I’ll Listen Closer

I’ll Listen Closer

(“He makes sure that orphans and widows are treated fairly; he loves the foreigners who live with our people, and gives them food and clothes.” Deuteronomy 10:18)

There are signboards on the corner
that write off every unrecognizable name.
But every name has a mother, every appellation
a definition. Every pair of eyes sees the
spectrum,
every mouth speaks its native tongue.

I’ll speak slower if I’m hard to understand,
I’ll listen closer if your words are sifted through the colander.
I love the unknown rhythm your words make when
you punctuate your sentences with a countryman.
You smiled when you showed me the videos you
made with your newest drone.
Your wife interpreted for me that, yes, you could
fix the problem with my MG.
I tried to pay you, I did. You laughed and I
think you said
it was nothing. But it was more than that and
you deserved even more than I offered.

You tinkered like a magician,
you laughed like a penguin,
you talked like we were brothers,
you sang without knowing the words.
I believed you like a clergyman,
I smiled like an old friend,
I talked like we were comrades,
I sang without knowing the words.

Now I’m older, but not by much,
and you are just the same.
Our languages are mixed,
our friendship exists despite the
placards that try to send you home.

The Heart Grasps the Sky

The Heart Grasps the Sky

(“Hear my prayer, O God; listen to my words!” Psalm 54:2)

I turned the corner without ever thinking I might meet
my neighbor on the walking path.
We exchanged cherry “hellos”
and traded a little silly talk.
I walked further, toward the cemetery,
and could not find the site where I thought they
laid someone to rest yesterday. I have so many
friends there,
resting there,
that I feel the weight of grief their loved ones feel.
Didn’t they pray for their child,
didn’t they cry out for their wife,
didn’t they name the names of the dying
to the Name of all names?

And didn’t God hear that
I need a friend stronger than death.
And didn’t God listen to
the tears that stained the faces of the beloved.
And didn’t we wish (another word for pray,
though you might disagree) that we could take
their place?

I’ve seen a hundred replacements,
I’ve called a thousand phone numbers,
I’ve listened for the knock on the door,
I’ve waited for a voice to explain it all.

Sandwiched between belief and doubt,
my prayers are not for human ears.
But I would welcome yours, silent as
the first spring night. The heart weeps,
the heart grasps the sky, the heart has
words
that paint a seaside where pain and
relief meet. The heart beats, ready to
write unspoken prayer.

The Trajectory of My Ennui

The Trajectory of My Ennui

(“’For I am the Lord who acts with gracious love, justice, and righteousness in the land. I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 9:24)

The trajectory of my ennui
landed me at the corner of the sea.
I was too late to see
the tidepools and their creatures.
I wondered where the other seekers had landed.

The tide was up full, the sand lapped up
the foam and held the captured seaweed to
compliment the scalloped design flat until
the cliffs that rose above it all.

I tried to compose myself, I tried to understand
how I had missed the very
thing I longed for; how I began my mission
thinking there was so much more.
I shook without thinking, there was no one else
on the shore. The wind salted my day and I had
nowhere else to go.

The language of the waves was incoherent as
they hid craggy black homes of the
sea anemones and urchins. Nearly neon,
their green and purple sheen waited below the
atonal words of the tide’s uncovering.

A line of stone, a short-wall and a bedrock
cornerstone,
outlined the ruins of an ancient fortress. The
foundation was filled with
water and sand.
Once built to protect the legal citizens,
It was now a haven for starfish and hermit crabs.

Dear Friday

Dear Friday

Dear Friday,
I’m writing to say that if I walked into your room
and all my senses were filled,
I could swear it was the first day of summer and not the last.
I smell jasmine and orange, hear jazz and motorhomes
escaping to the lake.
Nearby someone served up strawberries in chocolate,
the boys next door are shooting hoops like they meant it,
sage reminds me of the long days with native friends
just south of Canada. I’m writing to say
that
though joy is bubbling through every sense
there remains this ache,
this loss,
this wince where time has taken its
best shot at my chest.
I want to walk to a downtown with neon signs
that have letters missing.
I want to find a bar where no one knows me and
treats me like a guest.
I’d prefer, to be honest, the company of all the
rest that are too far by geography,
too distant by time,
too removed from my simple misunderstandings of
living ahead of the clock and
behind the calendar that dates my appointments with
no one in particular.

Still, I will sit on my deck this afternoon, start in the
sun
and
end in the shade.
My playlist keeps me company, my chihuahua licks
my fingers before warning the Huskie next door about
wandering too close to her terrain. Not to worry, though,
it is all enclosed by ranch fence. She finally settles in
her favorite corner in the sun.

The Hat

The Hat

(“So why do you judge your brothers or sisters in Christ? And why do you think you are better than they are? We will all stand before God to be judged.” Romans 14:10)

He walked into the room with his hat
covering one eye. He always wore it like that;
no one knew why. But they made 1000 guesses
every time he arrived. Was he partially blind?

He didn’t hear their conversations but knew the
temperature of the room. He would have just as soon
been at the bar around the corner; after all,
they gave him the hat when he retired.

Tilted across his head, the hat provoked conversation
while he never said a word.

