I Wish I Had a River Road

 

I Wish I Had a River Road

I wish I had a river road to walk upon,
a lazy trail behind the trees to lead me
to your home.
Our faces once glowed in moonlight like
decorated pines. No snow,
just eyes that saw everything.

I wish the days did not separate the years
from each other. Though our tracks convened
in mud and asphalt decades ago,
the world still speaks in syllables of love,
the poetry of patience that embraces everything.

I weep how the roads have degraded over miles,
over time,
and the navigation is more challenging from
your house to mine. I can see it,
I can hear the music wafting from the windows
like a country apple pie. I can hear your heartbeat,
see the frost in the air as you exhale the same
atmosphere as me. Yet we get tagged, we get named,
we get classified and remain no different than
when we both agreed.

But what if birds were no longer birds,
were verbs like stretch or pinch or slobber
or cringe? What if language meant nothing and
facts are farce; no longer simple opinions
and their interpretations? It you call it pie
while others insist it is an automobile, how do
we communicate at all?

That is why I hesitate at your door. If you ask me
to sit on the couch, I do not know if I should fly
or buy a ticket to the stockyards downtown.
And further, if you tell me you have dreamed,
I may presume it is real; the ghosts, the pale riders,
the dark forces you believe have embattled me.

That is why I say so little. The more I speak the
more brittle my words fall upon the kitchen floor
where the pet dog licks up the remains.

And yet one thing never changes: the syllabus of mercy,
the portrait of long skies that undisguises everything.

Without Watching

Without Watching

(“Whether he is a sinner or not, I couldn’t tell, but one thing I am sure of,” the man replied, “I used to be blind, now I can see!” John 9:25)

I’ve got nothing in my pockets except
shredded tissue that went through the wash.
I do the laundry now and my wife works.
She always emptied each pocket and
turned the clothing inside-out.

I haven’t filled up my car for a year and a half;
barely have driven except to see doctors and visit
an occasional mockingbird. I stay home now while my wife works.
She always detailed the car and never left napkins on the seats.
I forgot where the gas cap latch was when I filled it for the first time
yesterday
in a year and a half.

I live too much behind me. I mean decades behind me. I live with
stagecraft in my head, leading ladies and drama buddies, high school
presumptions and productions we took more seriously than calculus or
french IV. Every time we practiced, every time we performed,
donning burlap sacks of characters on a page,
we met truer than when using our own names.
My past flows through a funnel. Area codes are transposed,
and everyone I know from the best time of life
are mere digital connections; though for some of us,
the love has only deepened as we spoke each others’ names.

I haven’t stood behind a pulpit for over a year. I may never again.
I may forget decorum and study. I may become lazy and cry away
the mistakes, age and pain that did me in. I may never preach again.

Sometimes sight comes without watching,
blindness is cured while we lie in the mud.
Sometimes we were born that way, sometimes the sky
merely darkened, and others have closed their eyes because
perception is too frightening. I have been blind because
of everything.

Sometimes the good news becomes noon day and smells of
apple pie golden in the windowsill. Sometimes gospel is more than
pianos and banjos
and is heard in every birdsong sung to you from beginning
to end. Sometimes seeing is just spit and mud
in the hands of the Human One who rarely announces his name.

So we wash our clothes, empty our pockets, fuel our cars,
long for tacos our best friend’s mother always set out for
the half dozen always just showing up. We sit by the water,
we breathe the pastry baking, we hear music divine played by
earthlings like us, human or not

And hope one day, unexpectedly, the tears will clear,
the light will enter, the love will engulf and we shall
know as we are known; clothed or unclothed, named or
anonymous.

What No One Else Sees

What No One Else Sees

(“So Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘Here I have seen one who sees me!’” Genesis 16:13)

It’s another grey dawn and she wonders who
sees her uneventful life.
She’s only a slave, a pawn, someone put upon
by hidden bruises on her arms and brain.

It’s another piercing sunrise and he ponders the
numb outrage that has stunned his best intentions.
He’s only an ant in a hole, undistinguished, anguished
and sometimes wears disguises just to elicit a smile.

It’s another silent morning; though the music swirls
throughout the house,
words from church and worship, how can they feel empty;
but they bring so little to fill this soul; this agony
that so few ever see, hidden even from her sometimes
in the constant tinnitus that is too common.

It’s another isolated morning; though the music meets
him face to ear;
wordless, he’d rather not sing, and still feels empty;
waiting for something so large to heal the composure he
lost along the way. He hides from humans these days,
afraid they will find, see and touch the source of his
daily tears; duly confessed but still a torrent.

It’s another hollow afternoon and she waits for her
children to come home.
Her life, her joy and her frame of reference;
they fill her heart and she fears the day they will leave.
Who sees the tears held back; the words never spoken,
the doubts that make her feel she is worth less than the
perfect people who never speak their pain and never see
the boredom; the weeping fruit of hurts unspoken.

It’s another afternoon of pain and he waits for a simple
word or friend, or anyone who can see how brittle he’s become.
Don’t call him strong just because he writes a few lines when
the daggers are dividing his mind.
Who sees the tears every afternoon? The next-door neighbor,
the friend known forever, anyone who has seen him cringe.
Shouldn’t they know better? Would someone please see better?

Would someone please see what no one else sees and not run away
at the sight of people so out of place, out of time, so out of tears to shed that
by all appearances they are as normal as anyone else who never cries
when the world has left them stranded.