I’ll Greet the Dogs

I’ll Greet the Dogs

(“To people who are pure, everything is pure.” Titus 1:15a)

The old black dog sat motionless on the grass still
wet from yesterday’s rains.
He did not move to meet me. He merely lifted his
head and eyed my silently, too weary to move.
The air smelled like honey.

Sometimes my mind hurts, sometimes my vision is too narrow.
Often I remember the stabs of yesterday. Or hurts a decade
old intrude into my silent strolls.

I’ve spoken to the dogs along my route,
to the ones who bark like I am their enemy. After time,
as I call them aside, they bark once and then follow me
from behind their fences. They do not know my name
and I don’t know most of theirs. There is one
fierce chihuahua though that insists on biting
the seam of my jeans. I should bring treats for that
tiny adversary.

I have rounded the corner a dozen times every year;
I have sounded out the consonants of pain. But my
dreams are less fearful these days, my thoughts turning
to unconstrained moments in the sun.

A deer and her fawn ambled by my front window
a week ago. I think they were heading to my roses
for a midday snack. My flowers lack their blooms from
Spring to Summer and I think I should protect them from
those gentle creatures.

The quiet days sometimes tax me, I want to hear a human
voice, even a stuttering expression, even a conversation
filled with question marks and compliments. About half
the time, though, the solitude soothes me. The loudest arrows
are a thousand years behind me; they have died down across the
prairies and no longer find me faltering. My body carries
pain apart from the static harm that ebbs and flows. It does
not befit me to grab yesterday’s hurt. I’ll greet the dogs
and maybe a deer on my next venture around the town.

A Day to Play the Blues

 A Day to Play the Blues

(“And so my harp is tuned to the key of mourning, and my flute is pitched to the sound of weeping.” Job 30:31)

It’s a day to wear a long black coat that covers you full and low,
from your knees to your feet. It’s a day to pretend to walk the dog
and leave home with just the leash.
It’s a day to hide your tears from the many who would never understand.
The sun has little to do with it, high and bright,
or
hidden and cloud. Wanting to see a friend take to new heights,
but they tremble, glued to the ground. And the sounds of music
they hear, the soothing chords,
are merely morse code for liberation.
It's a day to shake like exhaustion, to feel the cold you hoped had
finally melted in your soul.
It's a day to hide your pain, you’ve carried it too long anyway.
(Or so friends and experts say.)
Wanting to share coffee with a friend, but they demure,
certain and unsure like the first flickers from wet logs in
a campfire.
It's a day where sitting silent would be good, if there was someone
to sit with.
It’s a day where sitting alone feels more like abandoned.
The sky has not answered back and neither have the distress signals
flared toward the sun early in the day.
It's a day to play the blues, but you need two. No,
you do.
It’s a day when the ghosts of those who have walked away
refuse to leave your heart, your shoulders, your brain, your tears,
every muscle fiber, and you would be rid of them if the replacement was not expensive.
If it would help to spend it on yourself, you would gladly shop all afternoon.
But this is a day to walk incognito in the world and hope that someone
recognizes you tomorrow.

Could There Be a Portal?

 Could There Be a Portal?

(“He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also weak in many ways.” Hebrews 5:2)

Could there be a portal,
a black hole framed with teak or ivory
that would take my thoughts directly to you?
I know I am weak in so many ways,
I know my words get scrambled worse that hurricane waves.
I know, because I talk so much, that the words can combine
to mean most anything.

Could there be a machine,
a blue-tooth thing,
that would transport my heart to yours?
Could it help you feel what I feel,
even if you think I shouldn’t feel that way in
a hundred years?
I want to hear your heart, and I want to feel your fears,
I want to know what is behind the words that
suddenly steered the voyage in a new direction,
or at least a different speed limit.

Oh, if you knew my words, understood them, definition and
implication, and still closed the door just a bit tighter,
I would stay outside until I knew if you would change your mind.

But, if my words, misunderstood, undefined and simplified,
entered your beloved psyche, I would wait forever in hope.
I would not knock on the door, or ring your bell,
but I would tell you where you could find me when the
words finally rang true, rang in tunes we both could hear.

You’ve asked me about my past, and I would tell you.
But I do not want to belittle anyone else who may have been
a part of my story. Can we leave it at this: I am ashamed of
wrong turns I took on several roads. I am weak in many ways.

I know your heart, without a portal or black hole,
that you are sometimes frightened, but always loving.
I hope, if we need a portal, you will find me weak (yes, so weak)
but good.

It is my turn to open the door wide, even if yours is closed a bit,
and invite you to sit before the hearth that is always lit with
warm fireglow, the grace of love learned in sand and grit.
I will not hide the cracks along the walls, although I do sometimes
still feel shame. But they are part of me, the places that earthquakes
took almost everything.
I would serve you tea, or iced coffee, I would read your favorite book
or listen to your silence. But my door would never close, the locks
were thrown away long ago.

If I could show you the future, this is what it would be.
Two friends who cannot wait to share the mornings together,
the direction of the wind, the slant of the sun,
two friends who have beaten the odds and are closer
than anyone deserves to be.
Two friends, unafraid, weak, sometimes shaken,
but ever carrying two hearts as one when one heart is
too heavy to bear.

