Let’s Be Clear

Let’s Be Clear

(“Then the Lord put a message in Balaam’s mouth and said, ‘Return to Balak, and speak what I tell you.’” Numbers 23:5)

Let’s be clear,
not everything that is spoken can be heard;
not everything in creation can be seen.
Not every pocket is empty and not every
wallet is full. There are holes in my jeans
I never paid for; there are angels assigned to
lead us, or so we hope, or so we believe,
or so we tell everyone when it was all just
a matter of coincidences. It was two atoms
in the same place at the same time and they pulled
each other apart like the yoke of oxen in the field.

Sitting up straighter I can peer through the window;
my posture has been bent by pain and years. You say
you don’t believe, and I understand. Doubt is a ladder
up or down, depending on how you’re persuaded.
These noises have continued unabated and fill the silence
that anxiety brings.

I would speak if there was anyone to hear. I would talk,
but the varying results make me fear the knocks at my
door and who may be waiting to criticize my past
agony and my present
disquiet mind. I would apologize, but I’ve tried
that before. Forgiveness was granted but the
icy wind still blew through the cracks in the windows.

That has left me suspicious of everyone who possesses ears.
As much as they pretend to hear, I know they have never seen
the authentic me, so I may as well paint a picture they would prefer.
I may as well lock myself away. It is a risk too far
to assume how the highwire will hold the full weight of
my blended truth. I’ve welcomed the vagrant whose
story was as murky as my own. And now, in my spiritual
vagrancy, I look for someone to listen to my vague
incarnations of stories and stumbles.

Songs for the Road

 Songs for the Road

(“So the people believed. When they heard that the Lord cared about the people of Israel and had seen their suffering, they bowed to the ground and worshiped.” Exodus 4:31)

Listen, the story is coming. Give heed to the words that
contain the seeds of your liberation. There is an announcement that
is no longer fantasy. It is not vanity to think that the divine has
given you an avenue of escape.
Open the envelope, break the seal,
read the news that announces the days of sorrow are over.
See the signature, hear the voice, recognize the penmanship,
breathe the perfume. Let it remind you, let it make you dream
while you are still standing there in the sun. Let it transport you
to the next day that describes the reasons for your pain.

List the ways you have heard, catalog the moment you
understood that tomorrow, though the same as today,
will bring reminders that you have been understood. The
message
was timely.

The sweat had left trails of salt down our
brows and cheeks. We checked in on our children every
time we had a chance. We looked past the horizon in hopes
they would not suffer our hardship once they were grown.

We thought we might perish in the sun. We thought we might
grow extinct, but unsure of the exact moment in time.

We heard the words and fell on our faces. We listened
longer than we had before. We were seen; we had been noticed;
our silent soliloquys had stuck in the mud. We built an altar
and loaded it with every prayer we had ever uttered. We
grasped every syllable and molded them into shapes of
angels who had been following us all along. We kept
quiet, though, saving our songs for the road, saving our
songs for the road.

Open the Day Wider

Open the Day Wider

 

(“This is the message we heard from Christ and are reporting to you: God is light, and there isn’t any darkness in him.” 1 John 1:5)

 

Open the day wider, the eyes, the spectrum of paint
that interprets every dandelion, dragonfly, and cloud.

 

Open your heart fuller, the ears, the spectrum of song
that hears every waterfall, thunderstorm, and roar.

 

Being is better than careening,
joy is sweeter than parades.
Each moment is filled with particles
from the first day the universe was made.

 

Lately and lazy, I see only shadows.
Polaris is obscured by my
pain, transgressions and friendships
broken across the sky.

 

There must be air beyond the abyss,
parallel rays above the raging cliffs.
There must be a place of endless day,
sundance or sunday, all the dead bones waste away,
until light is left behind to turn tears into prisms
casting rainbows on the cavern walls.

 

Until failures fall silent, pain lasts no longer than
the first drop of rain. Until friendships are friendships
that hold each other unafraid;
for the light has revealed every and
pronounced everything “good.”