Like Blindfolded Children

Like Blindfolded Children

(“I was like eyes for the blind, like feet for the crippled.” Job 29:15)

I saw your face and the only thing I could think
was to ask if it was okay for me to say
that I miss you?
You weren’t the first to limp for me
when I had pretended to walk upright for years.
Studying the early morning light
was just another way to disguise my blindness.
It was no fault of my own,
and you saw none to begin with,
but I always depended on your description of
the day to remind me where love began and
rejection ended. I remember you did cartwheels
on my front lawn.

Hanging by your knees from the parallel bars
you saw me inverted; my feet had been burned from
walking on asphalt all summer. But your laugh
was July’s tune, your play like a kitten showing
how long it could hang on the living room drapes
in the sun.

We began the way that all children do;
hide-and-go-seek until it was too dark to
see the secret place in the grove of trees just
between the public park and the old tool shed
we swore was haunted. You would have carried
me on your back, but you were smaller than I was.
So you slowed your pace, and with childlike grace
that displaces adult apprehensions, you showed me
the dance floor, the gazebo, where teenagers pretended to be
married
by the neighbor next door.

Do I know your face? How can you ask? Though years
have stubbornly kept us apart like continental drift,
your laugh is as young as the last day of summer
50 years ago.

There is a grandmother here in town (we are both now
grands, can you believe it?) There is a grandmother in town
who entertains every visitor that sits on her couch and
every baby placed upon her lap.

How old shall we be before we can play again
like blindfolded children swinging at a pinata?
How far we have come, how near do I believe you to be,
(though my thoughts often deceive me.) How long until
we walk a dusky evening with nothing more than
a bunch of grapes and roll down the hill until
our jeans are grass-stained with the imprints of impossibility?
I could see more easily when you were there to guide me.

Your Face in the Rain

Your Face in the Rain

(“The Lord's faithful love never comes to an end. He never stops being kind to us.” Lamentations 3:22)

I don’t want to sound like him,
I don’t want to look like them.
I don’t want to dance like a thousand children,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

I want you to know me by the lines on my face,
I want you to know you will never be replaced.
If you want to find me,
if you’re looking for my soul,
come look in the puddles
on the low side of the road.

I don’t want to be like you,
I don’t want to see like us.
I don’t want to read a hundred mystery books,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

Come visit me at the hovel I know the best,
come look me up where grit and grace come to rest.
Come sit with the broken,
if you really want to know
what moves me today,
what is nourishing my soul.

I don’t want to shine like gold,
I don’t want to be that old.
I don’t want to sing another dozen songs,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

You may not enjoy the cuisine,
you may prefer to be unseen.
You may return to your home
once
you see I like being alone.

I don’t want to get a raise,
I don’t want to occupy space.
I don’t want to number my weeks and my days,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

You Deserve More

You Deserve More

(“Make Your face to shine on Your servant; save me by Your lovingkindness.” Psalm 31:16)

Have you always thought you deserve more than
blizzard skies and hardpan scraps? Have you wondered
why
the earth wraps you from
outside, from farm to town?
Have you looked for smiles on a day
that crashes like thunder?
Have you dashed around the corner and
startled a toddler holding his mother’s
hand?

Have you had your words
dissected from your mouth;
have the tunes you knew from
tooth to grin
made you wish for long summers of
touch football again?
Have you shared a beer with
a widow and watched the tears begin?
Have you paid for another friend’s lunch
while he wasn’t looking? Have you
talked too much because you rarely talk
at all?

Wave, even if no one is watching. The air that
is stirred by the hummingbirds’ wings
brings the morning songs out to play. The
couple remodeling their house saw you
walk by, and giggled.

Each day is camouflage, each night is subversive,
each moon is a grin, each star a wink,
each breath a ripple that
revolves around thoughts uncontrolled.

Have you understood that tears still fall when
there is no one to see them?

She Crossed the Street Slowly

She Crossed the Street Slowly

(“Do not fail to show love to strangers, for by doing this some have welcomed angels without realizing it.” Hebrews 13:2)

I thought I recognized her face as she crossed the
street against the stoplight. Her gaze was elsewhere,
maybe her
shoes,
maybe her lost hunger,
maybe her words that once
were summer bouquets set upon
the tables of the unknowing.

I think she was a singer. A songwriter.
A minstrel. Maybe she used to be the
darling of the worship scene where every word
is scrutinized, every miscue recorded in
reporter’s notebooks for posterity. Maybe she
was tired of the same four chords. Maybe she was
weary of factories of uplifted faces. I think she
was still a poet. But her audience wrote her a
resignation letter before
she ever got started.

I think she liked women. I think she wanted to fly.
I think she crossed the street slowly because every
eye had always been upon her. I think she was ready
to cry as soon as she reached the other side.

She had drunk the vintage of diluted wine.
She had held it all in. She had lied for too long.
And to honor her truth

She was ushered to the alley. She wore a “no vacancy” sign.
She was put on probation. She was given two years, or more,
time to outgrow her fanciful follies and stand
in the back of the line.

As she approached the curb I wondered, where would she
turn
from here? Her eyes were steely and blazing. Her hair
was limp. Her lips moved in ways only she could hear.
Her arms were tattoos of every promise she had kept.

She stepped up and waited, though the light had turned green.
She sat on the corner, picked up a cardboard sign. She pulled a
sandwich from her backpack, tore it in half and shared it with
the man whose words were scribbled like prayer.
And she gave him half. And she sang the words that
had bubbled from her pain. And she explained nothing.
She made motions with her hands. She hummed the
lilting melody that only the rejected can sing.

And she stayed the day with the man who did not ask her
for a thing.

Would You Show Up?

 

Would You Show Up?

(“The Lord would speak to Moses face to face like one would speak to a friend.” Exodus 33:11a)

Would you show up when we least expect,
knock on the door from inside a dream?
Would you correct the recipes we have misunderstood,
direct us to banquets where we feast as friends?

My attention has been torn asunder (there,
I admit it). I’ve been pushed to the edge by
playground carousels,
buried beneath the bedrock by relentless
gravity. It is time I came up for air.

Would you dig deep enough to find us,
wait until our breath returned?
Would you suspect us of heresy, try us for treason,
or despite our errancy, meet us at our unevenness?

My pages are being rewritten (there,
I wrote it). The ink is drying faster than
my slow unfolding intended. But birds still fly,
preteen hawks perch on the fenceposts looking like doves
until a closer inspection.
It is time I read outside for a while.

Would you meet us before sunrise, though
our aches precede the day? Would you
send us your poetry, ask us to dance,
answer our questions with only your smile?

Would you befriend me, or have we been
from the foundation of the world?