Don’t Disappear

Don’t Disappear

(“Christ died for all so that those who live would not continue to live for themselves. He died for them and was raised from the dead so that they would live for him.” 2 Corinthians 5:15)

Don’t disappear over desperation that knocks
noisily in your mind. Don’t lose the ending just because
the beginning is out of view. The time of rising has
arrived. The time of sentient exploration brings you
closer to the pathway you have dreamed. It could
be today,
it might be later. It might be sunny, it might be
unwieldy. It might be the visions of a well-earned
peace on the streets of disaster. It might be transportation
from airlifts that move us from complacent complaints
to marches of confidence. We will speak confidentially
with those who wait within hollowed homes for the
announcement that holy joy is rounding the bend.

But it all looks like death right now,
doesn’t it. It reeks of deterioration,
it smells like decomposition. We cannot
ignore it and fly right by without noticing
the targets on the backs of colors we no longer
want to accept. Brown and black are hiding behind
doors of terror when the peaceful are called radicals
and the warmongers are called leaders. Get in line
they tell us,
and wait for your apprehension. The cuffs dig into
the wrists of the wrongly arrested. We stand
next to the fallen. We find the marks upon the mothers
who hide their children from the camouflage pretenders
who pace the residential avenues with fear.

There is still a stream that flows through the city,
a living river that sweeps the dead dust away.
There is still a hope that breathes and listens
for the wings of the Spirit. There are still streets
that are alive with healing at every turn.
Sanity demands we embrace the metamorphosis
of dying to living, and see through revitalized eyes
the imprints of the divine being born even while
we cry.

We Choose Up Sides

We Choose Up Sides

(“The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love; teach me your statutes!” Psalm 119:64)

My request to understand the end of days was declined,
so I,
with feet unwillingly clenching the sand,
survey the pockmarked earth.

I thought they were potholes when the
desert concert ended early. But the sun
never explodes that loudly at the end of the day.

I heard that firebombs burned a hospital and
our children are hidden underground
by their captors.

And while missiles whine, while grandmothers weep,
while the smoke wafts high above the borders,
the selected leaders can find no way to restore
the broken earth
except to break her into quarters.

My face unconsciously flinches,
the heat burns like teenage blemishes.
I cannot debate. I cannot slow the hate that
floods like sludge. The water is not potable,
the water has been shut off at its source.

The grains of sand are shards cutting our toes,
we cannot sleep. We cannot cry. We cannot understand
why. We hate at a distance and invent our fictions
to justify the blood that flows down the streets.

Where
is
this mercy?

Where is the
playground where children play?

Where are the prayers that extend deeper
than ancestry? Where are rivers of life that
turn gall into wine?

We draw the lines so well. We choose up sides.
One life for a dozen. A dozen for a village.
A village for a nation. A nation…

Oh God,
why?

Are there not peacemakers within range of
the missiles and squadrons? Why do the church bells
toll
and send the crowd to war?
Peacemakers, children, hostages, generals,
saints, mystics, truants, tyrants,
presidents, ministers, visitors, and citizens

Cry,
why?

Would You Cry with Me?

Would You Cry with Me?

(“He helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others who have all kinds of troubles, using the same help that we ourselves have received from God.” 2 Corinthians 1:4)

Would you cry with me even
when
I could not tell you why
the days roll into one another like
boulders left behind by an ancient glacier
and a mind frozen by in time?

Would you bring me cake?
Would you buy me a day on the beach?
Would you give me your island in the sun
and stay as long as I needed
to hear someone’s tears besides my own?

I do not mean to bother you,
your life is no different than mine. The air
between us is space or it is connection.
But the fences have divided us into sections
and served us up separately.

I would rather sit with an ailing friend,
play with the neighbor dogs and laugh with the children.
And I can, a few minutes at a time;
but mostly I sit inside wondering
how to find a river in the desert,
a place to visit where it does not matter
that I speak less often than I used to.

Last night I dreamed I was going on a trip with
my two sons,
but we never finished packing. We could not find
enough socks.
And that is how all my dreams end,
anticipating a life that looks more like a mirage.

Your hand on my shoulder,
your loaf of fresh-baked bread,
your song when I cannot find my own,
your heart traded for my fainting;

I hate debating. I need only eyes that
tear up
because mine do too.

The Air Sounds Like

The Air Sounds Like

(“When the Lord saw her, he felt sorry for her and said, ‘Don’t cry.’” Luke 7:13)

We scratch our heads so often; we question the days and argue with clouds.
We debate the death the looms above the final step for every journey.
We come home from this vacation, we return from that trip to fish,
we pull into the driveway half wondering how we’ll get in the front door;

But one day we will not return. A journey where the footprints simple stop.
No one computed the demanded time, and so our fathers and grandfathers still
have lemonade far into the afternoon, while
a mother and daughter have been parted since the second full moon the first child knew.

“It’s alright, it’s ok,” we say. We know the end of the trail
appears somewhere between one inhale of forest and the last exhale
of goodbye. If there is a half circle gathered around our final moment,
there is waiting, watching. Every vision is a solid stare, fast and focused
upon the nose and mouth and silence (undemanded) fills what might be lost.
One unintended, brings his fingers to the back of his head and scratches just
as everyone concludes the end has come. Mouth and lungs, eyes and fingers
are in suspended animation. The first, second, third, then three at once, then
uncounted
the tears spread around the room without blush or hesitation.

Only few notice the eyes that see unseen. In the silence, the solace is quieter still.
The hand, perhaps, that escorted the waiting one across the final precipice,
was the one who waited now, to dry eyes and find the middle of every room
where grief has swallowed a family, a church, a town or nation. He is
the exact center measured from every tear dropped from eye to earth.

He is the exact reason the last exhale happens beyond our hearing;
He is the exact substance, image, feeling of each one in the room and
the One who made each one in the room: He is the exact. Whether

He touches the bodies of the dead, or the brooding of the living, He touches them
with life,
with feeling,
with breath that leaves the air sound like the first day of birthing over again.