The First Thing I Noticed

The First Thing I Noticed

The first thing I noticed was the vacancy
at the table, the chair you used to sit in,
the door left unlatched, the void where your
voice once filled the air.

You were no longer invited after taking your fall;
your name was forgotten after your honesty took the stage.
You lived putting it all together and leaving your mind
behind.
You could not accept the constant dissonance any longer;
your ears needed the chords to resolve. You had pinned your
hopes on the lyrics you heard earlier in the day.
You trusted promises that were left hanging like
torn sheets in the wind. You looked for the hand
that once carried you through the riptides of
bewilderment. But they had withdrawn to find their
own place in the sun.

You started the song again, this time all alone.
You played all the instruments because everyone had gone home.
You could no longer sing, though, like you had decades before.
You wondered why you even recorded anything anymore.

Doctrine had caught up with you. Creeds had kept you
bound to the chair at the table where only the most exclusive
were invited. You spoke too soon and were deconverted
unnaturally. Your place at the table dissolved even
more once you mentioned the poor. You were resolved
to live unnoticed like a seed underground.

The first thing I noticed was the way you
turned the tables
and lived again in the margins. The first thing
I heard were the words you said unleashed from
the strain you used to bear of living up to the dogma
of yesterday.

She Dressed Her Soul Well

 

She Dressed Her Soul Well

(“Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice.” 1 Samuel 2:19)

Habits are the vestments of the soul. Every holiday
we knew
a card would show up in our mailbox,
a day before Thanksgiving,
a week before Christmas.
Birthdays and anniversaries
a card would arrive with the address inscribed
by an unshaking and elegant hand.
Always signed in love and always sent in
a colored envelope to suit the occasion.
Even when we moved a thousand miles away,
there in a borrowed mailbox we picked up cards
from a saint who had practiced the artful habit.

I do not know how many thought of us in our exile,
perhaps dozens, perhaps every day, perhaps with tears,
perhaps hoping to say they wish they had done more.

But one, with a habit nurtured with 80 years of life
sent us air for our lungs,
hope and steady friendship
sealed in simple paper.

How long had she sent friends and pastors,
nieces and nephews,
children now adults,
the hope that someone still remembered,
the smile at seeing the same signature
of someone who adopted armfuls and never
forgot them
through deserts of Decembers?

She has dressed her soul well
though she would never think
a mere pen, paper and calendar
could ever make a fashion statement
noticed by anyone.