An Unvarnished Sky

An Unvarnished Sky

I didn’t expect to go out again today,
the rain reminded me to sit with a pillow under my back and
a quilt around my lets. The call of a friend woke me from
the scratches I was reading in the book and my malaise,
and I took her to pick up her vehicle being fixed 9 miles
up the road.

I have all the time I want. No one wakes me up early,
no one demands my time mid-morning until late afternoon.
The rain spoke most of the day, but I had trouble interpreting
it’s call. Weeks ago, I wrote further ahead in time.

The sky was unvarnished and paintless,
the pencil mast of a sailboat etched the horizon.
I thought of warm waves, countless days
when the warm sun and wet sand were all I desired.

All my days have regressed to mediocrity;
happy hours meet sad sandstone head on.
Like a stream whistling from the hills I
sometimes wish alone felt more like sanity.

I didn’t expect to go out again tonight,
I spent the day centered on myself. Not
selfish,
but sifting every emotion through a sieve of
old beliefs and common words that
leave me mimetic. I can lose myself in the
music for an hour
and be back to brooding by the next
wink of morning. The sky is just a canvass
for my unpublished masterpieces.

All Tattered and Perfection

All Tattered and Perfection

(“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17)

Where lives intersect; eat and play and love,
we can dance the steps of the joyful,
we can hear the melody redeemed,
we can note the steps, follow the quarter-tones,
and wonder at rounds geometrically opposed to
the strict sounds that stayed within the walls of
our protected subdivisions.

But we must not journalize the stranger; bell and chant and candle.

Here in the day we are reduced to children again who
play by the rules until the rules hinder the play. Why can’t
the newest one have four strikes, not three? Why shouldn’t the
corner boy paint portraits in pink and green?

Once we have discovered our New World we die if we think
the discovering is done.
Each coast is clearly concocted of sand dropped in new
frameworks against the horizon.
Each cavern is deep or dry, shallow or dripping with stalagmites
dialed by time slower than the kitchen wall ticking.

Dry eyes, warm clouds, sand crabs, foreign sounds,
hands raised, knees bowed, hymns sung, voices loud.

A hush at supper, a shout at soccer; vespers and incense,
chocolate and cadences; each soul is its own invocation,
and benediction can begin

The moment we embrace the introspection that longs for
the dances we’ve never learned or seen or heard.

The Dancer is not of this world or your world,
The Dancer spreads the music through every crack in time.
The Dancer indwells each space between movements
and encircles the down-beats tapped or clapped or missed
in our tripping attempts to follow.

The Dancer is invitation; all tattered and perfection,
torn and covered with the crash of waterfalls and the
force of hurricanes. The Dancer is whisper; the epicenter
of creation’s silence fully alive.