Perhaps a Doppelganger

Perhaps a Doppelganger

(“A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ I did what he said. When I washed, I saw.” John 9:11 [The Message])

Another long day placed him near the pool where
jokers and religionists, housewives and jesters,
would was their vagrant sins away. He was certain
the waters could heal his blindness; he was just befuddled
as to which sin had taken away his sight.

Had had to resort to begging, not being able to look them in the eye,
I suppose his coffers grew more slowly than the sighted ones who
could coax some mercy and a sliver of shame from the passersby.

some were wearing turbans, some were wearing fedoras.
He could not discern their readiness, he only could listen and
hope
their voices told their readiness to contribute.

But then a man approached and said not a word. He looked at him,
this Jesus, and spit on the ground. Making clay with the saliva,
he rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes. The blind man
shivered; what could this mean. Then he spoke, this Jesus,
and told him to go wash in the Siloam pool. He sent him there
directly.

The man went. The man washed. The man could see.

Scattered across the portico the people held court and could
not believe. Perhaps there was a doppelganger who had alwayscoul
had his sight. Perhaps they merely mistook him for the man begging
at the gates.

inally, he spoke up, “I’m the man, the very one.” His voice was
happy but shaking.

How did this happen? The clowns asked from the circus motif.

I can see. Does that bother you? A man named Jesus made a paste
and rubbed it in my eyes. Does that offend you? He told me to go
to the pool of Siloam. Does that confuse you? I did what he said.

When I washed, I saw.

Does that make you want to follow him?

Instead they marched the man to the religion experts who
dressed finer than cocktail tuxedos at night. They knew it had
to be a fake;
it was done on the Sabbath. He was healed on the Sabbath.
Jesus did work with mud and clay on the Sabbath. The man washed
it off on the Sabbath.

And every adjudication contained a clause that insisted miracles
cannot happen on the Sabbath. They take too much work. You cannot
rest and restore sight at the same time.

All the man knew is that he was once blind but could now see.
Jesus could have healed every blind person that day, including the
clowns posing as experts, if only they knew they could not see.

Perhaps If We Paused

Perhaps If We Paused

(“If any of you needs wisdom, you should ask God for it. He will give it to you. God gives freely to everyone and doesn’t find fault.” James 1:5)

I appreciate your visit, at least I know where I stand.
You brought your talking points, numbered and outlined,
scrawled in your own hand. Some were new, but one was
a decade old.
Hadn’t we beat that one into the ground? Wasn’t it dust
sent on the wind ages ago?

But since then, you have never visited again. Did the
storms blow, knocking down the hedgerow we planted?
Did the crows steal the seeds of peace?

The seasons still turn, though, 16 since then. The pictures
move
in memory like a flickering silent film. The words hide,
buried beneath grains of sand, beyond a million stars,
outside the radius of our reach. We send flares in the night,
but the colors were wrong. We wave at trucks and cars,
hoping someone notices our pace has slowed, our smile
is frozen in place, and our feet have worn paths into the
grass between the road and the river.

What was our baptism if the water never washed
our misdirections out to sea? Did the showers rain on
you and not on
me?

But we are fathoms, we are not phantoms. We are universes,
we are mites. We are not airless, but we are children of the wind.

Did we pass each other yesterday? Did our globes rotate to
coordinates that stopped us, same place, for a moment in time?
Did we both see the face that wondered how friendship was
so fragile,
how two men of billions walked a path together,
and then lost sight of the north star?

Perhaps if we paused before unwashed words settled in the
air
like smoke from a distant fire. Perhaps if we learned that
laughter is as good as wisdom, campfires are as good as
generosity, and freedom is cultivated by the light of
a myriad of wicks lit before dawn.

When the Noise Has Scattered

When the Noise Has Scattered

(“Perhaps the Lord will see my affliction and restore goodness to me instead of Shimei’s curses today.” 2 Samuel 16:12)

When the noise has scattered,
when the sky is shattered,
when the paths that mattered now seem
unfastened from the hillside,

How do we hide our fear? How do we regroup,
(circles or pyramids) outside the doors that
once invited us in?

When the songs are deployed,
when the prayers are employed,
when the chants we enjoyed now fall
unwritten from the towers,

How do we hid our grief? How do we refine,
(ignite or liquefy) inside the walls that
now all box us in?

When fire is rewarded,
when love is reworded,
when the priests discarded the low
unwelcome from the banquets,

How do we hide our tears? How do we resolve,
(theses and discourses) above the debates
that lock us all out?

We waited the way patients do,
simply hoping for some good news.
We tasted the honey, imbibed the perfume,
we drank the new wine, dined beneath the blooms.

