The Fog was Ankle Deep

The Fog was Ankle Deep

(“Jesus said to Nathanael, ‘I can guarantee this truth: You will see the sky open and God’s angels going up and coming down to the Son of Man.’” John 1:51)

The fog was ankle deep as the sun
warmed the wet morning asphalt. It slunk like
snake tracks and spoke of something that wrapped
us all up like common denominators, like children returning
from exile. It hinted that we might all have wings if
we only inhabited the thin places where heaven seeps
through.

It makes us doubt our own significance as if the breath
was taken out of our lungs at the very thought that
there may be more than we imagined going on within us.
If the sun can coax land-locked clouds on the ground
why can we not linger while spirit breathes a presence
we had only guessed at until now. What if the very place
we stand
is also an anteroom to the throne? What if we are invited
to enter in like Spring coaxing the cherry tree blossoms?

I’ve stood here before, thinking I needed to knock down the door
and crawl on my hands and knees to prove my piety.
What if the throne is unoccupied? Or what if, instead, it
is filled with the author of nurture? What if every blade of
grass invites us to sing around prayers like maypoles
and mumble inaudible but well-intentioned alleluias?
What if our morning walk is just the start of
the very heartbeat we had been waiting to hear?

And the Fog Grabbed Me

And the Fog Grabbed Me

(“You were like sheep wandering away. But now you have returned to the Shepherd. He is the one who watches over your souls.” 1 Peter 2:25)

And the fog grabbed me deep gray,
and the streetlights faded away,
and the avenues were dripping,
the roadway was slipping towards the
outside of the city.
I turned the steering wheel and
turned it again. I consulted long abandoned
side streets and could not find the
way home.

The sun had dropped hours ago,
the moon had lost all of its night-glow,
the stars had departed their places,
the fog broke my vision and filled the spaces
between the nose of my car and the
height of a man. I could not understand my
ability to be lost; I had entered the town
in daylight. Was I paying the cost for waiting
too long to journey home?

A green sign barely lit through the haze
seemed to rise from in front of me. A sign
with highway numbers, a sign pointing to the
205.
Cautiously I turned onto the ramp,
breathing heavy only frosted my windshield
and the mist hid most everything else.
I followed a semi out of the city.

I am not harmed by my meandering,
I am only a refugee here.
I had gone to meet a friend who loves music,
I had gone to meet her and busk awhile.
I would have sojourned longer but the night
caught up to me. She is a PhD in psychology,
I’m just a weary member of the clergy.
She is a meditating Buddhist,
I am just a melancholy Christian.

Home came in view after nearly two hours,
the fog grabbed the riverbanks like fingers
from an underwater creature. I still hear
our music as I pull into my drive.

Like Cows in the Fog

Like Cows in the Fog

(“’My brothers,’ he said. ‘I have conducted myself before God in a completely good conscience all my life up to this day.’” Acts 23:1)

Like cows in the fog,
black specters on the savannah,
we looked like strangers, but we belonged there.

It got to the point where we always said,
“I’m fine”
when people asked who never made up their mind
to come closer,
to see better,
to hear the bellows of creatures left out in the cold.

We are all looking for a better love,
a higher sun that looks deeper than the droplets that
mask our view. We are all hoping for better apologies,
higher comedies that laugh
only at our own misperceptions.

I know you are not fine. I know you juggle
tears and eggshells on the floor everywhere you walk.
I know you hide it well,
but not from me,
not from me.
I know you seek a cavern deep inside yourself,
a pattern that turns the years inside out,
a hand that takes you outside yourself
for one day or two.
I know you long for,
cannot believe, but hope for,
a light through the fog that sees you
more clearly than you see yourself.

We looked like strangers. But
we hoped to be arranged in a way
that left us leaning together,
unafraid to say,
I’m not as fine as I let on.”
And trust the honesty will pierce the haze
we always believed would hide us from the
worst of days. We need something fiercer than
words that push the best gifts away. We need to
simply

Stay.

I Could Not Fight the Fog Today

 I Could Not Fight the Fog Today

(“Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Peace be with you.” They came up to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.” Matthew 28:9)

I could not fight the fog today,
I could not squeeze anything out of the morning.
I could not see the clock today,
I could not tease another moment of sleeping.
The fog did not lift,
the air did not open,
the clock whacked at my misunderstanding,
the sleep would not hold me in its arms.

I weary walking down the road hoping to meet
a man or woman
to see through my façade,
to feel the days that tread on my heart,
to see the escapes that are closed to me,
the open doors that are locked from the inside,
and the stone that has been rolled over the opening
of all I once was.

What I once was
was less of me
than who I am now.
And still the showers of blue rain
drown joy. Alone there is little joy.

