He Called it Presence

He Called it Presence

(“When they suffered, he suffered with them.” Isaiah 63:9a)

He danced the dirge like a ghost,
and felt like a silent shade. There was
nothing substantial he could remember.
There was nothing future he could predict.
He pulled the sod up over his shoulders like
a blanket to keep out the cold.
There was no one there for him,
at least that is what he was told.

It was like the beginning of creation,
It was less than the sun could shine.
It was like the last day of celebration.
It was more than the moon had to show.

He never thought anyone knew,
He never saw the eyes that saw him.
But there was another dancing, another echoing
his sad spinning. He did not think he was suffering.
The truth is, he did not think much at all.
But he could not help but see there was another
day someone might call apostasy.
He just called it presence and kept up his
sojourning ways while his heart gave way
to the questions he had been asking for
a lifetime.

Would the one who began it all
finally move his direction? Would the last
of days, ancient in its ways,
feel the tears as hot as his own?
He hoped it was so. Neither questions nor
answers
soothed him in these rotating seasons.
He just hoped the unknown visitor would
stop by before the end of the day.

When Joy is Ancient Like Rain

When Joy is Ancient Like Rain

(“Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!” Psalm 95:2)

Run in for cover,
that’s how my soul feels on days like these,
find somewhere to hide. Not that
I am in danger; I find my heart craving
impossible meals and solo excursions with
a gypsy mind.

There were two friends on the road,
one danced with his classmates and one
sipped wine whenever it was offered.
They had met up after 50 years,
they thought they might recognize the
old poppy fields. They thought they might taste
the teenage pizza they shared, a large
hot Italian sausage. They played pong
while they waited.

There were dark wooden tables there.
There were girls who recognized us.
There was a boy who looked like me
who thought he knew, finally, for once,
how the world worked and how God handed
out prizes to the penitent.
He cried in his room a lot over
cravings and old coffee cups underneath his bed.

This man, me-who-writes,
would give up a quarter cup of convenience
for a pinch of ad-libbed laughter in a
favorite restaurant.

I could sing of your insanity forever,
the ways you schemed, the poems you dreamed,
and the ways you viewed the world, they way
you practiced each scene like it was the first day
of a trip through the winding roads of the East Bay Hills.

Today, though the rain speaks every name I’ve
learned along the way,
I will listen for their songs. The joy feels like sadness,
the gladness sounds like monks chanting. The silence
looks like a doorway to sojourn and paisley afternoons.

All Anyone Wanted

All Anyone Wanted

(“Feast there in the Presence of God, your God. Celebrate everything that you and your families have accomplished under the blessing of God, your God.” Deuteronomy 12:7 [The Message])

 

His choices once were boundless, the wideness of time and
the land spread before him like a queen’s banquet on her
coronation day.

There was nothing to hint in the air or the sky
or the pizza late night games with a dozen young dreamers
and their children fast asleep--
there was nothing to hint that many would not see him again until
he finally was on the ground.

 

How had he fallen among the dark shadows begging for longer hours
and brand new bread? Why was the daylight so slanted,
the help he was handed so ghostly, the glances interpreted
as holes in his shirts and acne in his soul?

 

From the time he hit the dirt until he accepted his
next invitation,
he only sat with children whose sense of invention
held him steady in the embarrassment that his poetry
no longer rhymed. The adults spread out in tables of eight
and he laughed with babies with deviled egg on their faces.

 

There was a cradle that held parts of him
he could not explain. There was a toddler in a playpen
babbling his name. And so he knelt in the corner,
eye to eye with one
who knew the ground as well as he.
He never knew what to say when the one adult
across from him made it two at the table. Words
were stumbling and sometimes stuck sideways
in his throat.

 

But still he craved the fire, still he wanted to go where
the flames wrapped each word with smoked goodness
and the embers never died until well after dawn.

 

He never knew what to say when it was only two
at the table,
but the food they offered, the drink they poured
opened portals of the spirit. The babies and children
laughed harder and the adults did not mind.

 

Eventually he discovered a real live giver,
another breather with his same misgivings and
realized
all anyone wanted was a meal on a paper plate
beside the kitchen door.

And Then We Are Born

And Then We Are Born

(“You teach me the way of life. In your presence is total celebration. Beautiful things are always in your right hand.” Psalm 16:11)

Lastly I want to say that I am an
archipelago and not a continent,
though the ants that sting my feet might disagree.
(I know you think you’ve found all the
ground you can cover in me,
but there is more to be discovered than
you or I perceive.)

You see my present, and think you know my past.
I am flooded with every act from middle to last.
You see my blunders, I bathe in them daily.
My intentions are more gloomy than you have imagined.

For I am dark jungle and the brightest beach,
barren desert and living reef,
artesian spring and salted sea,
I live in the margins not in the
clarity I wished and believed an
infant life could be.

No one shames the tree for the shadow it casts,
nor blames the sun for not piercing the tree,
the tree and the sun are one.

I hated the middle, the mud, the dark
and assumed the light would change me at last.
But I am tree and sun, dirt and air,
castaway and citizen,
a single soul containing the universe with all its
cold void and searing stars.

Some traveled with me through the overgrowth,
some left when they saw I might be lost,
some welcomed me at the caravansary,
some left provisions and went swimming.
Others wandered with me, overland, between the
boundaries of dusky light. We knew each other better
for our simplicity and loved each other more in the
complexities of soul no one can explain.

We learned new languages and geography;
history was abandoned as we waited for water
and listened to the stories we told. We did not know
if we were younger than the universe, or old.
But the Creator’s light cast shadows in the heat
and brightened the songs we once thought torn by the
unwelcome complications of the moment, the journey,
the untransformed.

And then we are born.