Afternoons Slip By

Afternoons Slip By

(“Lord, make me aware of my end and the number of my days so that I will know how short-lived I am.” Psalm 39:4)

I looked behind me to see how crooked
the line had become. I think I waited for
perfection
to creep up on me.
I may have let the days pass too innocently,
and the words I spoke so incoherently
as I tried to explain the reason I would not
walk in the rain.
I don’t regret a single conversation I had that
led to no conclusions at all. I would have more if
I could find someone to talk to.
We incubated words and hoped they would hatch
into new ideas about how to spend the day.

I might open my eyes underwater, I might
reach for the sky and capture a cloud. But I wish
I had called you more often, that I had made a list
of all the silly jokes we would tell over the years.
I might try the phone number I’ve known since childhood
but I’m convinced that number has grown extinct.

Afternoons alone slip by so slowly while
the years I remember zoom by like supersonic spies.
Time draws lines like fences broken by the rain.
I bring to mind underfunded misfortune and laugh
under my breath
at the thought of it all.

Will you meet me for a beer before it becomes so
late that I’ve forgotten your name?

A Southern Breeze

A Southern Breeze

(“They will reach Jerusalem with gladness, singing and shouting for joy. They will be happy forever, forever free from sorrow and grief.” Isaiah 35:10)

So far from home we didn’t recognize the language
echoing around us. Similar, but unknown, it cast its
sounds like the frogs on the bogs near the end of the day.
But when they sang, we awoke. When they spoke in
stories that seemed to be repeated for the purpose reminding
themselves that once they were one, now they are one,
and will always be one. Perhaps they shared battle stories,
or romances around the campfire. All we knew is
we were on our way home
and hoped they would send us on our way
without a map to our name.

We had left years before, fleeing the vagaries of
cold edicts from foreign lands. We wailed and took
our babies with us to escape the fire by night that
no longer guided our steps. We ran until the end of
the city was a day behind us and carried the children
for days until we had no recognition of the land before us.
We took note of the eastern sky each morning as we
wandered like sheep without a shepherd. We escaped
like embers from a fire stoked by the wind.

But the day dawned when spirit blew us back the
way we came. We slowly turned, a steamship in the sea,
and made our way home hoping nothing had defaced
our memories. We had held them in our minds for so long
we hoped to find them unstained from the years we were gone.
But joy overtook us, a southern breeze that warmed the day,
and we danced back home like young elks along the river’s edge.

Working in the Back

Working in the Back

(“We are ruled by Christ's love for us.” 2 Corinthians 5:14a)

Were you working in the back where no one could see you;
do you crouch behind the boxes to hide the words you fear to hear?
Didn’t you once run the place,
didn’t you greet every person as they came in the door?
You were no warrior, but you fought for those you loved;
You were no prophet, but you spoke love to the unloved.
Did it wear you out,
did it damage your innocent desires for something far better
than fences to keep everyone out? Did the wall
they
erected make your heart fail as you clawed at it with
your fingernails.
People used to come and go freely.
People used to come and go.
Wasn’t it about time for the wall to fall,
nearly time for the sun to call when it sets
for all the hiding and timid ones who once
frolicked through the day to come watch the
horizon light up like Picasso.
Our hands
are still calloused from bearing the burdens
that only love makes light enough to carry.
Our feet
still walk home to home hoping to find
artisans who model their days after lovers in the park.
But some days are too much,
much too much,
and we drink our coffee in the shadows,
sit behind boxes,
work in a corner of the backroom closet hoping
to wake to a different day. Hoping to find a way
to bring some love back to this place that has forgotten
its name.

All He Wanted Was to Know His Name

All He Wanted Was to Know His Name

(“That’s why the spring was called, ‘The Well of the Living One who Looks after Me.’” Genesis 16:14a)

He side-stepped into town; didn’t want his face to be seen.
He stepped over every crack, carried dried bread in his pockets.
He was from another country, he rarely heard his own language.
His face was crusted like a coal miner’s map. He never liked
being watched. He would step into the shadows. He never liked
being asked where he was from, or how he got to where he was.
Every road was different, every meal the same. All he wanted was
silence.
All he wanted was to know his name.
He watched for movement behind the trees, limbs that moved against
the breeze. He listened for snapping twigs, for whispers, for a
stray dog’s bark, or perhaps the sun and shadow colliding just ahead.
No one knew him. No one ever did. He moved through time,
past tilting billboards, around rail stations abandoned like scarecrows
in the desert.
He read every cloud. He rehearsed every line of the day. He memorized
all he had forgotten from the day before.
Suspended in the space between nearly and always,
he rarely stopped. The future was inevitable. Dust devils
were the only messengers of god he knew.

Then his luck ran out. His tank was empty. His feet curled in on themselves,
his brain sought the solace of shade and croaking frogs beside a
farmer’s duck pond. He let his guard down. He let the spare breath
he had
form words he feared. He saw the eyes that saw him. He saw the feet
moving gently along the bank. He heard the voice, light and translucent,
that only said (he shivered)

I see you.

It was a child’s voice. They were darting eyes that saw everything. They
came from the sky and the dandelions at the same time, these eyes that
belonged to everyone. And he let his breath go to

Fill the void he had left behind him.

Standing Right in Front of You

 

Standing Right in Front of You

(“Jesus said this because the people were saying that he had an evil spirit in him.” Mark 3:30)

You have him standing right in front of you,
the one without the loaded gun,
(No, I do not have a gun).
the one who eschewed the sword,
(Lord of peace, king imbued with grace).
You have him kneeling right in front of you,
the one with the washcloth in his hand.
(No, I do not boast of loss).
the one who disdained the crown,
(Prince of the found and lost).

And still we ignore you, too quiet for our own tastes.
And still we mistake you, too subversive to be a saint.
And still we see demons where healing is measured
in bushels of liberation to the underserving back alleys
and sad mistakes
and perpetual retakes
and weighted heartaches
without ever entering the high stakes
steeples we have erected to point far above
the places you selected to dwell.

We will learn to dissolve our high-minded walls
when we lay down our calls for doctrines to referee
every notion encapsulated minds have formed.
(if they said demons inhabited You,
what prevents us from saying worse about the
least of these?)

Meanwhile we load our rifles, grab our clubs,
march into a garden where a man has been praying
all night long (far after the last refrain of the last psalm)
and demand proof of his identity.

We see demons everywhere when demons have circled our
unrequited thoughts and pulled them tightly around us like
a hat band squeezing our brain. Little room remains to see
the world, the divine,
the image, the new wine,
the healed, the holy
in the feet of one who walks the backroads
slowly, ambling through our souls, one at a time,
and healing those we have left behind.