This Day Has Drained Me

This Day Has Drained Me

(“’Don’t be alarmed,’ he told them. ‘You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they put him.’” Mark 16:6)

Today was dusty, though the sky was
airier
than normal.
It’s not up to me to
judge,
what with the law of relativity,
but I’m not sure I can break even,
or that evening breaks me.

I’ve waited for angels to pull me aside,
widen my view,
point out the empty place in the tomb.
Most days it is merely damp.

Not that I don’t hear the simple syllables
that insist
there is more,
much more than this.
It is all the other voices I’ve collected
and the dark strings of connected incidentals
that have swarmed my silence.

There still is a narrator that insists,
an immovable rock or island,
a force exists that resists my localized
view of things. How can this inner cavern quench
such glorious light,
how can a few chemicals in the brain
convince me the sun does not shine.

Whether it’s the smoke from the forests
or the haze from the factories,
this gravity will not let me spin out of control
even when the whole day has been wasted.

He is not here
(they
say)
and I nod in assent.
But if I understand the angels rightly,
(or the record of their descant)
I may find him on the next turn
down the road.

For now, I cut and paste
words and phrases
trying to edit my life.

Wider Fields

 

Wider Fields

(“But he brought us from there in order to lead us in and give us the land...” Deuteronomy 6:23a)

It should no longer surprise me,
this mud and dirt under my feet.
Red clay from the badlands,
cement soot from the foundation we poured,
pavement dust from suburban sidewalks,
forest loam and evergreen needles,
fallen leaves on steep and slippery hills;
all under sweat, snow, sun, wind and
days that pass while the rain kisses everything.

For all the meander from city to rural sounds
of coyotes on the cliffs and mockingbirds gigging their riffs,
I’m bound inside my mind these days
(though safe, and only alarmed at dreamed
intentions on angry faces)
I still long to wander again,
to saunter past the circles of stringed instruments
who knew the lyrics to everything.

I would dedicate this to you, if I knew where you were.
I would sing my heart to you, if I knew you would hear.
I would hug the fear away from your face,
tell you it was all a mistake,
and gladly invite you to ramble again
past locked gates and lines drawn in the sand.

Would it surprise you that our feet show the
dirt from the sages before us?
Would it persuade you that offbeat is still
my favorite improvisation?
I will not detain you, but perhaps, in this
lockbox of age we will find the wider fields
we once walked upon.