The Footsteps were Relentless

The Footsteps were Relentless

(“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23:6)

He awoke to the sounds of the city just beginning
and blinked the night from out of his eyes.
His sons had already left for the day and this
wife kissed him goodbye moments before his eyes were opened.

He felt like orbits had spun around him unchanging for
year after year. There was love enough for everyone in
his small house and family yet he felt unsettled, and
he was embarrassed to say, deeply lonely.

He knew the incongruity that left him well tanned on the outside,
and shuddering sad within. Face to face he had
little to say though he knew his words carried more meaning
than ages ago.

He barely remembered what it was like to shop for gifts
until the perfect one jumped off the shelf and came prewrapped.
He wished he could shop anonymously, but now he lived in
a rural village and no one was new. He felt guilty about that
too.
Why would anyone avoid the friendly glances of neighbors
and friends. He thought he had run out of things to say
and the rest got caught in his throat. He had been captured
by his words so often that he rationed them like rain.

He had to admit, in his quiet moments, that though he
was often misunderstood,
he also was asked for wisdom he was not sure he had.

He could not argue with mercy; he could not debate with goodness.
The tiniest footsteps crept up on him over time,
like a grandchild wanting to surprise Papa with their hands
over his eyes.
He could not deny the eternal home he had found;
he could not explain the melancholy that captured him
mid-sentence when he only wished he could sing better.

He got out of bed and, walking, listened for the footsteps
chasing him down, the footsteps he recognizes everywhere.
His mind clattered with unease and built fences to keep
his precious wounds out of sight. But the footsteps were
relentless, and he stopped to try half a conversation
in the late morning sun.

Untitled

Untitled

(“The rich and the poor are met together; the Lord is the Creator of them both.” Proverbs 22:2)

I.

He wandered the galleries
circa 1970
of the New Berkeley Art Museum.
The gray concrete Brutalist building
housed Warhol and Pollock,
and in a shaded enclave Richard Brautigan
read,
with easy inebriation,
his newest poetry. It was magical in the 70s;
He was 15 in 1970.

Brautigan paused. Or maybe he finished.
The students who drove through the Caldecott Tunnel
could not be sure.
Some of his poems were scratches on parchment,
some rambled the east bay hills. But, after he
put the last drop of whiskey to his lips and
sat down to light a cigar,
the curious teens wandered the galleries again.

He wondered at some of the installations,
walking around pop art and soup cans
and curious to their meaning,
looked at every label in the gallery.

Untitled.
There was more than one. Un
titled.
And questioned the creativity of
leaving off the name.
For him the title was a gateway to the meaning,
a miniature explanation of the dots and explosions
on canvas or melamine sculptures. There was no one
to ask
when the card read
un
Titled.

He vowed to write an anthology of poetry and,
right in the middle of his collection,
leave one page blank except for the title:

“Untitled”

II.

Half a century later, labels mean less.
Perhaps we come into the world as the perfect
artistic medium.
Perhaps we do not need the titles. They may not
be
gateways to meaning at all,
but a tin box lithograph with “sardines”
on the label.
The name tag was affixed so early
the artist’s name has been forgotten.

Freedom Lives in the Fence Slats

 

Freedom Lives in the Fence Slats

(“So if the son sets you free, you will be really free.” John 8:36)

Today all I hoped for was meaning
alongside my mistaken humanity.
I barely can proofread my own work,
let alone edit soft sell and
hardheaded opinions boiling over
on the page.

And yet,
words I meant as love
have squeezed some wounds I did
not anticipate. The rain fell like
a sandstorm instead.

Here I am, lonely again,
wishing words were more transparent.
But some dots and commas tripped
a person up again
and I must remove them before
the meaning is lost forever.

Freedom lives in the fence slats
that let us see the garden next door
cultivated by spotted hands breathing
the roses.

Freedom lives in the offenses
dropped like guns turned into
garden rakes. The hands dropped loosely
to the side, we advance only in
surrender and silence.

We hope that our folly will
be only a printer’s error in this
loose-leaf attempt at

Getting through the day.