The Company of Middling Folk

The Company of Middling Folk

(“Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?” Ecclesiastes 7:16)

Did they remember your name those days after
you told of all your conquests and had knocked out those
demons and unclean spirits with merely a word?
Did they pay attention to you when you outlined the
hours of prayer you spent over the weekend and all the
food you refused to eat while everyone else was dining?
Did you think you were dying to exhibit that your best pal was god,
and that everyone knew you to be one righteous brother?
Did you run a popup prayer room where your power petitions
buried everyone’s nose in your pious practices? Did you think
that would raise your esteem among the ladies and gentlemen who
never encountered someone of your holy fame?

And those sayings of yours, those pithy sentences that sounded
convoluted but you said were so simple a child could understand them.
You told parables, but they wound around themselves like condiments
hid in the back of the refrigerator. You pronounced stories you insisted
were heavenly blue, heavenly true. Only a few wondered about their
origin, and among them one or two who considered they were lifted from
someone else’s anthology of folk wisdom.

I’d prefer the company of middling folk who know a joke and tell it
knowing we have heard it before. I prefer the camaraderie of men and women
who carry food so quietly that no one in the neighborhood hears them
ring the bell at the old widow’s door. And they don’t stay for long,
just enough to make sure she doesn’t need anything more. I prefer
the company of people who never outline their acts for the big wigs
to hear. They may go to coffee after their excursions but never brag
about their respectability.

When we boasted to each other of our exploits, we found our appetite
for goodness had taken a dive. When we pontificated about words of
wisdom
loudly in the ruckus room, they turned their backs to us and left us
standing alone. We learned the lesson quickly. We learned the ways of
kindness without announcing it to the world. And we were far more
satisfied, our righteousness and wisdom, quietly showing up the next
time someone needed them. And quietly we would respond, do what
we could do, and apologize there was not more.

Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the company you keep,
and sometimes it’s the weather beyond degree;
but mostly it’s the patterns in your brain engraved
over volumes of time. Like well-worn paths on
the way to a winter’s garden we reimagine
our backgrounds unintentionally.

I’ve visited the alcoves in the museums;
I’ve torn open old pages in the magazines
and I remember every imagination that never
found its wings. The hunt for daylight continues
around every tree that has lost its leaves.
I’ve lost my breath waiting for answers
to every aching circle I’ve prayed.

I have so few troubles, and I don’t mean to complain,
but sometimes not all is what it seems to be.
I feel like I’m mourning for a sliver of devotion
to the rules and gods I postdated. I feel like
its storming a silent squall inside my mind.
I lose my train of thought; I’ve lost touch with
certainty. My mind is not empty; it’s my thoughts
that have blocked mere enjoyment further out
of reach.

The dullness is harsher than the depression,
it reveals nothing but emptiness within.
Once I encounter the divine crossing my path
I stop to let it by and it fills me instead, even though
It still feels like emptiness inside.

I Do Not Dance Enough

 I Do Not Dance Enough

(“Then the men asked, ‘Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive?’” Luke 24:5b)

I see the stars and I want to keep them company;
I see my protection above and within it all.
(I committed the crime; I was not framed.)

A chihuahua barks while a fat stellar jay perches
in the tree outside my window. Hummingbirds sweep
by the feeder
on my redwood deck and speed to the walnut tree
branches for refuge.
(Someone once told me I do not dance enough.)

I visited the San Gabriel Mission more than once as a child,
and created a model of cardboard and green tempura for
a school project. I was 10, and, even then, knew my art
would never hang on a wall. I wanted my mom’s opinion,
and after stalling for the longest two seconds I ever knew,
she said,
“It’s unique.”
I knew what she meant and never made a model again.
(She did like my writing, though.)

The air is light today with a full July sun. The leaves wave
at one another vivified by the river breeze. Shadows on
the siding hint that the afternoon is waning. I may walk along
the marina later
or spend time finding celluloid reels for a future viewing.
(I ought to ban “ought” from my daily life.)

So, vocabulary fails the description. My words are
unvarnished models of a universe I have met. No longer
the center,
life spills from light-years and babies’ mouths, from
empty tombs and full moons, from synapses and
the way light dances in signals to the brain where
we process everything.
(No one deserves life or earns it. We are born in the minute
we breathe the Spirit.)