To Know the Deep

To Know the Deep

I want to know the deep and long of you,
The all and song of you.
I want to give you the true and same of me,
the peace and frame of me.
I want to know the days you cannot sing,
the nights that keep reminding you of everything
you wish you could not remember.
I want to sit with you for hours
just watching the river run.
I want to walk with you, hand in hand,
slowly like love that rises from the roots of
trees in the forest, like the warm earth below
our feet.
I want to hold you the way the sun holds the sky,
the way the clouds hug the hills with questions.
I want to be one with you, our hearts answering the
call of soft birdsongs resting among the cedars on the way.

I want to know the wide and fear of you,
the why and tears of you.
I want to give you the love and end of me,
the sighs and bends of me.
I want to know you like a slow turning
ocean below the azure blue. I want you to
know I’m there before you say a word.
I want to spend days and days with you
unfolding everything we’ve forgotten about
dancing when no one is watching.

I want to show you the corners of my heart
that I’ve kept in the dark. I want to soothe the
hurts you never speak of and hope you will speak
of them more to me.

I want you to feel my hands upon your face
when the tears silently trace your cheeks.
I want you to know you are beautiful when
the tears pool like pearls in you eyes.
I want to know the hurts and pain of you,
to give the soothing grains of sand on a
warm stretch of ocean sand.

I want to be silent while you tell me everything.
I want to hold you while you tell me each
chapter of your story and I will memorize it
and protect it within my heart for you.

You Heard Me

You Heard Me

(“In my distress I called to the Lord; I called to my God. From his heavenly temple he heard my voice; he listened to my cry for help.” 2 Samuel 22:7)

Somewhere between the margin of the
sky and earth my cry was heard. The sky was
as thin as a skin stretched over a drum.
The earth was thick and slowly rolling toward
the river that occupied my dreams.
I cannot quote a specific line,
I cannot identify the rays that broke from
sun to sky. I only know the vibration of my own
voice
lifted it over the trees and carried it further than
I could see.

This life has been a laboratory where
experiment and experience meet in unexpected
embrace. I theorize and record the results in
a journal written across my face. I still await a voice
that tells me my words are not insane. I still
await a hand
that helps me climb between earth and sky
where I walk foolishly and faint. Creation
changes with the tide; nature offers so little
insulation against the dark shades that haunt
the edges of my mind.

But you heard me. You let my distress arise;
you let the best of my poetry erase my first
draft of a life. I never belonged, or so I thought.
I dug my fingernails deep into the mud, squeezing
every pious word out of my undressed mind.
But you heard me, though no one patted me
on the back
to tell me I had finally gotten it right.
Prayer is not a magic formula learned in
lectures from experts.
But you heard me. And I walked assured on
the deep grass until I heard you as well as

You heard me.

What If We Had Never Met?

What If We Had Never Met?

What if we had never met? That’s not impossible,
is it? I used to think I could dig deep enough to arrive
for lunch in China. I’d still be digging today or
melted and scorned by the molten core of my home planet.

But, what if? Would I still be afraid to dance? Would
I like to meander more or less? Would I let strangers take
my snapshot
or be shyer than all the rest?

When if we had always supped? Sharing bread and
bottles of wine,
would we have lasted longer as friends or
wandered like wobbling planets? Would I cross
states
to find you? Or remain solid as ice, permanent as pavement
and never leave my assigned place?

Lately beloved names escape me. Fascination with new ones
unmakes me. What if we had not feared so much? What if
we let the river take us, peaceful and strong,
along the banks of the mountains to the
open sea
and straightway realized how friendships are far too
geographical.
For me, it is no laughing matter. I can ache for a face
I have not seen in nearly 20 years. I can long for a voice;
no, the tone, not the words. I can long for a voice that meant,
“Do you need some company?” at the first hello.

Today space separates me from my if-onlys; yesterday, death.
Time has made our shared secrets thinner. I have no illusions
about eternal bonds, not with everyone, I guess. And
I hate to say I’m

lonely.

I hate to say it at all.

What if I had stayed just one hour longer when
all you needed was another human to see you
better
than you saw yourself?

What if I have divorced myself?

Today one day whole
would be the beginning of me.

How Deep the Kisses Go

 

How Deep the Kisses Go

(“If I go to the east, God is not there. And if I go to the west, I do not see him there.” Job 23:8)

I could add that I’ve looked up and down to see how deep the kisses go.
It is a long way down, north and south, to insist the address can be found
that got rumpled, unsuited for public view.
Yet here I am
answering the phone again
(and who shall I say is calling this time?)

The voice I am looking for shines with sweat,
the voice I am looking for is too soon for regret,
the voice I am looking for is too old to forget,
and still I find every time I turn to hear,
the clouds muffle its silence again,
(and yet, I have not given up the listening.)

Have you ever found yourself exploring holes and ditches
and then climbed down the sides of a six-foot pit
to discover the dirt slid like gravy and
the walls were too gravity to crawl out the same way
you jumped in? I would not call that a sin,
but you probably yelled the name of
a friend or two to
throw you a rope. Maybe no one came
until well after dinner time.

I could add that I have fallen also,
a child-man scraping his knees,
a curious boy climbing over piles of
cardboard boxes in the garage. I could
make a hideout for days against the walls
and behind my cardboard castle. But I
hid there in bare feet and soon the concrete floor
shot its icy cold through me. I would have walked down
the street on warmer sidewalks but my parents had
asked for an All Points Bulletin for a barefoot boy
on the run.

I could add that, though from hideouts or august asphalt,
it still is a long way down. Maybe what I’ve found is
the kisses surround us deeper than we can ever hope
to mine.