This Scorched Gravity

 

This Scorched Gravity

 

I cannot describe the conflagration that goes on inside
my brain; the fire of pain, the scorching power that lays
me low and mows me down. 

I cannot describe the river designed to delight my mind
over and through the flames, never extinguishing the blaze, but
cooling while I’m burning and reaching for the name
of another friend who will look on without protection and
only see the waters pour out my eyes and 
only hear my saddest songs.

I would share this scorched gravity with you,
only for a moment with you,
just to let you feel what I know
you want to feel.
You look at me and see a face with
whiting hair,
wide mouth,
and eyes that still beg for a moment’s peace,
(but your eyes look the same).
Aren’t all eyes the same? 

I know my complaints sound like a backfire,
a premature explosion, fuel under pressure
that should have been released over time.
I know you see the outside as clearly as you can,
and, understanding less that I do,
you would reach across the miles for my hand
(or my heart, or my brain, anything to restrain
the mountains that have massed on top of the
valley of longing.) 

But still, there is a river saturating the fervor
that has turned to fire and leaves it unextinguished.
Oh that I was only a bush in wilderness, unconsumed,
a gap in the universe where God appears.
And perhaps God does, between the river and the flame,
calling the lightning and the rain. Do they speak in the
heavy ache that binds the fire to my earth-bound mind;
Do they speak for the divine?

Some Days are Heavier

Some Days are Heavier

(“When someone is weak, then I feel weak too; when someone is led into sin, I am filled with distress.” 2 Corinthians 11:29)

Some days are heavier, the gravity pushes down like a cloud
full of gravel; while just a step and a half over the children twirl
like cottonwood dancing on the breeze. There is little to be said
about geography, myopathy; it is simply the weather that pushed
you around and left an opening in its soul full of dandelions and
dragonflies,
while you drag your disguise under the hailstones you nope no one notices.

But I see. Or at least discern the evidence. A lovely white porch
with
elder limbs for shade and the next day spitballs from the sky
shredded the lanai. Leaves were pureed, paint was splayed with
chips of white and green the jigsaw pieces of an infinite puzzle
or remains. You remembered why you nearly decided it
was a bad idea to put the glass table outside.

Some had insurance. Some had luck. Some discerned the future.
But you, you must have been on the receiving end of judgment
for hail so large to hover so long over a target so precise as
the white porch where people imagined (mostly the uninvited)
your adolescent raucous.

We sat outside on spotted plastic, shared a sigh and a drink,
and though the air was still heavy as iron, the hand of a friend
was better
than the doctrines of neighbors about
the hand of god.