Under a Single Sky

Under a Single Sky

(“For the High and Exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy says this: ‘I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed.’” Isaiah 57:15)

The corner is no place for someone like you.
The shadows are not your home.
The teeth of the cavern,
the shards of the abyss
are not the place prepared for you.

And yet we put you there.
We never meant to.
You didn’t fit in and we were not
elastic.
And now we have moved on and left you
behind
to take more drastic measures on your own.

You belonged at the table.
No, you belonged to the voices that are
rarely heard;
the colors, the genders, the spectrum, the splendor
of intervals between the tones. You
stopped speaking when
you were not heard.

Your prayers were interrupted by syncopation
we rejected.
Your pleas were dismissed. We left you
unprotected. And then designed our bylaws
to exclude the rest that came behind you.
We did not mind knowing you;
we could not risk the questions that
fell from rafters like concrete on our heads.
We assumed you knew that too.

Do they still call it a remnant? That leftover
fabric, that unused yarn? It always made me think
of leftovers, the last thing left in the kitchen.

How can we know you if we insist on a quorum,
how can we hear you over the small talk of majority?
How can we encircle you? Tell us this time and
we will remain silent. We have put down our pens,
closed our notebooks and want to join you.
We were not allies, we were pedagogues and
insisted you learn our lessons.

A few of us are grieving.
A handful are shattered that we preferred
leaving to learning your story.

Let us sit in the corner with you,
visit the cavern and study the abyss.
We have smashed our clocks, our scales
buried in the rubbish of our myopia.
And if you do not speak,
we will not depart this time. We
will sit on damp granite stones,
pour the wine in a common cup
and pass the moments, the minutes,
the hours, the ages,
where the divine dwells like incense,
where our souls revere the placement
of one to one. The you, the i. The we,
the us. The just and unjust under a single
sky.

Smudged the Words

Smudged the Words

(You see, everyone will be salted with fire. Mark 9:49)

You cannot argue with the pain, wrestle it into submission,
make it understand the strain it has put on the simple admission
that life was hard before it came along.

It argues with every decision, it pushes you back upon the bed in the morning.
It says the shower will be too cold, shaving takes too long,
and the phone rings far too loud and often.

It buries your memories, mutes your love songs,
imprisons your prayers and incinerates your best intentions.

And then, passing someone groaning louder,
it insists you have no right to complain at all.

It whispers in hidden wavelengths, the way lovers keep
all their conversations to themselves. Invisible, it draws lines
across faces that once played with laughter, walked dogs before
and after a quick lunch with a friend. But jokes evoke silence,
and pets lay their noses on the lap of a human they used to know.

Pain sprinkles every day with edges, every night with dreams
where bridges are burned until morning turns the volume up again.

But pain cannot compete with a daughter’s surprise,
a partner with tears in her eyes,
a friend who sits, and only sits, more of a prayer
than the longest hallelujah or loudest speaking in tongues.
Pain is slain by a son who calls out of the blue,
and shares his dark painting too. And you both sigh
because you know you share the invisible side of a life
that ought to be easy.
Pain is paused when the letter is opened, the salutation
is familiar and the text scribbled so quickly that salty drops
smudged the words. And they stay embedded
in a single corner that pain once occupied as its own.

Not Quite an Hour

Not Quite an Hour

(“When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’” Luke 16:17)

I had hoped to find you there, maybe in a corner, sitting with no one,
and catching up on every done, every right and wrong. We would
laugh at our serious adolescence, condole upon our misshapen dreams,
wonder at wisdom that left our coffee bitter,
some friendships, and some others, that started to the letter and
ended not answering the phone.

You would tell me of your husband’s passing, the one love you found
that took all of you, the full of you, and befriended the broken heart
you had finally come to understand. But he was older, 15 years or more;
but he was stronger than the teenage crushes, more settled than
the bad boys who usher in adulthood like a customized playground.

It would be not quite an hour of soft words, and the first tear forms.
The water rest, a captured bubble, filling in your lower eyelid, and
like me, like you, like many others, you do not blink, for as soon
as you do,
it will break the surface tension with the heavy tear dropping from
the icicle warming and settling like a mountaineer upon the crest of
your cheek; the frame of a face that denies forgetting.

I would mention my loves, remember time in 80 or 81 we
heard Terry Talbot sing his ballads to Jesus. You never flushed
nor squirmed and even joined our hands as pray floated from
the gymnasium floor to the ear of the Father. And, perhaps
a God who calls himself Father was the chief hurdle for your faith.

All I know, you were always gracious when at 19 I opened a
can of “Four Spiritual Laws” and spoon-fed it to you without any
thought of even heating it up.

But here we are, and I hope, when the dinner bell is rung, we might
meet you again, we might laugh as silly old friends, mention our
upcoming hip replacements and European vacations; and, with

30 years since placing eyes on each other, 20 years since hearing
as voice,
we might be content to skim the surface, yet comfortable to
open the curtain of our backstage lives, with nothing to lose
and so little time.

Meet me at the banquet, sit beside me at the table,
I expect to have a day full of errands,
but would rather break bread with a friend.