Love that Bid Us to Stay

Love that Bid Us to Stay

(“Hear my voice according to Your faithfulness; revive me, Lord, according to Your judgments.” Psalm 119:149)

Daily the cracks in the sky open to help us feel
how the love of God can burst into flames and warm
our quiet and cold early morning pensées. The night
before
we had felt the zero that loneliness brings, sitting by a
fire
that no one else sees. We stayed outside till midnight,
just two of us exchanging stories we had told each other
a hundred times before.

Waking the next morning in our separate houses,
I don’t know if we dreamed the scenes we had painted
the night before. I wondered if the embers had turned to
ashes
overnight.

I pondered how many beliefs we left behind to find
their remains in the firepit we had constructed? Did
our stories match? Did our songs matter? Did our
recitations of memorized liturgies make a difference
today?

It was love that invited us, and it was love that
bid us to stay.

We wish we had kept our sense of humor
intact.

Just in Time

Just in Time

(“And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near.” Ephesians 2:17)

It is no disgrace to hear the morning gloires open
to the slowing sun. It is still the grayest of days and,
like sifted sugar, the snow sits atop the foothills.
With our mouths full of wonder we could have
second-guessed every word. There was something
human
about the message that graced our anxious waiting.
From parallel planes we had carried the animosity
of the ages. How would this announcement take us
from our place to the other with the river blocking our paths?
We were gauged by the notice we took that the shorelines
had changed.

We both awoke at dawn with time zones between us;
We heard the song with same ears we had used to
berate the far country we thought we knew.
We had stubbed our toes on the concrete drama
of religious dogma. We had tried all this before with
no one listening. We toed the party line and never
tried to find the common thread that ran from one
life
to another. We were chosen and they were neither
blessed nor corrupted. They were just born that way.
But their very touch, as seldom as it occurred, could
drive us to constant ritual cleansing of our souls.

At odds, the new song kept trying to break through the
tangled catechism we both held on to. I worship this
and you worship that, and we both end up condemning
the practices we called idolatry. We stretched our
definitions to include the final judgement we knew
they deserved.

But at one point of time, in one sphere intervening
and filling everything, we heard the words that we
were afraid to speak. We heard a question that seemed
to answer everything.

We traveled toward each other, following the air waves
that had finally caught our attention. And we arrived
near noon,
just in time to see the marigolds glow.

Between the Stars and Planets

Between the Stars and Planets

(“I’m now eighty years old. Can I discern what is pleasant and what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats or drinks? Can I still hear the voice of male and female singers?” 2 Samuel 19:35a)

Late into the day the light dims and the sounds around us
are interpreted by the rattling cages of hopeful listening.
We once heard the frogs calling by the pond,
the owls hooting above the trees,
the folksongs sung by young lovers in the meadow.
We remembered that though our children thrive,
our footsteps have become more halting and we
wish we could twirl like them in playful squeals.

We had spent the prime of our days like castles built
above canyon walls. We had armed ourselves with word
after
word, and forgot most of them by the end of the day.
We explored food and the music that accompanied it.
We recited memorized planets from first to last and
all the asteroids dancing between them. We had a way
to look at the sky that discerned between the stars and the
planets and could see well past the end of space, at least
in our minds.

We stayed up late with the best of friends, played music
like it was a carousel. We were serious about our joy;
we played the homemade cassette over and over, two
sisters harmonizing to simple guitar accompaniment.
They sang of oil anointing the head, of sheep imitating
the shepherd and all of it so simple we dove into the songs
like angels swooping the skies.

Today the voices are crackling, the fingers are swollen and
the lyrics escape me. But I remember the people, the warm
smiles
we could wait all day to see, the voices that calmed our
unnecessary anxiety, our uncanny laughter at the silliest of jokes.
Today we would wait even longer because we are spread
across the miles like dots on a map spread across the floor.
And our days are warmer for the joy of our youth.
Some days the evening claims too many of our memories,
but sometimes, unexpectedly, a friend calls to say,
“I miss you.” And you can hear the music one more time.

Gifts of Consolation

Gifts of Consolation

I don’t have to wait until I hear your tears,
I don’t have to put it off one day to
console you with the gifts I have already
set aside. You don’t have to wait
to hear me say
that I would do anything to keep the
world from sneaking up on you like
careless serpents in the sand.

