled his feet.
He could not quite place it, perhaps the solitude had become
his undoing. Perhaps it was not the retreat he needed.
He saw as many stars as
the men in the next valley.
Though hidden, the same sun would crack the sky
occasionally, a hint that things moved the same
direction as they had from the beginning.
But the winter captured every hope and,
reversing course,
froze his loneliness in place.

He loved to see the eagles atop the douglas firs,
the cows and calves nuzzling in the fields. But
the threads
that ran from friend to friend were
too fragile to bind much together these days.
He feared they had broken, and loosened,
had floated with the northern breeze. He
feared they had been dropped into the river.
And he was too weary to weave new tapestries,
too late, too far, too distant, too afraid
to see them unravel again.

So he wrote. He would send it to every pair of eyes
that had ever seen him truly. But they would think him
far more needy
than the man they knew before.
So he wrote. And sent it like paper boats on
the river to
the ocean to
the continent next door.

And he would not be disappointed that
no one answered. How could they know what
all the writing was for?

I Looked for Your Letter

I Looked for Your Letter

(“How beautiful is the person who comes over the mountains to bring good news, who announces peace and brings good news, who announces salvation and says to Jerusalem, ‘Your God is King.’” Isaiah 52:7)

I’ve looked for your letter for decades now.
From one box number to the next I hoped to see the
familiar script that spoke of your beautiful but nervous hands,
the signature you always reserved for me.
I check my mailbox every day,
I no longer need to go to the post office.
And still it remains empty, except for coupons and
special deals on technical advances I wish I could afford.

I was never a pacer; I sit and brood.
The more I brood the greater the pull of gravity.

I would read your words over and over,
I would run my fingers along the strokes on the page.
I would memorize the reflections,
I would set my heartbeat to their cadence.

But I have been amiss and have not written either.
Mine would be Times New Roman for my fingers
form letters like a ten-year old. I once tried to
speak in ways that welcomed you in. But now, after
so much time has passed,
after all my fears have been exposed,
after all my crimes have been deposed,
I just don’t know if I want to go out in the open.

But I wait to hear, and suppose I never will,
your invitation. It grows fainter and fainter.

Tomorrow I will check the mail again. Perhaps
a letter will land mistakenly in my hands. Or,
if not,
I will write one myself. I will hear the words
come slowly over the hill, the antidote to
silence,
the answer, unrepeatable as
g-d’s own name.

We Forgot About the Bread

We Forgot About the Bread

(“If you had obeyed me, you would have had peace like a full-flowing river. Good things would have flowed to you like the waves of the sea.” Isaiah 48:18)

Waiting for the day to arise,
for the full sun, the faint sky to push
broadly
through the clouds pretending they are
stone walls
between rumors below and
and celestas above.

And we wait for angels.

I would rather an old friend hug
me for one minute longer
than meet an extra-terrestrial, winged
and spinning. When someone told me
they paid for my stay,
I did not assume they were heavenly.
I was happy they lived next door to me.

Once I prayed for days on end for
fire. Once I thirsted privately and
imagined visions suggested to me.
I pounded the carpeted floor,
I petitioned the bronze anatomy of
heaven
to help me convince onlookers
of my spiritual bona fides. There was
little left to hide while I watched for a
wind or a
wave or a
dream or an
angel (so it seemed).

While we knelt behind pianos,
while we were prostrate on antique floorboards,
we hoped for a handout from a messenger to tell us
we had been in the presence of god.

Amens sometimes punctuated the crying. Fierce
words brewed within cauldrons; souls bubbling over with
who knew what or why.

While we prayed just 10 minutes longer to guarantee
our purity,
and did so in all sincerity,
we forgot about the bread and the fishes
and the five and some-odd thousand who waited
for bread.

Skipping a Beat

Skipping a Beat

(“For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed.” Acts 28:27a)

How long will we lock ourselves into
concrete cells,
midnight caverns,
armed boundaries where we shoot
on sight and ask no questions?
How long will we delight in
creating enemies,
launching missiles,
holding on to land that belongs
to no one? Why do we draw
butcher knife lines?
Why do we nail signs to the wall
that keep people out on the coldest
night of the winter?
Why do we aim at targets
only to practice
shedding blood on the property we
say we own?

The end will not come because
you are chosen;
the apocalypse is below your feet.
The second coming is the defeat of
death, of idiotic killing, of insanity
unleashed in the name of allegiance and
national anthems. The match you lit,
the tiny flame,
sets the wilderness on fire while you speak
of holy things. You utter sacred words like
they are your private language.

There are better prayers. Leave the
hell behind, the place you have consigned for
oh
so
many who never said an
unkind word about you.

Father forgive us, and we know this is dangerous,
just like we have forgiven those we believe have
never forgiven us.

Standing aside for just one day, maybe we
can pack every imagined target away. Maybe
we can invite the opponent to stay for the evening,
drink wine late into the night,
and let the cool spirit breezes flow like
music through our souls again.

A Missed Phone Call

A Missed Phone Call

(“For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants and my blessing on your offspring.” Isaiah 44:3)

I heard you called while I was out,
that you had left a message for me. I fumbled
with the phone, misdialed the number and tried
again.
But my fingers slipped and,
too
tentative to re-call, I thought of
dropping by.

You know already how unsteady I am
when I do not know the subject at hand.

But I have not forgotten how to dream.

While others talked of visions, told in great
detail and
filled with colors like Van Gogh,
I was myopic. An ant carrying a leaf
was glorious to me.

I did not understand that until now. I did not
know how majesty invades a dial tone or
a grain of sand. Could it be,
scratching my head,
that becoming less is a better vantage point
than flying with the fireworks across the sky?

Anyway,
what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I missed your call.

I hesitate to write much at all,
(you know my missteps, my wrong turns, my downfalls)
and you would be right to mention them, though
I carry them heavy. I carry them deadweight. I carry them
inside my body and outside my dreams.

But I will meet you. Give me a time and place. We can
sit by the river if you like; the seals swim by this time of year.

Just no place too crowded please; the noise compounds my
dis-
ease.

But I will meet you.
And exchange an hour of our time, and
let quiet talk replace the pathology of imagining
the worst. We can watch the streams tickle the
pebbled banks.