That Calls You Beloved

That Calls You Beloved

(“Look, my God will help me. My Lord will support me.” Psalm 54:4)

I’ve seen what the external voices have done to you
building a brick red barrier around your heart. I’ve seen
the locked door that sealed up the most human of your hopes.
I’ve seen how the music has changed, how it challenges your
perception of time. If only the days would end sooner;
if only the quiet would be sweeter;
if only the love captured deep inside you would win the day.

I’ve heard the same voices; you know I have. They still
show up in my dreams, don’t they? And yet you live with them
like words to your face to channel away any joy you had
accumulated over months of collecting the smallest moments
like semi-precious stones discovered along the riverbank.
You hid them away and hoped they would not be found.
You wrote about them, journaling the discoveries that
helped your chest relax, that steadied your breathing,
that allowed the tears to flow without embarrassment.
You hid your writing too; fearful it would be discovered
and cycles start all over again.

I know how you want to be alone to heal,
I know how loneliness can pierce your head like thunder
invading the middle of the night.
I know how you deserve love, I know how you wish
to be held, and pampered, and treated with everything that
love means.

Your trust is like a frayed rope. You feel ashamed that you
feel only half human, when you would rather live a heart
wide open to the ones who see you truly.

Instead, you are not allowed to speak your mind or it
will disintegrate into screaming. You wish you could
stand outside and let out all that has been stored within so long.

I see you. I love you. I want to hold you. I want to tell you
the truth that lies deep within you. I want to whisper you are worthy,
I want to sing that you are more precious than anything I could find.
I want to kiss away the tears when they come and let them drop from
your eyes to my fingertips.

I want to be your new voice that you hear until you hear your
own voice again. I want to tell you, even as I write this, that you
are a diamond for me, as rare a jewel I could ever find.

I want you to know that, besides me, God is especially
fond of you. Fond like a mother’s cuddle, fond like a father’s
laughing eyes. Fond like a light that guides you to the
end of the trail, hand in hand.

Write to me and send it like a letter to the sky.
Write everything you cannot say and find every word
that sticks in your throat. I’ll read every line of you,
I’d drink a case of you, I’d memorize it and repeat
it back to you.

So, I share this very quietly, my words mere sighs
beneath the noise of apprehension. I will never compromise
what I say to you, your worth, your esteem, your value
in my world.
In this wide world.
Hear the voice that calls you beloved in each breath
you take.

Love Does Not Float

 

Love Does Not Float

(“Beloveds, let us love one another. For love comes of God. And every one who loves is born of God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7)

Love does not float.
It digs.
Love sometimes smells like sweat and dung,
coming from the last one you expect and
going to the hot fields to lift bales for the
neighbor who lost everything when the fires came.

Loves does not tiptoe.
It stomps.
It is earthquakes with baskets for the falling.
Love often lives among the ruins,
coming from the survivors you missed and
going to the shattered concrete remains of
houses where only the poor could afford
a building that tumbles with the slightest wind or
shaking.

Love does not fly.
It crawls.
It is smaller than kings and ruffians.
Love always seeks the silent ones,
coming from invisible wounds still healing and
going to the fading echoes whose voices have lost
their song. Their names are scrawled on the pavement.
Impermanent chalk.

Love does not speak.
It holds.
It is spacious as the saddest tear that needs a circle of existence.
Love will stay until the void is filled,
coming from the song of the fields and
going to the decayed kitchen where a widow
wonders how the dishes will ever be done. Her
name, though unknown, is present for everyone.

To Memorize Their Song

 

To Memorize Their Song

(“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7)

I held the ticket in my hand as long as I could,
I boarded the train, the thunder shook, the rains
explained their course in fractals across the windows.
I sat in the observation deck but there was nothing to see.
I had taken the overnight,
and the plains passed blackly underneath my eyes.

