Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the company you keep,
and sometimes it’s the weather beyond degree;
but mostly it’s the patterns in your brain engraved
over volumes of time. Like well-worn paths on
the way to a winter’s garden we reimagine
our backgrounds unintentionally.

I’ve visited the alcoves in the museums;
I’ve torn open old pages in the magazines
and I remember every imagination that never
found its wings. The hunt for daylight continues
around every tree that has lost its leaves.
I’ve lost my breath waiting for answers
to every aching circle I’ve prayed.

I have so few troubles, and I don’t mean to complain,
but sometimes not all is what it seems to be.
I feel like I’m mourning for a sliver of devotion
to the rules and gods I postdated. I feel like
its storming a silent squall inside my mind.
I lose my train of thought; I’ve lost touch with
certainty. My mind is not empty; it’s my thoughts
that have blocked mere enjoyment further out
of reach.

The dullness is harsher than the depression,
it reveals nothing but emptiness within.
Once I encounter the divine crossing my path
I stop to let it by and it fills me instead, even though
It still feels like emptiness inside.

On the Telephone Wires

 On the Telephone Wires

(“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Jeremiah 29:11)

 

Stuck inside that space between longing and hope
I felt the deepness of Autumn walking December
through the cedars and pines. And my heart,
silent like a dog sleeping during the day,
hoped for so much more that could be imagined.

We made the arrangements the best way that we could;
we never imagined that no one would show up,
that everyone acted as if they had never heard.
We were surprised when there were 100 birds
lined up on the telephone wires.

We spent most of the day watching our imaginations
wander away. We listened for the words that
silence could not douse. We listened for the songs
that sounded like home, that translated every word
into a language we always understood.

It doesn’t take much to move me off-center so far
from home; a password forgotten, a car driven to slow,
a name you remember but who has neglected you.
I am too old for tears, and someone would surely say,
“get over it”. But I cannot remember what it might be
with my memories becoming o so muddy.

So I turn toward the sun and remember it is
hiding behind the shrouds in the sky, the
gray fog that makes its home halfway
up the hills.
I know we return one day and until then
I’ll read and hope, write and condense my
longings onto paper. I’ll commit them all
to song carried along by tomorrow’s freshening
plainsong breeze.

The Spelling is Correct

The Spelling is Correct

(“For from him, through him and to him are all things. Glory to him forever! Amen.” Romans 11:36)

What to say to someone who has
never known green,
or to describe the invisible spectrum that
makes the grape leaves grow?

I’ve seen less than I know,
I know less than it seems,
I walk slower when dreams
slip through the curtain between
perception and the beginnings of things.

Waiting for the day to speak out loud so
I can send a message. Words have left me
at such a loss
and my dreams disturb and
entice me. They play around the edges.
They resurrect the error of judgement.
They offer make-believe lovers.
The leave the day smelling of vinegar.
They are my only connection

To

A few of you.

If I would not spend the day inside my head
I might get around to sending a letter.
But then I think of all the things I’ve said that
--in their context--
should have been invisible. Instead

I place my fingers on the black keys,
count the alphabet out loud and make sure
the spelling is correct.

At least that is something I can rearrange if
it is pointed out to me.

What to say when
your heart feels larger than the world.
What to say when it feels constricted
at the end of the day.

These thin membranes that separate
thought from thought
still feel connected in wireless wonder
to something I am not.

Remember when we sat on the hills,
looked at the sun
and wondered why we were here?
Remember when every conversation was
epic until

Your brother or my sister,
or camp counselor or a dad
cracked a joke that...

Remember how
we forgot what we were
talking about?

Questions Like These

Questions Like These

(“A discussion started among them about who would be the greatest.” Luke 9:46)

Questions like these cause the world to stop spinning
and laugh like onions in a chocolate milkshake.
They are misguided missiles,
thought-bombs that explode far from
the source of every noun, every verb,
every proclamation complete with non-sequiturs
and slovenly rhetoric.

Give me children who wave at me,
neighborhood pets who run to me,
eagles ignoring me,
and breezes that barely whisper the names
that have
gone before me.

The strongest among us find their bones
becoming brittle eventually.
The few on the pyramid above us
find their breath thick and cannot spare
a single respiration. Inevitably.

Look inside my cedar chest, a few blankets,
mildewed clothing, chipped teacups and saucers.
We keep mementos because we could not keep
our ancestors alive. And two more generations,
maybe three, maybe all,
the keepsakes will crumble to dust, the wind
changing their course from owned to loam hundreds
of miles from here.

Give me a baby crying in the night,
give me the mother nursing the child,
give me the father walking the floor,
give me the make-believe that should
never die.

Questions like this keep our fists closed,
grasping rods of iron,
clenching thrones of power.
Set a child before me, let their eyes
loosen my hold on unearned titles.

