Safer Together on the Sand

Safer Together on the Sand

The tides roll in and out
so regularly
that we can set the days by them.
But every low tide surprises you,
exposes you and leaves you
uncovered on the helpless shore.
You shiver every time.

You have learned to shelter in a
nearby cave, rolling a stone
to hide inside for half the day.
The surf is drowned out within
the limestone fortress.

I know where to find you.
I watched you once on the sand
before we ever met.
I marveled at your beauty and
wept as you ran away. I did not know
what it was you feared;
I only wanted to sit on the beach with you
until the tide came back in.

I started going to the same beach
each day to wonder at your beauty
and to know the secret that made you hide
(If I had only shone brighter, would you have
blossomed and
trusted me with your hidden heart?)

I walked past the pulpy seaweed, through
the coastal grasses to the mouth of the cave
gagged by a stone.

I did not know your name yet,
but I guessed it would sound like moonlight.
I wanted to breathe that name out loud,
but had to knock on the stone and
say “hey”.
I heard barely the sigh that wanted to
be alone.

I went back every day at the same time
and finally heard the tears drop just inside.
And I knew you still wanted to be alone.
I asked if I could remove the stone.
You preferred that I didn’t.

So, I promise to never try to pry it open.
But if, one day, you nudge it open,
only an inch…

Then I would still stay silent and
send only sunshine and golden love
through the crack you have opened.

And when I find you on the beach, frightened
but stronger,
I would ask your name and take it
as my necessary breath.

I would ask only for this;

That I could meet you here on the beach
every day to walk the sand together.
We would walk past the cave each day,
and we would keep on walking.

We are safer together on the sand
than alone in a soundless cave.

Day Breaks

 

Day Breaks

(“Then a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is My Son, the One I have chosen. Listen to Him!’” Luke 9:35)

Day breaks in on my dreams
as the sunbeams crash through my
windowpanes. Whether born with a
knotted mind
or
twisted like that over time,
the only voice I hear frightens me,
reminds me
that I have never belonged.
(When I did, so they thought, they invited me to
their homes. We played games. We laughed and
got donuts in the middle of the night.)
But either because, in desperation, I tried
to no longer hide behind cinder block certainties
or
I simply could no longer carry the pain of a slowly
exploding brain,
many scolded me. Many, my god, who once sang
the same songs about you.

Day breaks and the light slices unreliably,
strings and waves and particles so discordant
they escape my present reality. I have constructed
a crumbling world
where floorboards squeak every time
I think someone wants to enter. If they make their
way past my threshold I would certainly show them
the cobweb rooms where others before them
had left this unclean vacancy within. No, it
did not begin with them;
truly, I did little housecleaning from the start.

Day breaks up the waves that flow from river to sea,
and, for the life of me, I cannot discern how I ended up
flotsam upon the ocean with
no way to swim to the shore. I’ve flagged others
down with my words
but perhaps the foghorns have drowned my voice.

All this to say, let me hear the Daybreak. Unwind my
savage mind.
I am a child who cannot swim, a foreigner who does not
understand the language,
a castaway who stranded himself for
want of good navigation.
Let me hear the human voice of
the Living Son,
the Chosen One.
Because the way things have broken
every word I hear spoken sounds like
just one more reprimand. I need a voice
that gently breaks over deepening cracks
like ocean over sand.

A Word in the Sand

 

A Word in the Sand

(“I heard a loud voice from the throne say, ‘Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. Revelation 21:3)

I saw the letters left in the sand, shallow around the edges
where froth and wave had smoothed their homemade angles.
It was a long way from the dust of home.

I resisted the urge to measure my footprints by them;
even children know the alphabet withers when seagulls
strategize noisy assaults upon the beach.

So I walked around the single word traced when the
sky was afire,
and sighed I could not find its author. But I stayed;

I sat on sand still warm and waited for the tide
to erase the temporary script. My breath was

Endless.

And though night was soon to follow the last
perforation, the dusky prism of sunset,

Even the darkness ran from me,
silent in the glow that inhabits everything.