And still we wondered why,
despite every well-oiled presentation,
so few wandered in, and when they did,
why they never stayed long.

Perhaps We Still Can Fly

Perhaps We Still Can Fly

(“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” 1 Corinthians 13:1)

I can’t afford to walk with my head in the clouds anymore,
I can’t wait on angels to touch my brain and lips like I did before.
There is a straight-line path from my home to yours,
but I must take the road around to bypass private property and dogs
roaming outdoors from
one treat to the next; I might be next.
Although, I have befriended most of them. Perhaps I’ll show up
at your door with a pack of them. Your cats would appreciate
the confusion.

I walk the half-mile to your house. I hope you are not in pain.
I pick up your mail and walk it up your driveway. Today there
are three new prescriptions to add to the
dozens half organized and a quarter unrealized.
I’ll sit with you as we have dozens of times before.
We are old hands at this, we are experts on angels,
and yet the angels we’ve known are absent for now.
We are two angels with broken wings; with two wings
between us
perhaps we still can fly.

But I had enough trouble leaving my bed today that
angels were the last thing on my mind.
You were in so much pain today all you could think to do
was to fall asleep again in your chair after we
wondered how life leaves so many of us grasping for air
when we had dared to climb the heights for those who could not
find their way.

They never knew it, well very few anyway, that our legs were
fire whenever we found the summit at last. They understood it well,
though,
when we fell, when we stumbled, when we crawled like
the first amphibians leaving water for land.
We were not well suited for either. We wanted to be
of land and sea,
they wanted us to be Sunday’s constant surprise of
spirituality.

So, we wait on angels, don’t we? One calls you while I
visit today, your advocate from the V.A. She is kind, but too
slow from our way of thinking. We both know she is juggling
time, and life, and clients, and care the same way we juggled
questions about god. And they were impatient too, with our answers,
because we dealt in questions and not in certainty.

I should have shared the bread and wine with you today,
the blood and body of the One who is hidden behind our pain.
I will visit you again, old friend. And we will talk about
the picture on the wall; you clothed in vestments and
children with drops of joy on their heads.

Perhaps It Was the Poppies

Perhaps It Was the Poppies

(“I will answer their prayers before they finish praying.” Isaiah 65:24)

It was in the shape of a tree, an evergreen,
pointing beyond the skies and dreams away from
the magnetism of dirt and earth.

But there was not a guardian angel in sight. I know I knew
his name,
I thought we were personal like that. But, for now,
the name was locked deep inside my brain, and maybe a
mini stroke had hidden it forever.

It was the color of wind, a gale warning; the offshore flow
dropped heavy clouds with bullet rain driving us inside
except to make a run to the mailbox.

But there was not a ray of sun in sight. I longed for happy rays
that pierced my retinas, tanned my forehead and sent me safely
playing with my chihuahua. She doesn’t like the cold or the
precipitation. She hesitates at each drop.

It was the rhythm of fear, the heart rate, the paralysis,
the constant analysis of things that could go wrong. (Things
had gone wrong so many times before.) It was the wall that
calcified the heart and challenged anyone with soft enough
words
to tear it down from the outside. I had learned to hide; with
raw bruises where I had torn the fortress wall down before.
I looked in his eyes, told him my shame,
and years later everything changed. I sat with him for hours
when he cried about the love of his life. But I understand;
so my wall grew thicker by the year and higher each season.

Perhaps it was the sunflowers that reminded me of the power
of light.
Perhaps it was the poppies that buttered me up to install a
window, a small one, to peek at the days. Perhaps it was the
half dozen friends who never went away. But none of them
knew my shame, and I was not ready to risk it again.

So I walk where the shapes point to the sky,
I ponder inside darkness, I wait in frozen expectation,
and wish for one or the other kind of companion:

A new friend who knows nothing about me and wants to
know it all.
Or a friend who knows it all, and still craves my company.

Today I will travel between dreams and magnetic earth,
I will let the raindrops do their work to wash away the limestone
whitewash on my well-aged wall.

Perhaps a Mild One

 

Perhaps a Mild One

(“The Lord is my strength and my power; he has become my salvation. This is my God, whom I will praise, the God of my ancestors, whom I will acclaim.” Exodus15:2)

What I want to know is
why the waters do not always part.
This is not a complaint, or perhaps just
a mild one,
simply a question that fills my ache every time
someone else’s sea stands dry, and they pass by
with a satisfied look in their eyes.

I would sing too, and so would you,
if it happened to us. We might stay in
the riverbed
all afternoon building sand-castles
or cairns to mark the day.

You might even say I am jealous for the stories
told in ten seconds or less
about the mess that now looks like
a wedding cake on display. And yes,
my messes look more like pudding or
dumplings,
I admit.

