Circles of Pain

Circles of Pain

(And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” Ephesians 2:22)

The pain has grabbed me around the neck today,
pressing its way into every thought,
cauterizing open wounds
and blinding every well-meant phrase.
It’s been that way for two days now
and I could not sing and could hardly finish
a walk in the cold February air.

I planned on writing something full of spirit,
full of life and daffodils rising before a hint of
spring.
Instead I record these words and know they have
little meaning to those who can walk through a day
with doubts cast aside like rubbish and last year’s
party ribbons.

There must be some sense to this all,
I used to say.
There must be some purpose that leaves me
more whole by the end of the day.

I planned on wondering about how we all
are just walking each other home,
but I can barely give myself permission to
leave the house.
I planned on igniting some well placed
lightning
to scare the pain away.

Do you remember how we used to sing
with
only a guitar and made-up songs? Do you
remember
how we used to walk on the same hills where
the cows grazed on late afternoons?

There must be some sense to it all,
these memories that take my time away
from knowing anything for certain.
There must be a way to embrace
the new wine the spirit brings and
share the cup like sneaky teenagers again.

I got up from a nap to write this.
I was hoping it would do me some good.
But I pause before each line and want to
lie down again
except that sleep eludes me and
the pain
makes me homesick for the dwellings
of friends
where we gathered in laughter and naivety.
I’d call you again, but it hurts to speak
about the transfixed nature of this circle
of pain.

So, for now, I’ll repaint my boundaries
with hopeful words of remembrance
and how good it felt in those days so many
decades ago.

There may be a space so safe that spirit
draws open the tears and reminds us
we may not have this chance again.

They Redrew the Boundaries

They Redrew the Boundaries

(“Native-born Israelites and foreigners are equal before the Lord and are subject to the same decrees. This is a permanent law for you, to be observed from generation to generation.” Numbers 5:5)

They redrew the boundaries and stone-built it higher than
anyone could climb.
They turned their language into a test for allegiance and
turned their ear away from unfamiliar accents.
They acted like the world was a trinket they won
at the county fair midway. They pretended no one
else could play.

The land did not come this way, divided up into uncomfortable
portions of triangles and dust. The skies do not argue over
languages. The sun extends every ray without filtering
for nationality or gender. The moon gently shines on
us all.

Lanterns of suppositions pretend to show the way,
but only hide behind the walls erected like underrated mazes
to analyze those who go astray. We have driven too many
underground. We have complicated the translations of
the simple sounds of equality and freedom.

The answers are easy; it’s the questions that challenge our
very being. We could have lasted longer if we had let
the binds between us be as flexible as time. But our
bipolar world kept demanding that they are not us and
we are not them and all of us are separate like the verses
of a long-forgotten hymn.

We taught it to each other, and as long as we listened carefully,
the tune wound itself in and around us, through us and
outside into the waiting air. We knew, after all, that the
differences we see are just the imagination of games played
with loaded dice. We needed the advice of those
who listened to jazz even when they did not understand it.

We Should Try That Again

We Should Try That Again

(“You, too, are being built up together, in him, into a place where God will live by the spirit.” Ephesians 5:22)

Arms-length can feel like miles away.
I’ve seen too many cornered smiles to
believe anything less than this moment.
Every space you leave between me and another
multiplies by the time it takes to reply.
And so we sit on mudbanks quilted with the
apple blossoms the rains knocked off the trees
the night before.
And we long for velvet instead of hardship,
sanity to replace excused absences from our
place in the circle. You had me on the ropes once;
I cannot allow it to happen again.

I apologize for the shields I’ve built upon the
back of fears. I’m guilty of it all. There is something that
bubbles hot like Yellowstone geysers
every time I remember
the way social lunches erupted into
debates we had no way to adjudicate.
Some people appealed to a higher authority,
but the secretary put them on hold

Indefinitely.

Then there were days, decades previous to those,
when a breeze blew through from the southern skies
and our picnics ended with frisbees and kisses.
Our babies laughed and looked for worms beneath
the gingham tablecloth. The puppies never stopped playing.
The salamanders sunned alongside the stream. I can
remember the faces even if I cannot recall the names.

We should try that again.

It Is the Kiss of God

It Is the Kiss of God

(“Three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.” Daniel 6:10b)

Can you see the fusion between what is seen
and what lies beneath it all? I know it sounds
unusual,
I know it might seem absurd,
but there are more things richer in the
silence of things than in many words.

Even the hills in the distance with their cedars reaching
high
draw the slow clouds near until they are
two lovers with foreheads touching together,
and all I can tell you; it is the
kiss of God.

I have endless symbols at my disposal,
invented phrases and bright proposals to
lure the doves to the houses I’ve built for them
on the edges of my eaves.
I only wish I could coo the way they do,
I wish I could woo them to make their home
beside me.

I don’t mind saying that I’ve walked in darkness
far too often. And yet I had few who knew
how night-time fell around me like a cage,
like a cast-iron door welded across my forehead.
If I saw you coming up the driveway, I’d point you
toward the hills, up to the clouds,
and be tempted to escape backwards into the woods
at the back of my property.

Do you know what I mean? My own understanding has
crackled like a broken blister. My own longings are
mostly unanswered. Yet hope refuses to die. And it
is the only reason
I find time to pray between sentences written and
clouds unbidden.

More than anything I wish I could make the words sound
like the doves who sing their alluring songs. More than anything
I would like
another curious day watching the new moon fall on the
fog while we drink ferociously. We will sing jokingly
of the serious decades we spent only to land upon the
hills that kiss the sky barely halfway into the day.

The Age of the Earth

The Age of the Earth

(“Don’t pay people back with evil for the evil they do to you. Focus your thoughts on those things that are considered noble.” Romans 12:17)

That was a rainbow you saw hiding
behind the backside of the barn. Those were
bended rays
that moved around the boulders in the way.
The barn, red slat siding, tilting toward the river,
had stood straight as time when the neighbors first
raised it.

The boulder, worn with age, hid eons and eons of
abrasion inside. A golden salamander had sunned
upon the edges that the waters eroded. A boy
and
a girl
had jumped from its gray table-top
laughing into the river.

That was before the borders were drawn,
that was before English was the only acceptable language.
That was before the fences were erected,
that was before feet were inspected for where they
had come from.

Stay put. Stay out. Turn around. Go back.
Pay here. Stay there. Hit the ground. Flashback.

Churches grew on ground next to sweat lodges.
God gave the white man firearms,
the native only had axes.
It was clear whose right it was to
occupy the dirt. Bullets were the proof,
power was the religion that turned moccasins
to boots.

Let us keep our stories straight, let us rehearse
the communal memory so
rocks and barns and sands and stones
remind us of our atonal ways of composing our songs.

The same sun that dried the buffalo hides
burns the skin of children too long playing on the shore.
The same atoms that began eons and eons ago
build the hearts and lungs and feet and hands
of each of us,
now, and ever shall be.

When I shake your hand, I shake the molecules of
both our distant ancestors and the fires they built to
keep themselves warm.