I would take your anxious shivers into
my own nervous system,
I would punctuate the fears with music
that sounds like a dozen madrigals singing
between the fine lines of loss and quantity.
I would remind you how laughter can
dry the raindrops that sheared the air overnight.
I would assign your name to the best
accomplices of mercy without an explanation.
You would breathe easier; you would see
the meteors cross the late night sky. The
falling stars would remind you that beauty can
pierce the darkness and bright eyes shine
best through the spectrum of tears.

I wish I could tell you I know how the dice will roll,
I wish I could predict the uncertainties of hikes down
uncharted canyons.
All I know is the water still flows after the
overnight fever dream,
I know the daylight will warm your hopes
like pearls adorning your face. I know, even
though it seems little is left, that the wine is
still in the cup,
the bread still on the hearth,
and children giggle while parents watch
their unambiguous play.

You Hear Love Deeper

You Hear Love Deeper

(“One of Satan's angels was sent to make me suffer terribly, so that I would not feel too proud.” 2 Corinthians 12:7b)

I know you’ve tumbled over the stones that line the
swirling stream; I know the rain fell harder than hailstones.
I know how fast the scar tissue grows
to cover the pain, to make everything numb again.

I know your eyes see more than you say.
I know you hear love deeper than most.
I know your legs ache from standing so
no one will know
how weary it all has become.
I know your arms that tremble at a touch that
should feel like love.

I know the things you do not show.
I have bruises too. I feel the tears you hold
back, but they must go somewhere dear.
Drop them on the ground on your walk and
let the birds be silent in holy hush as they
perch in the trees beside you. Let the breeze whisper
the name of the flowers. It is not that you have forgotten them,
it's the wounds that have erased them.

I would name every day after you,
I would write it out plain. I would listen to
your small talk until
you knew it was safe to unload all the talk
you never share with anyone.

I see more than you think I see. I do not mean
I understand anything. It is just that your story
lies just below the surface where I’ve buried my
story too. But yours is one of innocence, mine one
of foolishness.

Your gentleness hits me hard. Your hesitations
only give me more time to fill the spaces between
you, me, the world, and the divine. I would blow
soap bubbles in the air between us
with our names written inside each one.

The Homemade Mint Jelly

The Homemade Mint Jelly

(“Yes, for your sake and with Christ as my witness, I have forgiven whatever needed to be forgiven.” 2 Corinthians 2:10b)

Knowing you, knowing me,
knowing the panels painted across the banquet hall,
we could have danced better if we had
the chance.
We could have picked our names out of a hat
instead of waiting for circumstances to turn
us toward each other,
forward like brothers,
singing the light that rarely enters the dark creases
of monochrome minds.

I will never hold my breath again waiting for the
banquet to begin.
I’ll share every loaf of bread until
their shelf-life expires. We’re all just
sons and daughters hoping to hear someone
cheer us on. Please pass the butter and
the homemade mint jam the neighbor brought by
when she saw us pull in after ten days gone.

Remember how the sun came out, five in the afternoon,
after the thunder unloaded its hoarse voice all day?
Remember how it felt let go a sigh once we knew
we did not control anything?

I wish I could update you in person; ride into town
like Jesus on the donkey. Not that there is any
comparison; the beast is the only loaner I could find.
I walk unevenly, but want to play fascinating rhythms
too late in my career. Just the time I get the hang of it

My audience will change.

Seeing you, seeing me,
seeing the grass leaning into Spring,
we can find another chance (the second act?)
and take our original names into the dance hall
where the light falls, spun like abalone shells.

Do you remember when we drove all night
just to find a new
address to call home?

Hear the Crystal Blue

Hear the Crystal Blue

(“Lord, I cry out to you. I say, ‘You are my place of safety. You are everything I need in this life.’” Psalm 142:5)

Did you hear the crystal blue speak to you,
did you see the children smile? Did you
remember you were made
the same as the tiny feet that
run in the late day grass with footballs
as big as their heads?
Did you remember tripping in the
dew-soaked grass
wearing winter boots
and running to your dad like no one saw?
Do you catch your breath once the winter ices the air,
do you shiver when there is no winter at all?

I’ve been like a jumbo jet that lost
an engine and a wing
and discovered my trajectory has been seen
by far too many on the ground. Why did I spiral,
why the fire,
why didn’t the air support my desire to climb?
They close their eyes at the near collision of
the earth and my fuselage. I accuse myself of
crashing far before their barnstormed videos.

