Our Clumsy Navigation

Our Clumsy Navigation

 

It is true, we have
finally come to our senses.
So let’s take a strong boat to
the other shore. Let’s not leave even a hint
that we know where we are going.
I don’t know how to sail, but we can let the winds
and current
take us tacking away from the harbor.
There are words we could borrow but no one
would believe then anyway. There are miles to
leave between us and our sorrows. There are
angels in the air, mermaids under the foam,
foghorns flailing at the mists, and mystic rivers
ready for us to cross.
We both know our stories by heart now.
We both know the water lines.
We both can finish the day and then,
by the orange light of the setting sun be lured
like monarch butterflies to the trees, like
salmon up the creek,
like souls aching to be left alone,
like souls seeking a reflection we both can recognize.
None of it makes sense. But that is why we must go.
We have waited, hoped half-hearted for all the signs
to point out our next departure. And we have stood
frozen and agonized by the shore
imploring a certain impartation, a cure for our
clumsy navigation.
Noah built a boat before it rained,
but we are drenched and stained by our own
immobility.
Jesus walked on the water in the storm,
but we have been tossed while only hazy ghosts
teased us like sirens on the shore.
Sensing the time is right, let’s embark this journey,
provided, of course, that we can see the stars
and trust their movement from sea to sky.

Foot Replacement

Foot Replacement

(“Now at last the Lord has helped me,” she said. “He has taken away my public disgrace!” Luke 1:25 )

I am sorry my writing sounds like moaning,
the ache from morning until groaning for the moments
I slumber only to recall in dreams the burst words upon my brow,
the worst guards against any reoccurrence against the rules.

My momentary agony is the glacial ice of a decade of abuse,
accused from the left and left by the right, and stumbling on my
own two feet the clumsy dance I’ve known since childhood. I would
have submitted to experimental foot replacement to cure my excursions
off the path.

So the cries you hear (when you would rather see roses and robins)
are the contest between the testing of the gods and the arrogance of men.
Midst it all, the sorrow, the heartbreak, the bait that hides the hook;
I have drunk their smog into my lungs and nearly drowned upon the
streets I hoped to live.

Like Zechariah, I’ve questioned God, and God has kept me quiet
more than once, more than twice. Are my sights so short that
He cannot find me in well-timed chastening to undress my disgrace?

I have waited for the waters to recede, the tears to disperse,
I’ve rehearsed every good thing I will say when He turns my dreams
of captivity to joy one day. Yet even He, I do not understand, offers
(through serendipity) the happiest career. Offered to me years ago,
it is once more a special on the buffet. When I turn the table,
ready to take the smile upon my plate, the course is taken;
I am shaken to the core.

Once more, another god-fellow lowers the boom, so full
of himself he cannot see past the fumes of his own hot words,
and severs a tie of 33 years in one angry stroke.

I once spoke fearlessly, now want to sleep and ignore the
knocks on the door, the rings of the phone

And breathe and eat and write alone.

Disrobe this ugly costume of disgrace.