Grain-Sized

 

Grain-Sized

(“Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.” Hosea 6:3)

Have you watched the rain fill the potholes and
the next day the sparrows are bathing?
Have you seen the way old eyes fade
when the lengths are measured so precisely?
Have you missed the sun on a befogged morning
and refused to walk out into the gray?
Have you ever,
even if you don’t remember,
walked barefoot all summer until you
did not need shoes at all?

Have you smelled the lavender and remembered
your grandmother or the florist who loved the dirt?
Have you tasted a strawberry and remembered
the kiss of an early love?
Have you been to the beach, watched sand crabs
swim in your castle’s moat?
Have you watched the orange sunset turn to
red tide under a renewing moon?
Have you seen the ways young eyes fade
when campfires sing until dawn?

Have you felt the verdant forest coating your skin,
the boundless sky caressing your shoulders,
the breezes sigh like a joke gone wrong
that everyone laughs at because wit has become
joy which needs no permission to grin?

Have you hiked a hill until your back was fire,
but would not retreat until you stood higher than the
aspens below you? The alpine lakes show you more
from above the timber line.

And some days do you sit and do
nothing at all
while you think the world is livelier
outside your room?

Have you every wondered how someone so
grain-sized
can imagine universes within and without you
or that the divine infuses
it all like rain, like flame, like
the very next dawn.

No One Leaves Hungry

No One Leaves Hungry

(“He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to the sky, he blessed them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude.” Luke 9:16)

I do not know who you are
reading these words,
seeing this page online,
but I want to share my bread with you,
my skin with you,
the tent I live within.

The dirt that I am made from,
the mud that molds my frame
is the same as every other earther,
we are 6 billion and the same.

And Jesus loved the bread of the land,
he love the fruit of the vine,
he shared it like a baker,
he blessed it like a priest,
he divided it like a maître d,
he held it like a grandfather on
Christmas eve.

No one leaves hungry when we share our bread,
no one leaves angry when we keep our skin on,
no one deserves our judgment, no one knows the story
from first to last, from vast lifetimes birthed without
our consent.

So we set the table; no we dine on the couch or
the picnic blanket closer to the soil. We are broken,
we are one,
we are open,
we are children aching for the sun
with our unanswered prayers and losses,
our good fortune and the gossips that talked
out of time.

We invite the one who spoke behind our back,
(our own words were swords not long ago).
We make room for the loneliest widow,
for the offkey and off the mark beliefs
we are certain are mistaken.

But this is becoming too unwieldy,
I only want you to know my story
and listen like it is bread that has been baking
and filling your head like yeast, and filling your
heart to
love the least and just join the band of humanity
that multiplies in the hands of dusty people
who still hunger for a shared loaf of bread.

From mud to grain, there is no better explanation
than a preoccupation with love.