What they do not know is that the ocean welcomes us,
the waves wash over us,
the sea soaks us warm.
What they cannot hear are the lyrics to songs only
the dolphins have taught us.

Shall we trust each other when we have not trusted ourselves?
Let us fall, or swim, or sing, or slide down the face
of the next mountain we ascend. Let us send each other
songs
and repeat them, beginning to end until they bring
the same tears
or smiles
they brought the first time we ever
heard them.

How Well Do You Hear?

 How Well Do You Hear?

(“For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise his own who are in bonds.” Psalm 69:33)

Stand on the hills that rise steeply
above the river.
Listen to the silence of its wide and winding traverse.
There is a universe you cannot see when you
stand so high above everybody.
Descend, take your time, end at sea level where

The bridge

Shelters a dozen and a half humans shivering
under its girders and steel.

Now choose what you view.

Do you breathe the mildewed air,
do you leave your boots strung from a tree limb
and hope they will dry by morning?
Do you hide when the flashlights intrude on
your children without warning?
Do you eat slowly to make it last,
or quickly before it is gone?

Sometimes the sirens sound for one who wandered
too close to the edge. Sometimes we want to exchange them
like batteries on their last legs. Sometimes they live forgotten
just beyond the reach of our consciousness.

And yet

They huddle closer on the slippery rocks under

The bridge.

While we tear down their tents and cities and hope they will
vagabond elsewhere.

How well do you hear, o follower of the One
who had no place to lay his head? How well
do you sleep while they smoke nervous cigarettes
because the night, the rain, the hunger, the pain
keep them up dreamless. One of them

Found a discarded couch, yellow and old,
and claimed it for a day.

I Hear/Bread and Wine

 I Hear/Bread and Wine

(“Or do you not know this about yourselves: that Jesus Christ is in you.” 2 Corinthians 13:5b)

At this point it is so hard to remember
chocolate or
guitar songs with my clan
or
warm beaches with my toes in the sand.

(I am in no mood for stoic meditations. Some
days it’s so easy,
but mostly I’ve forgotten.)

I don’t mean to be grumpy or
self-indulgent or
sorry for my plight.
I just wish I got get-well cards
from someone
other than my
nurses.

My house is cozy,
my family loves me,
but I am lonely
inside these days that pass
while I breathe and
eat and
live and
sleep
under the radar.

My soul is taxed,
my brain no match for the bass drum
of days that advance without my permission.
At this point
(let me make it clear)
Christ is more than all
while I wonder why the snow falls
so late this year.

Today the hours taunt me with self-made
stories
and the sadnesses I remember.

And then I hear, yes, only faintly,
the bread and the wine and the
voice that has never minded my questions:

“Remember me.”

Can We Hear the Whisper?

Can We Hear the Whisper?

(“Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3)

Don’t faint at the irate rantings
of crinkled skin that want to fry the world up
like bacon on the rack. They think they can see,
and all they see,
is darkness, doom, and tragedy. While they wait
for a warrior or a lion to finish off their prey,
there is a better day ushered in by a lamb,
a slaughtered one,
to reflect the possibilities like
fertilized eggs birthing hope.

It is easier,
so much easier,
to elevate the madness of the masses
than to sit in silence with the
sadness of the few.
Penned in like a locked cell,
a walled city shuttered against foreign
interference,
many have missed the inheritance of
a new pentecost that makes us stop
and listen to tongues we have never
heard before,
to see
shades we have never seen before,
to sit in the shadow of trees planted
ages ago
and reimagine every
fighter jet a homeless shelter,
every automatic rifle a garden rake,
and every steel-toed tongue a
poet with healing in their words.

Can time turn in on itself,
can babies lead the parade,
can tigers and fawns share the same lair,
can donkeys convey the king?

Can we offer liberty to everyone and
stop pretending
we don’t know what we are doing?
Can we hear the whisper that, sung often enough
will entice us all to the riverside
to finally lay our
swords and shields down?

There is More Space

 

There is More Space

(“Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see—how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him.” Psalm 34:8 [The Message])

There is more space around me than I will ever
need,
unused cubes and shipping containers.
My walls are lined with books I seldom touch
(though my taste for reading is still afire).
Stay in the minimum,
talk with me in stories that whet my appetite for more.
Tell me why I still hear music after the band
is packed and gone.
Tell me how to hear it again.
Teach me the song the wind sings to the mountains,
teach me the sun when the windows are shuttered.
Meet me for drinks, stay for dinner,
let me hear only our voices in the happy hour buzz.
Choose the table in the middle of things and I will
lean in to hear it all.