The blindness increased the emptiness sitting
alone
next to the cold gray window.
Just a mom and a daughter sitting behind me,
sweet sixteen and the youngest of three,
their conversation was spotty, like the first verse
of a folk song. Then retuning for the next.
Or more like a Dylan song,
where you don’t know if the middle verse
is the first
and the last is the overture. The words were fast
to start with,
punctuated silence between the breaths.
High school, boyfriends, future plans,
cool mom, hair bands, and dance recitals
began before she was five.
I heard it all, the delightful duet colored
my blue night better. They did complain
(everyone does on a train. At night. Crossing the plains)
The seats were sore, the sights were boring, the food was
bland and not a teenage boy in sight.
But their song always ended with laughter or
the kind of sigh when two people know the rest
of the story
and the listener only knows the patina.

I held my ticket until I disembarked.
I walked past the singers on my way out.
Asleep now, leaning into each other with
a single blanket covering their laps. Two flowers
I caught at full bloom. But it made me wonder
what care it had taken, what nurturing, whispered encouragement,
notes left on the fridge, or rides to practice had
distracted them from all the danger that can drive
the best love away.

I kept my ticket to memorize their song.

The Layers

The Layers

(“My beloved is mine and I am his, he pastures his flock among the lilies.” Song of Songs 2:16)

The first layer of attention, the lightness of feathers,
the breath of linen, never left for over the briefest season when
I moved apart the leaves to find another pathway lined
with false proposals. Inclined to believe what I see,
I sought them for the loneliest era; time undefined by
the finite or eternity.

I cannot be specific about what layer was next, or how many,
or what order they came; though I do know the last two as I’ve
grown into a new set of clothes that feel like comfortable hand
me
downs.

Love was never questioned, no seriously; the first layers were
dance and six-strings, never weary of late nights, long walks,
unending talks of what we thought might be heaven to day,
or might be gone tomorrow. Unexamined, our love bounced
like wagon wheels unsprung. We were nearly nomads,
finding gifts between concrete cracks and below rocks
settled in mud
after the rain.
We acknowledged hell with a mere glance, little thinking
love might leave us wordless about eternal agony.

But these final layers, no, not the ones on top, not the last
bit of whipped cream topping a parfait; these final layers lie
deep within the dish, the final taste of perfect goodness. Here
is where
our minds met, and nearly exploded in the velocity of
pleasures and restriction, passion and restraint in head-on
competition for an affair of the heart that satisfied the mind
as late as sentiment slept.

Would this Lover of my Soul satisfy its imagination,
half would not be rich, semi would not be full;
but let reason ring with passion, affections
speak with acumen; and the whole more complete
having examined each competing thought with
honest eyes and unswayed heart.
We acknowledged hell with more than a glare, more wondering
love would put it there for any creation; and leaving
each interpretation to other tongues. There may be
more clever ways to constrict the days others spent
on loves with different names than we have heard.

Our Orbits

Our Orbits

(“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.” Psalm 145:3)

I wish I knew the why back to the way
I had pointed. Green trees lined the highway
closer to the best work I have ever done: two grown sons
a daughter still at home,
we nearly took the road where our orbits were around
the same star.

I wish I knew the where behind
the lies and intrigue that turned the journey around
and now
twice as far as the travel guide advised;
nearer the ocean but further from my heart.

If it were not by deception I would have taken the occasion
to fly higher, above the ball lightning and surface radar that
pulled my strings behind my back. (Too many still wonder why
I am not over it yet and, as a matter of fact, no one else read the news
that I know.) The puppet master never guessed I found the knotted string
plaited around my wrists.

The courts speak plainly, the courts read the charges,
the courts are mainly for truth and not back-room purges;
the courts of earth are fairer than the kingdom of God in
the meaty hands of man; though no one would admit
before a mirror or jury that it is so.

I wish I knew the ways above the closed system we have invented;
I wish I heard the songs of stars in rhythm with my heart’s distended vision.
I wish every fence was down, miles condensed, sounds made loud that
whispered from high and leather chairs. I wish the stairs were less steep
and the phone would ring with one honest “truly yours”; one line on
a postcard from official executive authority: “we did not know what
we were doing.”

I wish I saw the streams of light that transfer joy from heaven
to heart
to voice
to song
that sees the wrong without confusion
and with Spring’s breeze and effervescent fingers of cloudless sky
still does not grant the why, but hears the where without sorrow.