Like a Time Capsule

Like a Time Capsule

(“But can anyone know what they’ve accidentally done wrong? Clear me of any unknown sin.” Psalm 19:12)

I’ve been running around this oval for far too long.
I used to run it so well with nothing left to sell and
only crafted pages of unbalanced mistakes.
I can see them, front and center, all the cages
where I locked away the wilder passions that
troubled me in darkness and silence.

I should have learned it a dozen lives ago that
there is no hiding once the deeds are done. There is no
consent for a choice gone wrong. I lack the control to
turn the pages to the next story I’ve hoped for ages to write.

I faced the facts, but only one at a time. I could not carry
the weight of every kind of stone that tripped me up.
I should have seen it coming;
I should have leaped out of the way. I opened my
mouth
to clear my mind and nothing came out except for
a squeaky scream that frightened even me.

The way I sneaked around the edges of my consciousness,
the way I perceived failures and fatalities only served
to make coming home a delayed tragedy.

So, clear my anonymity, let the motion pass unanimously.
My legs are mud-like and my imagination keeps recording
every uncertainty from the first time someone decided to
pry a confession out of my quivering mouth.

I’ll carry the weight, I’ll set it down on the porch.
I’ll visit the forest just a mile from my front door.
I’ll speak your name although it is unpronounceable
and hope when you call mine it will be a foreword
the new day longs for. I’ll
discover what I buried like a time capsule half a
century ago. I’ll reach out my hands to either side
and round dance with all the tribes that once invited me.

And if someone shows me how I’ve missed my steps
I’ll follow them faithfully until I learn them right.

Everywhere I See Him

     

Everywhere I See Him

(“But Paul claimed that Jesus is alive.” Acts 25:19b)

Everywhere I see him;
it once was not so. I could not see
the connections, the instruments were
untuned
and I could not discern the key.

But every cloud holds him now,
every raindrop transports me now
to beats and tones where the divine
is hidden. Up day. Out night. Up beat.
Sing light. Even the
blue notes
move me to cry tears along with him.

I followed, I know that you know,
but the world was divided, music and
spirit
collided
and footsteps were either dung or mud.

But now the world is one,
the most dangerous of places, beauty is seldom
found in the safest faces. The edge of the precipice,
and one foot more,
there I will explore the joy that steps outside of tombs
into gardens where doves sit on branches to greet the sun.

Could it rain any harder? Could my heart feel any dryer?
Yet the agony abates because
the demons I thought once feasted on my defeats
were birth pangs instead. Misery drove me to
break my knees on concrete floors setting a course for
all night prayers that lasted twenty minutes. I was
deflated.

I was not. I was embraced and did not feel it until
the day opened, the fog lifted, the noise drifted into
the dark lake swallowed whole. And I could hear the bells toll
from a half mile over the hill. I hear them still

In jazz and blues, in mother and child, in lemons and apples,
in novels and poetry, in elders and babies. I hear them even
in the voices just as frightened as I once was. But now,

I see him everywhere.