The Terminally Crazy One

The Terminally Crazy One

(...so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Thessalonians 1:12)

When black lives seem to matter less to
people dressed in their sunday best
than people of privilege driving by with
rifles in their racks and stacks of collectable angels,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

When care bears are satanic, and purple teletubbies are gay,
when a president who prays and quotes the mountain verbatim
is called the anti-christ and his family monkeys
and his wife not a woman but a man,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

When pledges of allegiance to an empire’s flag
are enforced from stadiums to sanctuaries,
when the national flag flies proudly from steeples
that declare Jesus is lord and soldiers are honored before
teachers and workers with the poor,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

Even my therapist asks about my church attendance
and wonders why it has fallen off
like a toddler too near the top of a ladder.
Seems like I’ve seen her forever (or a facsimile)
and she insists I’ve made very little progress.
She is right, I’ll admit; the forces that forced me to
make my first appointment have not decreased since
the first day I confessed until yesterday when I doubted.
Talk is cheap with the right insurance, and prayer is all
left to the bereft and poor. But the meds help me sleep,
though they do not repel the dreams where every attempt at
to exonerate my soul is unexempt from overnight sweats.

When leaders lie to cover their mistakes, not bishops,
but maybe a few. And others insist their lack of candor
was necessary for the saving of a soul,
when the screw was turned in the name of purity
and holiness was a name for those with the fewest
tvs and lps in their home,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

When love is the flag we love (not a rebel rag or country’s
glorification)
when the least of these matter (the widow, the poor, the
black, the immigrant)
when sight is given to the blind (thus seeing Christ in
the crowds, the soft and loud)
when the lame are allowed to walk (thus marching in streets
for the beloved we have forgotten)
when freedom is the air each one breathes (thus untasting
the sour fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)

When the walls finally crumble, not from war our shouts,
not from trumpets or triumphs,
but from the sheer weight of grace that descends like rain
filling the oceans and rivers, the streams and inlets
with the knowledge of God, the mercy of Christ

Then

I may decide to join
the terminally crazy ones.

Clipped Wings

Clipped Wings

(“If one part is suffering, then all the members suffer alongside it. If one member is honored, then all the members celebrate alongside it.” 1 Corinthians 12:26)

Someone had clipped the bird’s wings
and now he could not fly; not only for distance,
but for sheer folly and for time.
For more than a decade he simply hopped from
root too root underneath the trees where
the nests of cousins and brothers,
comrades and others,
settled in comfortably every Spring
and sang the songs that make men and gods smile.
He still could sing, but the tune never carried further
than the retaining walls around the yard.

Not only was his flight stolen, but the stumps of wings
were chronic wounds. He was not raised to be a stoic bird,
his voice was loud as a mockingbird. And time, and other time,
he wailed in his pain; a decade of catching the wind had been
removed from him.

At first the others, sorry for his loss, spoke to him from the
safety of their branches and offered sorrow, lozenges and prayer.
They would say he did not look in pain,
and that his wings were as beautiful as ever before. He wore
them high off his back as often as he could, but cried once night
shrouded him from the view of the mothers and their fledglings.
His singing stopped after no one listened anymore, but
crying, that awful sound that comes from a bird that is hurting,
cracked the midnight more often than the annual flocks imagined.

Each spring they began again, “How is your pain today? Have you
tried flying upside down? Have you tried seeds instead of worms?
And why don’t we see you at our morning gatherings to chirp at
the sun?” And then they would say, almost every day, for almost
an entire decade, “And we will pray for you.”

Agony takes its toll upon the most remarkable birds,
the eyes shrink to black, the legs wobble like toothpicks,
and the song is undiscernible as music at all. Then the soul,
the soul dries up like watermelon left on the vine too long.

Finally he squawked like a parrot, hissed like a rooster,
the pain had torn a hole where his heart had learned to sing.
This time the flocks did not even ask their questions,
but berated his attempts to sing of his grief. How does a bird
get over losing its voice,
how does it move past its wingless existence?

And occasionally, from the sky, a fellow flyer would hear his cry
and shout from above, “We are praying for you.”

For
ten
long
years
they
said
they would pray.

For
ten
long
years
nothing changed.

For
ten
long
years
he
longed

For visitors who would come and
take him under their wings.

Matter

Matter

(“Tie them on your hands and wear them on your foreheads to help you remember my teachings.” Deuteronomy 6:8)

We need no further instruction, we are full, we are satisfied;
We do not need the signs along the boulevard, and please do not
bring them to my neighborhood.
My Life Matters: that’s all you need to know.

My Life Matters, but has never been mistaken for a felon.
My Life Matters, and I can trace my relatives back to tobacco and cotton farms,

bogs and peats before crossing in hope, the Great Blue.
My portage was paid, my travel discretionary.
My Life Matters: where would you be without me?

Your Life Matters? Of course, but only as it relates to me.
Your Life Matters: And your relatives crossed the same Tossing Sea, though
I grant you against their will. But the climate was better, and jobs awaited you
once you brought the right price at auction.
Your Life Matters: but I just don’t see why you are making such a fuss.
Weren’t you freed? Aren’t you living the Dream? I know the school
where you live sits like an abandoned air force base; sand in the bubblers,
weeds between the crumbling pavement cracks.

Black Lives Matter, and after letting time rush between our feet, the
river we never catch,
and after letting reason have sway over the reflexes that make our mouth
into a muttering mass of artillery rounds, we pause

And honor your suffering without cause.

We will only say All Lives Matter when we put, at the head of our line,
those forced to the back and beyond empathy’s reach. Until then

I (cannot speak for “we” now) will honor the Meaning of every
sorrow, every grief, every cloud that should not have perched above
the barrel of a gun too quickly squeezed by an officer of the Peace.

I will honor the Uniforms who embrace the best wisdom, who
sit at the feet of the inner city father long enough to hear,
who let themselves weep at another neighbor’s pain,
who, along with their tears, look humbly in the eyes
of a black man’s grief, and lead the amen, the rhythm
of brotherhood alive again, and can repeat the humble refrain,
the quiet unison above the foolish chatter;
“I understand now, and with you say, without doubt,
without deceit..

Black

Lives

Matter