Though it may not be dramatic,
though the overture is painfully short,
though the curtains open on a scene so ordinary
it could be main street,
or ranch style,
or farm house,
or downtown diner,
or just some children wading in the river
with the dogs biting the water and
turning somersaults in the sand;

Though it may not be a masterpiece
of biblical proportions
or an anthem of alleluias,
the story I’ve learned has enough space
for my questions
and enough wonder to keep me
peeking at tomorrow as it comes over the ridge.

Perhaps I Will Hear a Voice

 

Perhaps I Will Hear a Voice

(“Then she stood behind Jesus’ feet, crying, and began to wet his feet with her tears. She wiped them with her hair, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” Luke 7:38)

I.

What no one knew is that I would
have stayed there all afternoon.
Perhaps they assumed I had grown weary
of mud on my feet; so very tired that I
had thrown everything away they though I believed.

II.

I heard your voice in a dream last night,
a voice I had not heard in forty years.
It sounded just the same as I remember,
only it was me-in-the-dream that heard the words
and not my waking ears. Still,
something was broken and
something healed
at careless sentences and curious
memories. There were fevers and living room corners,
my brother and the one high school class we shared;
was it world history?

So many question my departure; so many minimize my pain.
I am sorry that I had to dig so deeply into the archaeology of
my dreams
to hear easy laughter from the wrong side of religion.
I have no idea where you have gone, but I can find others
without trying
who have dismissed the crying in my soul. And, as in
all dreams, you were not you,
you were me,
and met my ache with simplicity.

III.

What no one knew is that I could
stay here forever.
Though they cleverly reeled me in to
their angry godless Jesus,
I can only fall awake-asleep,
and weep,
and repent for salting his feet
with my tears.

And now my heresy grows
as I stay where I can never leave.
He has reduced me to essence only.
It is lonely here. Perhaps I will hear a voice
awake I recognize from down the years
tomorrow or today. I still break,
I still heal,
I still have stories I am not allowed
to tell.

But I have stayed in the place where
my stories are safe, my proofs are optional,
and the voice I hear is spoken in things
more solid than

Dreams

or

Doctrines.

Perhaps it Was Satire

 

Perhaps it Was Satire

(“For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, their poison my spirit drinks; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.” Job 6:4)

 

Perhaps you thought it was satire as you saw the
helpless man burn.
Perhaps you thought it was a fairy tale when you saw
his black skin bleed.
Was your sarcasm worth it,
did it make you feel larger,
did you sense the darkness
when you said that he simply
should have complied?

 

How many of your brothers have been
shot in the back
7 times
by an officer of the peace?
How many, and who?

 

Perhaps you believe the playgrounds belong to you,
the shiny slides,
the perfect pavement,
the basketball nets replaced every afternoon.
Perhaps you sit in the shaded picnic spots
and listen to barbershop quartets
or a jazz combo while you douse your briquettes.
Perhaps you think race doesn’t mean a thing
even after stranglings, shootings, and warrants issued
like invasions.
Perhaps you believe.

 

So, I ask again, how many of your sisters
have been shot
in the dead of night
in their own bed
by officers who would have otherwise
knocked.

 

Have the arrows cut through your own flesh,
have you drunk the poison of blades invading
privacy, eaten the bitter fruit that steals all your sleep?
Do you need lessons, do you need more training,
has life been perfectly sweet? Did the giants hold you
underfoot while others raced ahead? Were you blamed
for coming in late?

 

Let us hear the stories of power that steals, giants who
rage, firearms that splay the last breath of the day. Let us
create the stories of power that heals, servants that sage
our playgrounds and begin the music to a new age
of open
dance
and
play.

And Perhaps

And Perhaps

(“Whoever wants to save his life will give up true life. But whoever gives up his life for me and for the Good News will have true life forever.” Mark 8:35)

Protective, my sentences are guarded;

defensive, my paragraphs precise;
wrestling, I accept few invitations;
guessing, my statements entice
more questions.

Few understand my occasional stutters,
unplanned conversation is quicksand.
Words are ammunition; mouths, keyboards,
pens and paper blaze with fiery offense
the surer I am

All the world is a neighborhood
and not
a conflagration of gangs and nations.

The poorer I am
of the certainties that
every earthly rubric
has a higher and conflicting rule
of peace by laying down our swords,
and taking up

Our neighbor’s plowshares, across the street,
the stream, the river, the border

And making matters worse

Expecting to speak well of life through dying,
that my best thoughts still keep me
one step inside the line

That Jesus would have me cross
in time to heaven’s tempo, at, perhaps
my own personal loss.