I’ve believed in the resurrection nearly my entire life,
painted eggs were always figures for the one who
sprang from the tomb and hung around for awhile to
greet the women who saw him first, and all the others
who hid (like I hide) and unlocked their doors from
the inside.

So I wait for a knock on the door, and a greeting from one
I have longed for.
I wait to hear the footsteps in the garden that bring life closer
to me.
I cannot exhale the fog. I cannot whitewash these blues.
I cannot invent a hundred invisible friends to remove this
granite lonesome from inside of me.
I walk by a cemetery nearly every day and
all the graves are undisturbed.

My honesty has never bothered God (that’s my guess)
it’s all the rest that worry me. Laser advice pierces my forehead,
prayer promises are sent on autographed cards. I do not blame them,
they hold on to the same uncertainties.

Here today, there are no supernatural greetings on the road; just
asphalt, rain, fog, and a clouded mind.

The Fog Invading Their Bones

 The Fog Invading Their Bones

(“I know the Lord will get justice for the poor and will defend the needy in court.” Psalm 140:12)

Today the clouds covered the dripping hills,
the trees half naked after the leaves have fallen,
the air had the first shiver of the season in it,
and the horizon was gray.

And I am warm. I look out my front window and
see my neighbor’s dog prancing like it is
new year’s eve.
The geese veered across the sky in their familiar
flight pattern toward the south.
Wrens hide in blackberry bushes,
Swallows send their young into the air.
And I am warm, fed, clothed and
have my favorite playlist for company.

How was I to know the first rains could reach
neighbors just a mile from me,
How was I to know they had no cover,
felt the cold, left their bodies aching with
the fog invading their bones?

I thought that sad face was angry with me,
I thought that ragged clothing was just fashion,
I thought that family on the corner was only on vacation,
I thought the homeless like sleeping on concrete.
I thought they had chosen, and having chosen,
should be politely escorted to an invisible part of town.

Sometimes they talked too much and I called them needy,
sometimes they slurred their words and I knew they deserved
far less than if they spoke clearly,
sometimes they fucked and shitted and bitched and bastarded
and I insisted they exchange their language for a piece of bread.
Sometimes I feel I was bad luck to those who were angry
only
because
they wanted to be human.

I think the Spirit is drawn to the huddled families
with snow drifting through the corners in their federal housing,
I think the Spirit seeks the shacks where friends left the
many to fend for themselves,
I think the Spirit warms the unprotected and
warns the unseeing whose privilege has kept them
from the cold.

Abbreviated Fog

Abbreviated Fog

(“If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored— so clean up your life.” Job 22:23)

If you don’t mind, would you take some time to
simply be silent
and sit in the pain,
and restrain yourself from trying to
put god in a place that explains what
you can never understand?

When someone has lost it all,
is it your calling to take some more?
Will you seize the fractures in his soul
and insist he walk upon the shards?
Is it so hard to live within the ellipses,
the dots and dashes,
the abbreviated fog of suffering
with another whose life has become
a broken paragraph, the torn pages of
a book nearly written.

The wind speaks better than the air that escapes
from wise men without knowledge. Spacious in their
capacity to blame and misname every flinch
of the afflicted, they see only effects that must have had
a cause.

Will you pick apart the psalms of despair,
throwing them upon the ash heap of your assumptions?
Will you hear the moans and reject the questions
because answers are easier to handle? But what if
the sand filled your castle; what if the fire melted your
everything you had crammed into your storage sheds?
What if the heads of everyone in town turned away because
they relished answers just like you?

Stay quiet my friend. Sit close enough that I hear your breathing.
The time for talking will come. But now, leave your dissertations
and start the tea kettle please.

A Brief Fog

A Brief Fog

(“By his knowledge the deep waters were divided, and the skies dropped dew.” Proverbs 3:20)

Whatever ideas I had when I awoke, half of them have disappeared with the dawn,
and the fog has cleared to prod a new list of names,
a package of choruses and refrains,
and the same old untamed habits that keep me isolated
on the island inhabited by my sweet wife,
two dogs (one our own, and one a sometimes visitor, our daughter’s very own
“Daisy”; a sweet Chiweenie),
one cat and

My pain.

It visited one Thanksgiving Day, forced the couch underneath me,
with the weight of an iron TopHat, I stayed flat on my back and missed
the first invitation for turkey, gravy and the best homemade cranberry sauce;
and six Thanksgivings has come and gone; the uninvited visitor is now
a nuisance and not a guest.

Days like these I would drive to the refuge, watch for the deer,
follow the lines of seals and sea lions swimming upstream.
Like fallen logs their nostrils bounce above the water line,
sniffing like dogs for a bone. Sniffing for salmon to bring
home (hated by the fisherman who net the salmon to bring
home.)