How the Day Begins

How the Day Begins

(“I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel.” Galatians 1:6

My chest started out tight today;
underground memories crowded my mind.
Too many crimes congregate and push the
better moments aside.

The glassy sky was reflected in the dew that
was shaded from the sun to start and gone within
an hour. But the lawn was still wet to the touch
and the optics rewarded the future. We might be
able to see the river from here if we climbed a
few feet higher.

I confess I don’t take the time with the invasion
of thoughts that show up in night vision. I saw
you in a dream last night and I could not remember
your brother’s name. But you still held me in mind
and spoke lightly. You helped erase every unkind
infusion I partook in.

As my muscles relaxed, I walked with a slight
limp toward the same course I walk every day.
Unintentionally I rehearsed the silence that comes
following the storm that tried to make me remember
a decade or more of stumbling. I still fear the looks
of everyone I think knows the way my face shook
on days like these. There are warm pools that wash
away the creeping doubts, the increasing debts I owe.

My vision, though, is grace beyond the short-circuited
sight of my reoccurring sadness. It is all supernatural
and still invades my DNA like a steady rain covering
the fields with expectation.

Loneliness Begins

 Loneliness Begins

(“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, which reaches inside behind the curtain.” Hebrews 6:19)

Loneliness begins like bees in your head
while you long for one friendly word
to mute their buzzing. The longer the day,
the more the noise, and the sickness grows to
an ache that weighs

Like lead in your chest. You would fall over with
the sickness, faint front first, if not for the last time
you broke your nose that way. A phone call would
be the alchemy that turned the weight around. And then,
into the night the illness fills
your legs’ hollowed

Bones. And now standing has locked the door behind itself.
The couch does not speak, but it knows your form. You beg
for sleep, and when you waken, you beg for sleep again,

Except your dreams leave you feeling you’ll never please those
half a dozen friends that haunt you nights. And then you
beg in postcards, texts, emails and anonymous social posts,
for one who used to hear your words
and sing them back to you

To return and heal this sickness before the bees’ stings
remind you that you caught your loneliness

From failing far too often.

Today I wait for one, maybe two, who know me
in, out, through, trash, and unholy scan
and simply want to keep me company, dry
my tears,
and remind me they have anchored me (sickened
by the sea) and that
I sometimes was less than lonesome,
and often more than dead.

It Might Take a Choir

 

It Might Take a Choir

(“Now it was Mary who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet dry with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.” John 11:2)

It might take a choir to
inspire any words today.
I am happy that Mary wiped Jesus’ feet,
but everything feels incomplete.

Even still, I have nothing to prove,
nothing less to lose.

So, I’ll write what I wonder,
ask the questions that pain begs to be asked,
scratch my head over churches teaching
the U.S. constitution and
forgetting the beatitudes.

I am sorry, have I said to much?
Did I offend you again?
I’m not sure where to begin,
but I hope we don’t run out of perfume soon
because we need Mary again to fill the room
with the fragrance of love.

It might take a symphony to
awaken my heart again.
I am happy that Mary wept at Jesus’ feet,
I am happy she was so indiscrete
without studying the demographics or plotting it
all on a spreadsheet. She perfumed the room.

I still have too many questions, I wonder where the
love has gone.
We fight for second amendments, we want all
the firepower we can muster.
It is unlikely we will every connect the dots between
the Prince of Peace
and projectiles aimed at human flesh.
I do not think Mary had a concealed carry permit.

I might be wrong. It might take a sonnet or song
to move me close again.
I am happy that Mary was unguarded;
I have been half-hearted and recently a
man of constant sorrow. Perhaps Mary
will show up again,
and we can see close-up again
the love that leaves us defenseless
before the man who teaches us,
who befriends us
even before the music begins.