Our Choreography Renewed

Our Choreography Renewed

(“The curtain in the Temple was torn into two pieces, from the top to the bottom.” Mark 15:38)

Once the illusions are scattered,
once the veil is removed,
once the hardened arteries are cleared,
once the implanted devices that replace the
original design are removed,
we might see the sun the same again.

Why is everything so small,
why are the stars any different here?
Why do imprisoned thoughts
sit enthroned behind halls draped with
crosses?

Though a thousand flags wave,
though banners catch the wind like cannonballs,
though lavender is turned to dust,
though our sculptures rust in the rain,

We can learn to trust the love within
the center. We can drop the disguises we
thought defended the shores from foes we
never had.

Our beds are unmade,
our pillows are stone,
our vision is dilated,
our view is myopic.
We see what we have been taught,
we teach what is written,
we do not read it beforehand.
We underline words that
close the doors to
the expanse that existed before we had

A single second to think.

The illusions can lift like fog, the rifts can fill with
the cooing of doves. The fields can be spotted
with does standing in the snow.
Our breath can come slowly,
our choreography renewed.
The chances are good if we sit in

Someone’s kitchen, smell the bread baking
against the uncommon rain,
that we will see the length between us is
only the same as the space between angels,
as the rays of light between droplets of dew.
We will learn to dance unrehearsed and put
our distinctions away while we savor the sunlight
that drenched the vine, savor the moments like
early wine.
And learn, without trying, that veils only obscure
the truest nature of things.

Renewed Geometry

Renewed Geometry

("...to show mercy to our ancestor and to remember his holy covenant." Luke 1:72)

Like a floating decimal point we are unashamedly aimless,
separating quotients, demanding notice, only to disappear
into the winter mists again.

We would find our way, if not for the theorems we suppose
apply to everyone. Fathers and mothers had their own family
instructions,
handed to us in woodframe prairie living rooms. Sometimes
there were logs in the hearth, sometimes there was fire; some
times there was more smoke than we hoped and we coughed
our little heads off. But no matter the background noise,
the rules turned us into their little girls and boys. Into their
men and women, into arrows they hoped to shoot in just
the right direction. But perhaps their diction was off, perhaps
we read too much fiction; perhaps our hearing was dull, perhaps
their mouths were too full

but

we needed mercy and so did they. Day by day, hearts damaged and
hearts overflowing, mouths salvaged and eyes still borrowing
their interpretations of everything from theorems on the run.

So here I am on the side of the road, waiting for the next ride home;
Here I am waiting on the edge of the corner, a long way from home.
Here I am, a boy and a man, not certain who and when I am the other;
Here I am, embraced and arms-length, uncertain how to love the others

Who had theorems at home just like me, but theorems at home
different than my own.
And now they float in decimal solutions, rings around my corresponding
sphere where sometimes we touch, once a decade or once a year.

Lord have mercy, God have mercy,
Christ have mercy;
on us.

We need renewed geometry. Grace that replaces our sloppy
calculations and creates the nexus where we meet in all our
muscle memory and brainy computations to simply offer
earthy oblations to the King whose only laws are love.