The Dot My Pencil Made

The Dot My Pencil Made

(“I live in a high and holy place. But I also live with people who are sad and humble. I give new life to those who are humble. I give new life to those whose hearts are broken.” Isaiah 57:15b)

Do you see the dot my pencil made;
Can you see the spot my tears undried?
I jotted down the training notes that taught
me to curtsy like a little girl in the face of
the divine.

Can I tell you a secret; will you hear the words
I display?
I never shouted as loud as the rest of you; I didn’t
think
god was hard of hearing.

But in private I ached, I bent, I tormented myself
into believing I was as alone as the graphite period
at the end of a meandering sentence. In public I made sure
I stayed on my knees at least as long as the
last one to leave.

My diaphragm jackknifed and my lungs hunted air
that was so spare in my unforgiving sadness. I was
suspect the whole time. Depression recruited me stronger
than the hands laid upon my head. The last time
I asked for prayer to take away my blackness

They decided to cast out demons and left their hands
hanging at their sides.

Do you see the laser on the wall;
Can you see the light so tiny it nearly faded?
I called in my reinforced bunker for the help
I craved. And though my tears continued

Like something that, if it had been you,
we might share a beer over consolation that
god had placed you there.

Let’s Not Pretend

Let’s Not Pretend

(“Even though you are so high above, you care for the lowly, and the proud cannot hide from you.” Psalm 138:6)

>Did you notice that day was new,
and did it seem they had all forgotten you?
Were the walls still stained with grease and pain,
did you ever try standing and found that you were faint?
Where is the mighty magic promised by the priests,
where is the comradery promised; where are the feasts?
It is frosty in their presence, the center is sub-zero;
I want to meet the fiery ones, I want to know another anti-hero.
Maybe being alone is the best option, maybe missing the day:
Maybe my pain is the place God meets me, my ache when I pray.

I don’t discount your stories of falling under the power, healing the blind,
uttering tongues that no one can understand. But from here it looks
like so much showing off (I hope that is ok to say). Jesus kept his
works semi-secret, like only one square of chocolate left,
dark chocolate that only pairs with a good red wine.
I haven’t tasted either for quiet some time. Here is what
I know…lowly to proud…

Life passes at the same rate for all of us. We all have an
end date stamped on our best years, and no hand stamp to
get us back in again.

So, let’s not pretend any longer. Do you see that homeless man
begging for bread or cash or a place to lay his head. That’s where
you can discover everything you have ever wanted to know about God.
Do you see the religious man bellowing, casting lost ones into eternal fire,
scolding struggling ones who have tries so many ways, and proudly announcing
the Second Coming is coming within days or months (apparently he has
an inside track.)

So, let’s not pretend any longer.

The Wind Was High Today

The Wind Was High Today

(“Worthy is the slaughtered Lamb to receive power, wealth, wisdom, and might, and honor, glory, and blessing.” Revelation 5:12a)

The wind was high today, but I did not mind.
The trees took it all into themselves, like they were being
born again.
It sounded like white water. It sounded like the
humming fan that puts me to sleep.
And I wonder why
men with only words for their authority
want to be Lions,
want to drive fear like a tank
right over the indigestion you feel
with their passive aggressive side dishes
they serve with every meal.

But today I saw two fawns, nearly ready to face
the adult autumn in the hills. I saw two rabbits
standing still even when dogs from two adjoining
yards tried to bark them away from their lunch of grass.
I saw a finch unafraid to share space with
mid-sky ravens and
upper atmosphere eagles.
And I wonder why
we’ve turned Jesus into a weapon of
mass; disgusting. Why we envision blood
flowing from his sword. Why we cannot wait
for him to stand on a mythical mountain and split
the wild world in two, leaving a hell of panic, a
Pit for nearly all creation to burn into.

Today I ate an apple from my front yard, greening red,
tart and perfect. I shared the same meal as
the deer who frequent my fields.
And I wonder why
we don’t invite more neighbors and share our pain
over pain de mie and wine in the sun.
Why we would not invite everyone;
to lay our burdens down and
dry the tears that nearly drowned us last time
and remember the suffering that spoke far more
of love
than a

Devouring lion ever could.

The Accumulation of Things

The Accumulation of Things

 

It is not the pain,
it is the accumulation of things.
And, I hate to complain, but today
the weight of solitude caused my knees to buckle.

Yesterday I received letters from friends who
have
melted my heart and let me into their own.
One, a glorious musician, air force navigator,
adventurer and conspirator in all things poetic and
spiritual.
The other, a widow. I attended her grief during her
husband’s final days and her son’s just one year later.
I was in over my head. But we stayed with her son,
her, me and the attending nurse,
until the light faded from his eyes. He was kindness
embodied, shoveling snow from the church sidewalk
with me when the drifts
were nearly high as our heads.

And most days the memories of these living friends,
these who for 25 and 35 years have never ended their
grace to me, their smiles encased within my heart,
a place reserved for fireplace talks and Christmas carol
variations. Most days they inhabit with joy my only alone.

But today it is the accumulation of things. Today
I wish for a finger’s touch on my arm, the kind that warms
you, and maybe makes you blush. The kind that pushes the
button to allow the tears to flow again. Today
I wish for the eyes that do not look away. The kind that
are lyrical, the kind that coax miracles from melancholy
without demanding faith of any kind.

