Irrigation

Irrigation

(“So I have learned this rule: When I want to do good, evil is there with me.” Romans 7:21)

Something has clogged the pipes;
the clear water pours out cloudy.
Every moment we desire purity another
argument is made to wrap ourselves up
into the longer way home.
I am the rope in this infernal
tug-of-war.
I could send more money if I drank
less whiskey.
Who can cut the ties to the shell of myself
that disturbs my best intentions like a shovel
of greasy dirt.

I could play all day if these shadows
would allow. I could have that conversation
we have been hinting at for years.
But something sways everything I try to say it.
I could repeat the melodies I once memorized
and sing them like hope on the horizon.
But my memory is faulty and something
tells me I’d start a fire if I pointed out the
muscled desires that wrestle me so far from home.

To tell you the truth I am afraid of people
and the time it takes to discern what harm
they might impose if we got closer than now.
Do I look fine and does my face disguise the
battle inside? Have I fooled you as well as I
have fooled myself? Or can we both admit
the gravitational pull that sucks us below the
waves of grace?

But the current that threatens to tear me away
from myself
is weaker than fresh-water eddies that
carry me deeper into the heart of it all.
I’ve been cut off by parentheses, first and
beyond. But, opened by two swipes of a pen,
I can read again the paragraphs highlighted in
blue and green. I’ll read them again to
remind myself that mercy is almost always found
just around the corner and just inside our foolish
assumptions of death. The waters bring life
and irrigate my waiting mind.