Like a Time Capsule

Like a Time Capsule

(“But can anyone know what they’ve accidentally done wrong? Clear me of any unknown sin.” Psalm 19:12)

I’ve been running around this oval for far too long.
I used to run it so well with nothing left to sell and
only crafted pages of unbalanced mistakes.
I can see them, front and center, all the cages
where I locked away the wilder passions that
troubled me in darkness and silence.

I should have learned it a dozen lives ago that
there is no hiding once the deeds are done. There is no
consent for a choice gone wrong. I lack the control to
turn the pages to the next story I’ve hoped for ages to write.

I faced the facts, but only one at a time. I could not carry
the weight of every kind of stone that tripped me up.
I should have seen it coming;
I should have leaped out of the way. I opened my
mouth
to clear my mind and nothing came out except for
a squeaky scream that frightened even me.

The way I sneaked around the edges of my consciousness,
the way I perceived failures and fatalities only served
to make coming home a delayed tragedy.

So, clear my anonymity, let the motion pass unanimously.
My legs are mud-like and my imagination keeps recording
every uncertainty from the first time someone decided to
pry a confession out of my quivering mouth.

I’ll carry the weight, I’ll set it down on the porch.
I’ll visit the forest just a mile from my front door.
I’ll speak your name although it is unpronounceable
and hope when you call mine it will be a foreword
the new day longs for. I’ll
discover what I buried like a time capsule half a
century ago. I’ll reach out my hands to either side
and round dance with all the tribes that once invited me.

And if someone shows me how I’ve missed my steps
I’ll follow them faithfully until I learn them right.

Now We Are Us

Now We Are Us

(“But when you make a dinner, ask the people who are poor, hurt, lame, or blind.” Luke 14:13)

The places are set,
the invitations were sent weeks ago.
We once were clowns who only hung out
with the circus. But the sun came up like
no other months ago
and we canceled our subscription to the
magazines
that fashioned our disease. We only felt
comfortable with
people like us. We set the places
mindfully,
hoping for new conversations to open
the sky, new songs to answer why we never
thought of this before.

We were awkward at first, finding our words,
slaking our thirst, watching the door for the final
few to find their seats unrehearsed.

We hoped for inspiration, the kind you get when
you climb a mountain higher than the birds fly.
We hoped the air would clear our minds,
the breeze unfreeze our brains from ages of
sitting like mirrors around unstable tables.

We hoped they felt welcome.
We hoped to dispel some of our unconscious
biases lately starting to give us pain.
We hoped we knew their language,
we hoped we spoke of the face value
of beauty all around the plates set out for
anyone who would come.

We were them
once,
now we are us.

The Storm Threatened

The Storm Threatened

(“Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” Luke 9:23)

The storm threatened more than mud and slime,
it continued to mock both function and design.
It was predicted,
and we evicted the plans we had for a picnic
afternoon.

It drove us to pray for promised deliverance,
It captured our imprisoned intelligence.
It was so sudden
there was hail in the garden
and conversations were muddled well into
the evening.

We watched and wondered at the thunder that
drove so many home. We woke later than usual
with eyes red from dust and distrust as we ached
over the mockingbird’s song that repeated the
false charges, wary accusations, and verdicts
made of sand.

(Crucify)

And we breathed the air that was burning plastic,
acrid and across from the garden torn up by
the onlookers in their rush to ridicule with words
the prisoner nailed to lumber. Why won’t he
come down? No one wanted to see that, of course.
No one wanted to spend more than half a day
glaring at the sky stripped of everything that
would open their eyes.

Everything turned black, every sign was
beyond belief. Every person felt that pain in
their chest and their minds found no rest as they
wondered why he ever was called a king.

Before the storm we heard him say they might

(Crucify)

Him. But that day was sunny and we never imagined he meant anything more than some days would go slower, that some days might be over later than we imagined.

Now the storm, the thunder, the pounding drops of rain
so thick they kicked up the dust all combined to confirm
our hope was gone. We could not let this night go by

(Crucify)

We did not know the storm would pass, at least not
that we could predict. But women found the
garden in the morning sun and surprised us all with
something we hoped was a new dawn,
a fresh beginning, a new ache that makes us
want nothing more than to follow, storm or sunlit days,
the trajectory that disengages us from reliance on
various changes in the wind.

