Did You Pick Him Out

Did You Pick Him Out

(“When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.” Matthew 14:14)

Did you pick him out of the crowd,
the lonely one barely drudging through his grief?
Did you stay just a moment longer to
share his tears as your own?
He turned away,
embarrassed at his shame.
But like daylight you came
and sought him out anyway.

His years were longer than he could count,
his afternoons yawning into early dusk.
He was invisible to those who knew him longest,
silent to those who had heard him cry.
They had memorized his ache,
had touched every blemish on his face and felt
they knew all there was to know and so
left him alone.

He blended into the throng, didn’t he?
He had walked the curving shoreline so long
that his feet throbbed the same as his face and
he imagined you might see him anyway.

Did the crowd call you? Did they dig into
your recent loss? Did your heart capture their signal
like a radio after dark?
Did their eyes call you from your solitary heartache
into their own? You saw them all but you also
saw
him
who wondered if things would always remain the same.

Healing the sick,
feeding the hungry
has always been your way, hasn’t it?
Seeing the one,
touching the single
among the throng you healed them all.

Will You Pick Me Up?

 Will You Pick Me Up?

(“Because you are God’s children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into us to call out, ‘Abba! Father!’” Galatians 4:6)

And so, a day begins the same as most days begin.
The sun rose, but I rose too late to see it.
The pains that have trapped me in a body
too old for its years
keep me pinned to my pillow too often to
count.

I do not mean to complain,
though I know how it sounds,
but how do I reclaim a decade
stolen by trips to medical centers and
uninvited spears that kept me locked
inside myself?

Papa, will you pick me up,
will you tell me how to sit on this planet
while the nerves in my brain
flash like fire? Papa, will you pause me,
put me in a parenthesis where I can explore
the mountains or the
bookshelves seventy miles away?
Papa, I don’t mean to cry so often,
and my reasons change with the turning
of the wind;
still,
(is a wish the same as a prayer?)
my feet that love to wander both
thoughts and ground
barely leave the few acres they can
walk around.

Papa, will you wake me in time
to sit around a table with beers and
friends and
guitars and
dangling ends of conversation
before the next thunderstorm sets in?