Chardonnay in the Sun

Chardonnay in the Sun

(“There they stored up a large amount of wine and summer fruit.” Jeremiah 40:12b)

Maybe you’re among the fallen ones,
maybe you’re just living your best,
maybe you’ve always had what you wanted,
maybe your dreams have turned to dust.

I don’t know if your fields lie fallow,
or if you will start your harvest tomorrow.
I don’t know if you’re talking to yourself,
or if you’d rather be anywhere else than
surrounded by the four walls,
closed in by the silence,
waiting for the fruit to ripen,
waiting for the wine to ferment.

Maybe you’ve been waiting to belong,
maybe you think you’re the chosen one,
maybe you’ve learned to shut out the world,
maybe the days are full of best friends and bluebirds.

I don’t know if your doorbell works,
or if your telephone is off the hook.
I don’t know if you’re fixing dinner for three,
or if you have waited all day for company
to fill the silence and your anxiety.
Maybe I should call you,
maybe bring coffee and lunch.
Maybe we are both the same, maybe we are not.

But a walk through the vineyard might do
both of us some good.
Chardonnay in the sun and
a book read out loud,
a day without fences, a week less certain
than monuments of the past; just hearts that
beat and eyes that see
and tongues that cannot wait to taste
the sweetness of the dawn.

The Battle, The Fatigue

 

The Battle, The Fatigue

 

(“But I have learned to feel safe and satisfied, just like a young child on its mother’s lap.” Psalm 131:2)

If I could sleep a hundred days, I would.
I’ve sat all day alone in my head 4000 days ago
Until now. There is no sword, no weapon to wield
that can slice through the shadows that weigh so much
they never bleed.

(And I would rather write an instead word here,
something to grant the reader a foreshadow that
rest will find me awakened like coffee and bacon.)

I do not want you to think that my faith has been shaken
(but it is)
I do not want you to imagine me wandering the path that
only leads me deeper into the darkening woods
(but I do)
I do not want you to think I’m an infidel, a heretic,
a miscreant, a fool or a poor soul swayed by a nasty spill
that befell me.
(but I am)

I have electronic friends to pass my days.
I have random music to explain the ways
the cells in my body buzz when my brain
stumbles and weaves into the 15^th round of a fight
it never intended to enter.
I have resonant instruments and harmonic strings
if ever I will play them.

How much rest does one person need when the battle,
the fatigue, the constant watching, the high alert lasts
from best life until late life? Where are the medics when
you are left bruised on the field?

I push my pencil forward one inch at a time,
who would think I would become so weary only
standing in one spot for the last decade?  
Who could predict that brain changes would
take so much out of me?

I am weary like the nub of the last crayon in the box,
I am tired like the black smoke from a candle wick dying in the dark.
I am silent, I am aboil, I am weighted, I am uncoiled,
I am medicated where the wounds lanced my dreams
and still I look at the phone to hear the past voices
that once laughed with me, but will not cry my pain.

So Mother, I am napping. Do not wake me until
the day has passed by at least twice over and the sun
is golden behind the river and fog.