The River Kept Flowing

The River Kept Flowing

(“John answered, ‘Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.’” Luke 3:11)

Fascinated by the reflections of still life
in the pools around the banks of the river,
people gathered to watch who might wash themselves.
Undeterred, some were ready to wade into the deep
to their waists,
wanting the germs cleansed from their ravenous thoughts.

Are you asked to give before your feet hit the water,
are you asked to share what your last morsel of bread?
Did you consider how short the span between birth and death,
did you contemplate the thinnest slice of your life?

What prerequisite did you ask to precede your
turning point? Why would water alone be enough
to baptize your fears and intentions? Did your tears
mean anything as you heard the answer to your questions?

After you heard the answer did your courage fade?
After you left your jacket on the bank did you wish
you had an extra?
After the water flowed over your head did you find
new ways to share your daily bread?

The river kept flowing, didn’t it? Your tunic ballooned
like a parachute. The same sun shone as bright as it always
had been. The same eyes stole into your soul. You
and
everyone else
hoped the changes would last.

Hearts Turn to Dirt

Hearts Turn to Dirt

(“If anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all.” Mark 9:35b)

There are days when hearts turn to dirt,
not rich garden topsoil,
but crunchy desert crackling underfoot,
shrunk by the sun in judgment.
Those days are long days. Those days are empty
and thorny.
Those days are fraught with heat dreams and
cold fevers. Those days pierce your ears
with isolation and your soul like uncreating
everything that once welcomed spring.

You left a forwarding number (or so you remember),
you told a few best friends where to find you if you did not return
by early September. Yet by October you have lost your way home.
No one phones. No one brings heat for your heart or ice
for your head. In the meantime, suburbs have risen all around
your saguaro hideout. You live outside in the elements,
they live inside with molecules and compounds in boxes
and stained-glass bottles. They play music your heart remembers,
but the chances for joy feel as remote as the friends you
remember from grade school. (You are sure you left them
your number.)

Some are managers, some housewives, some are the principal
paymasters, others dig minerals donated to museums. All were,
at least for a day, or another,
the loves who would massage your heart until the color
returned to your face.

Now, alone, no way home, and no one to keep you from
evaporating to the bone, you rattle. And you wish you could only
be
as silent as they are
when silence was the last thing you needed.

All Anyone Wanted

All Anyone Wanted

(“Feast there in the Presence of God, your God. Celebrate everything that you and your families have accomplished under the blessing of God, your God.” Deuteronomy 12:7 [The Message])

 

His choices once were boundless, the wideness of time and
the land spread before him like a queen’s banquet on her
coronation day.

There was nothing to hint in the air or the sky
or the pizza late night games with a dozen young dreamers
and their children fast asleep--
there was nothing to hint that many would not see him again until
he finally was on the ground.

 

How had he fallen among the dark shadows begging for longer hours
and brand new bread? Why was the daylight so slanted,
the help he was handed so ghostly, the glances interpreted
as holes in his shirts and acne in his soul?

 

From the time he hit the dirt until he accepted his
next invitation,
he only sat with children whose sense of invention
held him steady in the embarrassment that his poetry
no longer rhymed. The adults spread out in tables of eight
and he laughed with babies with deviled egg on their faces.

 

There was a cradle that held parts of him
he could not explain. There was a toddler in a playpen
babbling his name. And so he knelt in the corner,
eye to eye with one
who knew the ground as well as he.
He never knew what to say when the one adult
across from him made it two at the table. Words
were stumbling and sometimes stuck sideways
in his throat.

 

But still he craved the fire, still he wanted to go where
the flames wrapped each word with smoked goodness
and the embers never died until well after dawn.

 

He never knew what to say when it was only two
at the table,
but the food they offered, the drink they poured
opened portals of the spirit. The babies and children
laughed harder and the adults did not mind.

 

Eventually he discovered a real live giver,
another breather with his same misgivings and
realized
all anyone wanted was a meal on a paper plate
beside the kitchen door.