A New Place to Listen

A New Place to Listen

(“Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy when the elders laid their hands on you.” 1 Timothy 4:14)

I heard you crying like a child who cannot wake up.
We cradle them until the brightness returns.
We wait for the sun and forget the rain,
we talk until 2 in the morning, we drink coffee
until the same.

Our tears were distilled and run through the mill.
Our weariness overtook every plan we had made.
Could I tell you one more time how it means so
much to me
to have you fan into flame what sometimes disappears
beyond my fenced imagination? I fear sometimes
that insulation has hindered my brain and I’ve forgotten
the exact, the point, the meaning of it all. I want to give
it all away
again.

When we reach so distantly, insisting there must be
a way to discover something new, we play some jazz
and memorize the patterns that improvised over our heads.

I took a bottle of wine to my friend who had cried
for days. He could not put his finger on it, and I knew
less than he,
so we poured our glasses and reminisced on better times.
We recognized in each other’s eyes the questions that had
hemmed us in like concrete. He told me he never imagined
he would turn solo after so long. I was silent, I knew what
he meant.

We once understood the steps in the dance that brought
the delight of heavenly joy. We were players, we were
instrumentalists, we were singers some of the time.
But now we couldn’t find a venue to play. We hummed
a few tunes while we finished our wine and decided to find
a new place to listen to the music we missed and find
one or two who would learn them through like children.
We were ready to be useful again.