You Deserve More

You Deserve More

(“Make Your face to shine on Your servant; save me by Your lovingkindness.” Psalm 31:16)

Have you always thought you deserve more than
blizzard skies and hardpan scraps? Have you wondered
why
the earth wraps you from
outside, from farm to town?
Have you looked for smiles on a day
that crashes like thunder?
Have you dashed around the corner and
startled a toddler holding his mother’s
hand?

Have you had your words
dissected from your mouth;
have the tunes you knew from
tooth to grin
made you wish for long summers of
touch football again?
Have you shared a beer with
a widow and watched the tears begin?
Have you paid for another friend’s lunch
while he wasn’t looking? Have you
talked too much because you rarely talk
at all?

Wave, even if no one is watching. The air that
is stirred by the hummingbirds’ wings
brings the morning songs out to play. The
couple remodeling their house saw you
walk by, and giggled.

Each day is camouflage, each night is subversive,
each moon is a grin, each star a wink,
each breath a ripple that
revolves around thoughts uncontrolled.

Have you understood that tears still fall when
there is no one to see them?

Blizzard Blindness

 Blizzard Blindness

(“But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’” Matthew 14:27

Some storms are diseases,
deadly or benign.
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
long for
what was subtracted by the pain.
Who will hear the anguish, who will cross the line
between judgement and smokescreens,
who will resign their executable proverbs,
who will sit while the blizzard blinds every
direction out of the isolation. Who will be the
echo, who will assuage this flirtation with madness?

The highway was lost in the white-out and blowing
snow.
The bearings were lost, the directions frozen against
the windshield and the ice grabbed the jeep from
underneath and behind.
He would rather steer clear of deer than
inch through the drifts and snakes where the
asphalt broke more metal and steel the winter before.
If he slowed down it only meant
longer on the frozen path that whistled and cawed
like laughing ghosts. He held the wheel tight.
His knuckles were white. And the ditches were
camouflaged, the ditches were the dump grounds where
vehicles rolled like dogs in their sleep. Six inches from
the ditch on the right,
then six from the one on the left;
the road would not let go of him,
no one heard his voice and fear. The road
was clearly his enemy.

We slide from one storm to the backdoor of
a stranger’s house. We are slick in the ways
we substitute armaments for fear. We sweep away
what everyone knows,
so no one can see that
we all cry out in the storm alone. We all
cry out. We all deny the moans when face
to face
with the barely brave.

So we wait for the echo, we wait for the voice,
we wait for the choice to be afraid on the road.
We move in silence, we sit alone, we dig the oars deeper,
we weep or break the wine glasses on the kitchen floor.

And this, we simply implore and want to hear the
words again that only the frightened transcribe:

“It is I. It is I. Do not be afraid.”