Smoked Corn

Smoked Corn

I can tell by the way you smile you like the corn
that was smoked on the cob. Spice bites softly,
smoke grounds it, and each kernel is another bubble
of sweetness that combines with the butter in your mouth.
No wonder we talk more together when reaching for
the next bite of burger
grilled just moments ago.

Four adults and a rectangle table. One 2-week-old
baby, soaking up all the attention. Four dogs in our
daughter’s home, plus one alone from our home too.
One ancient cat that barely moves…couch to feed dish…
15 years and fluffy. Wherever she sits is her throne.

Nothing ever goes to waste; the minutes without voices,
potato salad dropped on the floor (that’s what the pack of
dogs is for), and the easy sleep of a baby passed around
the generations at the table.

There was no prayer, but for the bounty before us gratefulness
abounded.
We sang no hymns, but the Baby Man recently entering the world
filled us with song.
And no final benediction, save for hugs and “love-yous” as
we took our leave back home.

There is sanctity in communal meals, there is holiness in the
humility we share;
these bodies do not let us live long at all without
food. We share a table, we share mortality. And so we smile
broader knowing time will not capture us, space will not define us,

And church bells only remind us that eucharist is everywhere
we eat together with seen and unseen guests.

Some Hit the Wall

Some Hit the Wall

(“Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.’” John 6:68)

Some hit the wall so hard they cannot find their way back
to the panels where icons wrote worship in incense chalk.
The pain spins them, the concrete pins them against the
bricks that scratch their honest diversions.

Where do they go, the innocent failures,
headstrong but too smart to toe the party line?
Impure, though they longed, in short, for more.

To breathe the first blade of grass; silent, unmown,
straight in its posture toward light that pulls it from
dark underground. Sharp and soft,
it shoots in slow-motion toward the explosion of sun.

Is there still time to lie upon a bed of green next to a tree
generations older than hierarchies of men? When?
Are names still uttered from double-scripted scrolls;
is life still the language? And, my name, does it roll
of your tongue like you love the sound of it? The short of it?

Some hit the wall and find themselves cornered. The explanations
no longer soothe the brooding ache, the excuses have exceeded their limit.
Some sit, simply waiting for the next dispensation of miraculous
stories from mighty crowds. Some sit. The waiting has erased
the overheard faith and demands the hand and voice
first-person. This time.

Though struck, though dumb, though deaf to the drumbeat that
once attracted my soul like the first blade of grass,
I have nowhere else to go except the vast uncertainty that
slides in front of me, just out of reach.

I can only write of ache. I apologize. The size of my soul is shrinking.
But buried black, dead at the bottom of the abyss,
a seed remains. A seed awaits (please)
re-germination to become a spindly grain hugging
the wall.