There is less space around me than I predicted,
crowds of unused voices in cardboard boxes.
My thoughts are crammed with stubborn sanity
(though my taste for absurdity remains the same).
Play in the maximum,
meet me in the meadows that cleanse my palate for more.
Meet me between cornstalks and remind me of sunflowers
before I head back home.
Teach me the drama of dirt, rain and humanity,
teach me the sum of creation and the divine.
Let me have one drink, kneel by the streams,
let me hear it like crystal and taste it like starlight.
Choose the space in the middle of me and I will
green my heart to hear it all.

The Music from Within

 

The Music from Within

(‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4)

One day you can hear the mandolin strings singing just
outside your window.
The next day the fog hangs so close nothing pierces the
heavy silence.
Some weeks are lived this way, and some years.
Some storms turn suddenly away and some
sit overhead like they have nothing else to do.

One day you’re riding comfortably under convertible skies,
the next you’re confined inside a cramped stone basement
averting your eyes from the next claustrophobic wall of sound.

Joy is not for the faint of heart,
but for those willing to confront the darkness
and the detours
that stop us in our tracks. Deeper than the cellar floors
and the shadows, higher than the star-view disguises,
wider than ecstatic proclamations, and closer than
the bud to the branch

Is the unmovable space where love abides,
where transient meets immanent,
where music from within captivates us
when continental shelfs shake us to our core.

Or Write a Harmony

 

Or Write a Harmony

(“And we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which comes of God, in order to know the things that are given to us by God.” 1 Corinthians 2:12)

And how did your day begin? The clouds hugging the
ground and cold sweat dew on your brow?
Did it start with winds spiraling through the hills,
whistling and roaring like voices from up the canyon?

And what if the clouds escape the earth’s weak hold
and the winds cease for a moment just to listen to
the silence between low pressure and high pressure?
And what if we heard the music that exists so quietly
you can only hear it between heartbeats?

There is nothing magical about the moods of the day,
and yet there is singing that comes from everywhere (dark
or birth, howl or arrival, answer or inflections that change
with the hour.)

There was fear in the skies yesterday,
yet now the potholes are holy baths where brown finches
are hop-flitting in the sun. Any flip second
can rearrange a day.

Or write a harmony that we only can hear.

I Will Lay Them Down

I Will Lay Them Down

(“At daybreak, Lord, You hear my voice; at daybreak I plead my case to You and watch expectantly.” Psalm 5:3)

I rarely see the sunrise these days,
and my offerings are tiny relics of dreams
that braided my anxieties and hopes in a fantasy of shadowy light.

I rarely see the dawn break these days.
More than anything else I sense the rays sneaking
up on me, stripes upon my eyelids, beams broken up
by slits in the window shades.

Before the fog lifts, before the moon shifts below the trees,
before the sun kisses everything, before the morning breeze,
I awake, no longer startled by the images that haunt my nights.
But I do not rise,
I do not speak,
I do not pass from ink to light
until the pain has squeezed the reticence from
my groggy mind.

But I will lay it all outside my room,
I will write it all before the looming day
has its way with me. Here is my fear,
my façade, my vibrating heart, my outlawed
conscience and hopes as thin as smoke.
Here are my beloveds, here are my wounds,
here are the missing places at the table,
here are the my mother, my father, my sister, my friend;
here are all I dream of who have left this world too soon.

I will lay them down and listen. I will lay them down until
the fire of love inflames my soul again to weep or laugh
with the wind in my face. I will lay them down until
the waters have wings, until, like eagles, they take flight
into the bosom of the Uncreated One.

Do You Hear the Pipes Playing?

 

Do You Hear the Pipes Playing?

(“Though you were like straying sheep, you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your lives.” 1 Peter 2:25)

Do you hear the pipes playing,
wooden flutes on distant hills?
Do you recognize the melody,
floating across the silver river;
the acoustics that draw you home?

Do you hear the folk tunes, the roots music,
the banjo and guitar sliding under your consciousness,
the cicadas of the afternoon.
Feet tap on wooden porches, children clap
and dance between the broken boards and
tall glasses of sweet tea.

We have all seen it, the fear at the end of the gate.
We have all felt it, the shiver when we think we have
arrived too late. But then we hear it, the welcome song,
the hug your neck, we haven’t seen you for so long song.
And today you stay longer than you did last week,
today the song sounds stronger, like stones in the creek,
and it makes you want to stay until the impulses to leave
fade behind the music the master has played.

