I Saw What You Carry

I Saw What You Carry

(“So then, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1)

You walked by and I saw what you carry,
I saw the burdens, the load heaped on you from
far before I knew you. I saw the weight on your
face and around your eyes, the gravity that draws
you down.

The voices you hear are not your own,
or god,
or conscience,
but lyrics of dissonance that have cast
you aside.
Your song is higher. Your melody is sun
and wine. Your story is timeless. Your place

In this world

Was infested with thorns when
poppies should have covered your days
from hill to pond, from pond to horizon,
from horizon to sunsets inhabited by
butterflies.

I will shoulder the load for a while. I will
rewrite the lyrics.
I will find a place, a meadow or a beach,
where you can lay some of them down.
I will reflect the way the light plays off your face,
I will let you see your original portrait in my heart.

Lay them down. Breathe the daylight. Believe you
are flawed and fabulous, free and no mere accident.
Lay them down. And this moment, this second,
this tiny universe of time,
feel the hands of all who have loved you
and leave the others behind.

You walked by and I saw the light in
everyone’s eyes that
twinkle because of you.
You were never meant for ice, though some
have left you cold. And this season,
this turning, this inexact point in time,
feel the hearth of all the hearts that
would warm you forever,
because they have seen you

Walk by too.

The First Chords of a Folk Song

 The First Chords of a Folk Song

(“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1)

It was time to get serious again about all the subjects
that kept us in line. The law, the rules, the injunctions,
the tools, the courtrooms, the judges, the preachers so used
to fudging the tightest belt out of the most
ill-fitting passages they could find.
It was time to unwind the heresy that anyone
could be happy
simply tasting the rain on their tongue
or
dancing like a toddler with no one in particular.

For a while their lecture halls were full,
for some time the students took notes in bluebooks,
transferred them to laptops and cleaned up
the illegible handwriting that had made them miss lunch
dates
with too many friends.
For a while the pseudo-prophets prospered.
No one doubted their word. Not one. And those who did,
(we all knew who they were), those who did were treated
like outcasts and backsliders, though most of us believed they
never belonged in the first place.

After a while the acrid smoke blemished the best presentations,
after a while the manufactured scents caused women to cry,
after a while the flags that waved, the allegiances pledged,
lost their luster when everything was a battle,
and no one could escape the arrows’ gleaming light.
The doors were heavy as lead and the post trauma songs
only sent true believers home.

And then, like fireworks on New Year’s Eve,
a toddler spun at the edge of the campground,
a puppy danced in the campfire reflection,
a mother cried who had never cried before,
and hugged her baby who (she knew) had escaped
the death that had been peddled in pamphlets
passed out by preachers and their proteges. A mother
who had insisted the pamphlets were literal and inerrant,
a mother who had never missed a class before.

And then like nothing ever described,
the dawn broke; water, sun, and sky met at the east end
of the river. There had been baptisms, there had been ablutions;
but now it all was oceans that kept the dance going, that
kept showing the songs that opened like the first chords of
a folk song no one had ever heard and
that everyone knew.