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.

Love Returning Love

Love Returning Love

(“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3)

All I see when I gaze your way is
love returning love.
Your eyes seeing mine are the same as mine seeing you.

I’ve left the mirrored lake behind that caused Narcissus
such blindness. The reflection was flat and deceptive until
I saw the image of every human infatuated the first second
the rippling vision hit their eyes. We are static at the reflection
pool
to fool our inconsistencies. Echo helps by answering back
every elegant name we beget staring into water that
has no devices of its own. You are not you in the mirror,
you are not the royal we or the enthroned epitome. You
may need to walk a while, down the trail, toward the cavern dark
where bats and dimness breed forgetfulness, where damp silence
leaves you outside camera lenses and microphone intentions.

But in that motionless moment,
if you will let the watery image die,
you may find yourself seeing in the dark,
fascinated by mossy green and iron reds on the
cavern walls. You must go there alone, though, once
alone,
you will never need to venture into the darkness again.
If only you find the companions that wait outside,
that guard the entrance from intruders,
and watch it for friendships that have been stripped
of illusion
and, though mildly confused, the man is a child again,
the woman a toddler hopping in wonder.

All you will see when you gaze divine is
love returning love.
Those eyes seeing yours are the same as yours seeing them.

The Lonely Leaks In

 

The Lonely Leaks In

(“Be careful that none of you fails to respond to the grace which God gives....” Hebrews 12:15a [J. B. Phillips])

Maybe there’s a job at home that will keep me there this time.
Maybe there’s a lover or a friend,
an upended cup of water that
was filled again.
The lonely leaks in like august heat waves through
the blinds.

I’ve been standing on your porch hoping you still live
in the same house where I once knew you.
We were kids, we were naïve, we were insanity,
we were cotton candy and backyard picnics. We were
young love and agony.
Then it got cold,
and we got old
and I moved to the north country.
But I still feel you living in my chest.
Nothing lasts forever, some of my schoolyard crushes have died.
Some timeless friends have hidden themselves,
and some live just up the road.
But the lonely leaks like a diesel engine on fire.

I had a friend so smart he could have been a
chemical engineer.
But he bought a bowling alley instead and had a hundred
friends visit him in a day.
And still the lonely leaks like the grease
from drive-in fries.

Maybe there’s a house where laughter still lives
despite the brute force of age. Maybe
there’s a museum where one friend finds another
staring at the same painting for far too long.
Maybe there’s a child not grown
that simply wants to play on the swings again.
And still the lonely leaks in like delivering
newspapers before the sun rises on the weekend.

Sometimes Being Hidden

Sometimes Being Hidden

(“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3)

I must be hidden because so many friends
cannot seem to find me.
I don’t blame them, I’m as dead as I am alive,
more dead if you look inside
and see the sticky black tarmac
where may takeoff seems to
never get off the ground.

I must be hidden, I cannot find my own self,
my true self,
my do it well self; my death knell self
has done all the heavy lifting.

I am hidden in the world but seen so well,
I am not yet invisible, still vulnerable.
I am on display the way they catalogue fingerprints
from suspects who try to hide in dens and alleys.

I trust my smokescreen, the dense debris of intellect and
good intentions; who would guess the rest?
I’m too easily discovered, my hiding place is indiscreet,
when I’m finally discovered the street only laughs
and the grandstands grow deadly silent.

I could be far too dead to change,
but alive enough to try.
Sometimes being hidden
feels like being lost.