Though all have fallen fast asleep, the music continues
well into your dreams. It encompasses everything.
The fears are real but the melody infuses
the spirits and trauma that left you confused.
There is a wanderer who bids you to follow,
flute and birds lead the way. Tomorrow, like today,
will be the quilt comfort of ballads and blues,
the muse calls you to stay.

The Braided Strand

The Braided Strand

(“And he said to them, ‘Take care about what you hear. The measure you use will be the measure you receive, and more will be added to you.’” Mark 4:24)

We pull hard on the braided strand
like junior high boys
testing their skills.
How high can we drag our
evolving bodies above the
wrestling pads on the gymnasium floor?

Points are awarded for how high, how quick,
how fixed our eyes are upon the goal.
Friends are added for how strong, how silent,
how cool, how calm our sweatless face laughs
at the dare.

The doors are unhinged, the locks are broken,
the arms and legs of hundreds of acquaintances
buzz like flies in and out of the unspoken rooms we
hoped to populate with
a handful of lifetimes.

Did you hear about the one-way friends,
the directors of your life, the raters of your dives,
and the takers of your soul if you do not surface
soon enough for their satisfaction?

Did you hear about the open tribes,
the round-dance, the nods at your stumble,
the givers of your joy when clumsy is the
only step you’ve learned of their songs?

We pull hard on the braided strand
and,
aided by strangers (a first-day handshake with
a nameless face)
we find our rhythm, get our footing,
grab the slick rope and laugh at our efforts
together
to find a place above the clouds.

Earth and dirt, dust and sky; we live only
inches above the surface of gravity and sighs.

That is Where I Hear

That is Where I Hear

(“God showed his faithful love to me in front of the king…The Lord my God was with me, and that gave me courage.” Ezra 7:28)

Even though the brain waves crash upon my skull
like an endless buzz saw,
and the air is heavier than an anvil upon my head,
I have no other hope, no better word than
the softest whisper speaking from beneath the pain,
“I am with you, and I will be with you again.”

Even though the songs no longer come from my hands,
and the words, my love, my still life, explain less and less
between the lonesome stretches of writing.
I have no poetry than the simple rhymes of
childlike times. My mind is full of mystified
tangles, sentences dangling from the corners of my mouth.

Yet, I still read the unchanging motion, the words spoken
that are rooted at the base of every grunt or elocution.
“I have said, and will said it again; never will I leave you,
and never forsake you.”

And yet, nearing the end of my mission, when, from the first
the seeds grew rapidly, the message ignited wildfires of love;
at this final appointment, the last post of my journey

I fail. Though the soil is rich and watered well, the seed
does not germinate, the crop is dwindling and
I watch from a brittle chair awarded me once for
Outstanding Support, while the tears dry before they
hit the floor. My trajectory, though cruelly gravity-bound,
always rose between days of relative ease.

My books are old and tattered. Perhaps my words are as well.
Expectations shattered, percentages shrinking, while I keep thinking
the old seed should produce the same crop of my earlier mission.

And that is where I hear

Such a sad, sad silence. 

So Familiar

So Familiar

(“Come and see what God has done. See what wonderful things he has done for his people!” Psalm 66:5)

Come and hear what the jazz is saying behind
the new café outside in the alley where tables have been set
and customers sip light wine in waiting for the late rays
to withdraw from their al fresco experiment. Chain-link
separates
the alley from the sidewalk; but the sweet saxophone
slides between alley and street without the slightest interruption.

Come and watch the way lazy snowflakes take their time
from heaven to winter’s soft landing. Focus on the trunks of
of the sub-alpine firs; evidence the storm sifted in from the north. A
broadbrush
stripe of white runs up the trunk to meet the branches
demarked in high contrast in overcast afternoon light.

Come and listen to the old man’s song, the words altered and
the tune so familiar you swear it is someone’s birthday. The
cracks at the edges of his mouth and the chasms between notes
in his voice salute the truth of a life well-lived; he sings and
smiles and tears up because you have smiled at his life and
all he wanted out of every day from the moment the magic happened
(the moment youth becomes adult despite the customary age)
was to live on this borrowed mud and dome, pay his rent proudly
and have enough awe and numbered days stashed away to
fill the air one more time

With the stories of good and better, how the God who hid
had been nearer, most of the time, than he had expected.