Let me learn the lessons of upturned faces lifted
toward the sun.

An Inside Job

 

An Inside Job

(“Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this scripture passage, he proclaimed Jesus to him.” Acts 8:35)

With their hair full of waves and an ocean that swells
they dove into their day like seals paddling upriver
following the chum.
They had not played so well in days.

Remember, there is a pebble in your pocket and
summer in your eyes. Remember when we realized
it had been an inside job all along?
Remember how we gazed and wondered at
the way the hills knew the words to every song.

With their interior design and a moveable feast
they gave away everything just to have more.
They followed the sun.
They had not been so rich in years.

Remember, there is a penny in your pocked and
sunrise in your eyes. Remember when we realized
we were connected all along?
Remember how we stared and wandered for
days like the spirit does, like a song without words.

With their reading glasses and pointed questions
they swam away their pain like swans in serenity.
They chose not to run.
They had not rested so well in weeks.

And the days began and the evenings ended,
the questions were asked and answered well-intended,
the tide rose and the tide fell,
the winds looped and the—

Stillness welled up
within the few who
took the time to listen.

Inside the Loop

 

Inside the Loop

(“The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; and they have gone down into the person’s innermost being.” Proverbs 18:8)

They told me my soul was impounded;
I heard the news from reliable sources
and paid the fines plus taxes plus surcharges
plus a fraction more to unlock the door
the story-teller broke with his insistence
that no other tale could be truer
than the tale he wove.

It loomed from parking lots to garages.

The room I had saved for glorious days
was suddenly crammed with hoarded bits
I had heard
from officers-in-charge,
authors of books
and
radio hosts who swore
their knowledge was inside the loop
(the loop I longed to encircle me too.)

Those stories bloated me, leaking out the pores
of my skin
until I thought I believed in every secret scheme
that only the faithful and redeemed knew
out of tune,
out of mind.

What have you cooked up for me this time?
Shall we blame the demons, the seasons,
the curses--or worse--the fatality I was born into?

But now that sunset is approaching
I’m unwinding Once Upon a Time
from
Happily Ever After
and telling the fable that is in front of me,
and filling the table with discoveries
I have made on my own.

I’ll trust the last line, the afterword,
the seldom heard and sublime word
to the Author of starlight and verbs.

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?

In Wet Cement

In Wet Cement

(“I will put inside them a new way of thinking. I will take out the stubborn heart of stone from their bodies, and I will give them an obedient heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 11:19)

I’m not sure how it happened, so long ago,
perhaps when I was walking, perhaps fighting the undertow,
but it dropped out of my pocket, it fell out of my chest,
I swear this is how it happened,
I dropped my heart in wet cement.

The sun baked it clearly, cured the sidewalk well,
and for a while I kept on walking, for a few steps no one could tell
that, hardening beneath the pavement, beating slowly to death,
I swear I didn’t realize,
I dropped my heart in wet cement.

Can you walk the foothills, heart out of mind;
can you swim the sparkling rivers with your heart left far behind?
Can you answer the questions, can you offer your best,
when,
I swear this is how it happened,
I dropped my heart in wet cement.

No one walked on me, only over and around,
perhaps their own hearts lie buried deep and glued to the ground.
Did they drop out of their pockets, fall out of their chests?
I swear this is how it happened,
when
I dropped my heart in wet cement,

I kept on singing, praying and spelling
the name of god and his son in proper terms and failing
to hear the absent heartbeat; the cavity in my chest.
I swear this is when it happened
to the heart I dropped in wet cement.

I was undone, unsung, prayed and faded as an
old west calico dress.
I was kneeling, unfeeling, ached and lithic as the
old glacial boulders at rest.
I could not move, though I moved often,
I was not free, though I sang like a strong man.
I was retreating, unseated, frayed and begging as an
old warrior with little left.

But I was sung like morning, I was recited like dew,
I forgot the old, the dusty, the hobbled days
when, new as creation, I welcomed the invasion
of a gentler hand than the sand and grit
that held me so long when
I dropped my heart in wet cement.

Outsiders?

“You’ll watch outsiders stream in from east, west, north, and south and sit down at the table of God’s kingdom. And all the time you’ll be outside looking in—and wondering what happened.” Luke 13:29 (The Message)

One of my favorite movie is “Babbette’s Feast” based on the short story by Isak Dinesen. Babbette flees to Denmark, avoiding political upheaval in Paris in the 19^th century. She cooks and keeps house for two elderly sisters in a tiny village set on the remote and beautiful coast. For 14 years she serves the sisters, and the only link to her past is a lottery ticket a friend in Paris renews for her each year. One year she wins the lottery and uses the money to prepare a high-quality feast for the sisters and their small congregation. The scene is filled with all the delights of a wonderful banquet, and is the outpouring of Babette’s gratitude.