Our Choreography Renewed

Our Choreography Renewed

(“The curtain in the Temple was torn into two pieces, from the top to the bottom.” Mark 15:38)

Once the illusions are scattered,
once the veil is removed,
once the hardened arteries are cleared,
once the implanted devices that replace the
original design are removed,
we might see the sun the same again.

Why is everything so small,
why are the stars any different here?
Why do imprisoned thoughts
sit enthroned behind halls draped with
crosses?

Though a thousand flags wave,
though banners catch the wind like cannonballs,
though lavender is turned to dust,
though our sculptures rust in the rain,

We can learn to trust the love within
the center. We can drop the disguises we
thought defended the shores from foes we
never had.

Our beds are unmade,
our pillows are stone,
our vision is dilated,
our view is myopic.
We see what we have been taught,
we teach what is written,
we do not read it beforehand.
We underline words that
close the doors to
the expanse that existed before we had

A single second to think.

The illusions can lift like fog, the rifts can fill with
the cooing of doves. The fields can be spotted
with does standing in the snow.
Our breath can come slowly,
our choreography renewed.
The chances are good if we sit in

Someone’s kitchen, smell the bread baking
against the uncommon rain,
that we will see the length between us is
only the same as the space between angels,
as the rays of light between droplets of dew.
We will learn to dance unrehearsed and put
our distinctions away while we savor the sunlight
that drenched the vine, savor the moments like
early wine.
And learn, without trying, that veils only obscure
the truest nature of things.

Do I Pull Back the Curtain?

Do I Pull Back the Curtain?

 

I sat down to write today convinced there is nothing new left
within me to say. I am torn. Do I pull back the curtain?
Do I expose the storm that sits within my soul and never
feels the west wind and sun to blow it away?
Do I cry behind my eyes (no surprise I usually cry alone),
do I, undisguised, open the inner windows where
gloom pushes out in all directions against the
barometric pressure. How can it be that I am
so full of darkness,

I feel so hollow?

Or bloated. There was a time I believed these
were only the beginning of birth pangs,
some new creation evolving within me.
I believed it since I was seventeen,
and 60 years later I fear I must disagree.
You won’t believe the myriad of demons cast out
of me.
Or the midnight prayers, no solace, only agony.
Or the weeping in front of a trusted few,
and, once my guard was down, though the tiny crew
of friends tried to prevent it,
I was branded. I had no emotional control,
and so the caissons came rolling along.

I admitted, even from my elocutionists’ spot,
that I struggled with depression, and they believed it
upon first hearing.

But I lied. I rarely struggled. The fight made the dark
more demonic. I stood like a wrestler and went flat
to the mat at the referee’s whistle, then went to
visit the sick, keep office hours, and pass the time
playing mindless games to keep the night at bay.

Yes, I lied. They heard me say it, but never saw the
face, the terror, the desire to walk right out of town and
keep on walking until I could walk no more. I kept the
beasts inside. And if they did escape, I stalked them closely
to keep them at bay.

But I see rainbows around your head my friend.
And I’ve heard the trembling which you feel is a permanent affliction.
Do we finally give birth? Or, just as our delightful children,
does it take two souls to draw out the nativity we hoped for
all along?

Most things escape me these days. Even my words are less artful,
prosaic, plain, common and, in a word:

Sad.

But I know I would do anything to hold a mirror to your soul
until you saw the spectrum of beauty that surrounds you. And,
you,
I know now,
would hold the mirror for me.

Let Me Begin Again

Let Me Begin Again

(“The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17)

The curtain closed on one more day
of the part I’ve been playing. I could
read the lines
time and time again.
I used to think about fences, like words,
like scripts,
that kept me in line.

Preoccupied with getting things right,
I feared missing a step or forgetting a line.
I tread the boards so carefully
I tripped over the first crack in the wood.

Without an audience or with limited applause,
the fault fell at my feet. It is not
that improvisation was disallowed or
frowned upon,
it was my fear of diving headfirst into
the deep end.

But you, gentle one, danced with me instead.
Your words were unrehearsed,
your eyes an invitation to swing around the moon,
pick daisies on Mars and
tour the stars one by one.

I was not as broken as I supposed,
I was born with atoms in my skin
that existed before the rivers, before the
globes and spheres,
before the sun we both felt on our faces.

You taught me to dance and sometimes cry…

Let me begin again:

I intended to use the stage, scripts, blocking,
props, sets, and lighting
as a metaphor
for
constraints.

I intended to describe the freedom of ad libs
in a culture of carefully drawn lines. I
intended
to write about sweet freedom,
complete with descriptions of ecstatic
experiences with the
God of words and the
Lord of dance.

Instead:

Today freedom means…

I can tell you honestly,
directly,
soliloquy,
that I am of more than one mind.

The theater never hindered me,
though another culture nearly did.
I am free to tell you
I never had a divine encounter

Unless it was in the presence of my cast
mates.