Just like dividing an integer by zero,
solitude upon solitude becomes impossible.
A sparrow’s song outside the window breaks the
ennui for a moment. Maybe some carolers will call.

Under a Single Sky

Under a Single Sky

(“For the High and Exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy says this: ‘I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed.’” Isaiah 57:15)

The corner is no place for someone like you.
The shadows are not your home.
The teeth of the cavern,
the shards of the abyss
are not the place prepared for you.

And yet we put you there.
We never meant to.
You didn’t fit in and we were not
elastic.
And now we have moved on and left you
behind
to take more drastic measures on your own.

You belonged at the table.
No, you belonged to the voices that are
rarely heard;
the colors, the genders, the spectrum, the splendor
of intervals between the tones. You
stopped speaking when
you were not heard.

Your prayers were interrupted by syncopation
we rejected.
Your pleas were dismissed. We left you
unprotected. And then designed our bylaws
to exclude the rest that came behind you.
We did not mind knowing you;
we could not risk the questions that
fell from rafters like concrete on our heads.
We assumed you knew that too.

Do they still call it a remnant? That leftover
fabric, that unused yarn? It always made me think
of leftovers, the last thing left in the kitchen.

How can we know you if we insist on a quorum,
how can we hear you over the small talk of majority?
How can we encircle you? Tell us this time and
we will remain silent. We have put down our pens,
closed our notebooks and want to join you.
We were not allies, we were pedagogues and
insisted you learn our lessons.

A few of us are grieving.
A handful are shattered that we preferred
leaving to learning your story.

Let us sit in the corner with you,
visit the cavern and study the abyss.
We have smashed our clocks, our scales
buried in the rubbish of our myopia.
And if you do not speak,
we will not depart this time. We
will sit on damp granite stones,
pour the wine in a common cup
and pass the moments, the minutes,
the hours, the ages,
where the divine dwells like incense,
where our souls revere the placement
of one to one. The you, the i. The we,
the us. The just and unjust under a single
sky.

Leaking Grief

Leaking Grief

“Help me, O Lord my God! Save me because of your unfailing love.” Psalm 109:26

I have been leaking grief, not all over the place,
not puddles at the bottom of my feet;
but focus on the drips from the driveway to the
front door,
the seals have grown brittle and I can’t find
my bearings.

If I keep my thoughts at bay, I think of nothing.
If I allow my thoughts to stray, all the disrepair
straddles each side of my brain.
If I keep them away, they invade my dreams in
failure (no one shows up for my choir practice);
anger (no one defends the obvious loser);
losing (climbing cliffs with my fingernails);
bankrupt (running out of time and too many die.)

I have been leaking grief for years. You can mark the trail.
Gaze, for more than a moment, my eyes are redline,
oily, the tread is worn to the nub. I will no longer listen
to a single word that suggests

Anyone can overreact to unexpected death.

Take your high words and tell them to the hills;
I need the silence that heals, the fawns and does
that do not roar in the woods. I need the waves
that steal the sand and carry it to islands where survivors
know grief is sometimes a way of life.

Oh, Man of Sorrows! Become acquainted with my grief.

Take your complaints to the county courthouse,
I’m tired of being an eternal caregiver.
Come wrap me in a shawl, light candles for me,
sing the songs from Ireland or Lakota, beat the drums
that let the tears and tongues trickle, the faucet is
broken.

Someone wrote that you cannot support abortion and
be a Christian.
I wonder how you can lock the eyes of mourners,
(“don’t cry” is a lie) when your Leader wept between
the mystery of death and rising.

I am not lying; I have been leaking grief and sighing
for decades. Tomorrow I shall seek the comfort

Of unbelievers who know how to hold my tears in their tissues.

Oh Man of Sorrows, acquainted with my grief.
Oh! grief.

Words to Melody

Words to Melody

(“The Lord your God is in your midst—a warrior bringing victory. He will create calm with his love; he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17)

Sing me the lyrics I cannot remember. Sing me the song in the trees.
I need a lullaby, wind and violins to open the heavy coal mine that
occupies my soul.

The weight of the atmosphere keeps the leaves from whistling,
my heart from joining words to melody,
The weight of the atmosphere only reminds me of
what I cannot recall, what refuses to be resolved.

Sing me to life with wordless breath. The soundtrack of pain
is set so high the butterflies rise upon its updraft and escape across
the backyard fence. All I want is calm and rest,

And yet the silence infests me with neurons that buzz like
high voltage lines. My mind is crushed, the cranium shrunk by
abbreviated muscles and nerves. On the verge of leaving every
question behind, the pressure surges; a sound dull and slower than
my heartbeat; louder than the noonday sun.

Sing me to hope with your hands and face. Sing me to hope,
sit beside me in grace. Sing me to hope, cry with me. Sing me
to hope and remember our childhood joy and wonder.

All I remember are images, pixels scattered like jigsaw puzzles.
Sing me the words that patch the cracks, that take me into
magical forests, blue jay fun, dolphin joy and a sun that
revives-not-scorches.

Sing me the words on covered front porches where friends from
forever, renewed and amended, will remind me of the lyrics
that abandoned me here.