The Dump Truck

The Dump Truck

(“Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.” Psalm 55:22)

The dump truck backed up to my brain
early this morning before I noticed.
With a mind already full of
sensations and untimely fascinations
there was little room for the weighty dirt
it unloaded. No one alerted me. No one
called ahead. It was there to dig through.
It was there with no refund in sight.

Besides all that, summer hid behind the hills
and left the morning full of pre-autumn chills.
I needed to unwind the creases left inside by
a cable so tight it leashed me to tomorrow’s
unpaid bills.

But then I saw, or probably heard, that my neighbor,
my brother far away on the northern plains,
had received the same delivery this morning. The
hard earth filled his lungs nearly cracking his ribs
as the dump truck drove away.

He didn’t have the cash to hire a junkman to haul
the dirt away. I didn’t have the expertise to help him.
We both shuddered,
we both wondered,
we both cried,
we both prayed,
we both wandered into tomorrow far too
early in the day.

I do not know what will happen with our respective
piles of dirt.
But I’ve seen neighbor dogs stand on sand piles like
kings of the neighborhood. The blue jays nap on
top as well. Perhaps planting jonquils, perhaps a
playground for squirrels, perhaps we can photograph
our uninvited landscape. Didn’t we come in filthy
for dinner when we were young, our feet caked with
mud from ancestral dirt; didn’t we?

Hearts Turn to Dirt

Hearts Turn to Dirt

(“If anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all.” Mark 9:35b)

There are days when hearts turn to dirt,
not rich garden topsoil,
but crunchy desert crackling underfoot,
shrunk by the sun in judgment.
Those days are long days. Those days are empty
and thorny.
Those days are fraught with heat dreams and
cold fevers. Those days pierce your ears
with isolation and your soul like uncreating
everything that once welcomed spring.

You left a forwarding number (or so you remember),
you told a few best friends where to find you if you did not return
by early September. Yet by October you have lost your way home.
No one phones. No one brings heat for your heart or ice
for your head. In the meantime, suburbs have risen all around
your saguaro hideout. You live outside in the elements,
they live inside with molecules and compounds in boxes
and stained-glass bottles. They play music your heart remembers,
but the chances for joy feel as remote as the friends you
remember from grade school. (You are sure you left them
your number.)

Some are managers, some housewives, some are the principal
paymasters, others dig minerals donated to museums. All were,
at least for a day, or another,
the loves who would massage your heart until the color
returned to your face.

Now, alone, no way home, and no one to keep you from
evaporating to the bone, you rattle. And you wish you could only
be
as silent as they are
when silence was the last thing you needed.

Added Dirt

Added Dirt

(“The whole body is joined together and connected by every joint and ligament, as every part effectively does its work and grows, building itself up in love.” Ephesians 4:16)

As time as added dirt beneath my feet the roots
weep more deeply for distant embrace.
Shadows of unaffected laughter, classrooms with morning light,
guitars in a circle and folk songs with unexpected trumpet runs;
all wait in afternoon sun for the reawakening of innocence.

Opinions run too high, anxiety has paid its price. The buds will bloom
without my constant pinching.

The satisfaction of morning roses and an eight-year-old neighbor
who wants a flower to give to give her mom, the boy on stage,
the man unafraid, the father mistaken and the elder still shaken
from the way the earth quakes; all speak in the sunlight
of connections frayed at the edges.

The dark clouds spin by and ego is overpriced. The sun will shine
without my backward flinching.

Come, arms and legs, eyes and ears, take me in and play again.
Come, classmate and peer, soulmate and handshake, hear me and sing again.
Our distances are paper-thin, our barriers self-erected. What have we rejected,

If not the best selves we once inhabited?