Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the company you keep,
and sometimes it’s the weather beyond degree;
but mostly it’s the patterns in your brain engraved
over volumes of time. Like well-worn paths on
the way to a winter’s garden we reimagine
our backgrounds unintentionally.

I’ve visited the alcoves in the museums;
I’ve torn open old pages in the magazines
and I remember every imagination that never
found its wings. The hunt for daylight continues
around every tree that has lost its leaves.
I’ve lost my breath waiting for answers
to every aching circle I’ve prayed.

I have so few troubles, and I don’t mean to complain,
but sometimes not all is what it seems to be.
I feel like I’m mourning for a sliver of devotion
to the rules and gods I postdated. I feel like
its storming a silent squall inside my mind.
I lose my train of thought; I’ve lost touch with
certainty. My mind is not empty; it’s my thoughts
that have blocked mere enjoyment further out
of reach.

The dullness is harsher than the depression,
it reveals nothing but emptiness within.
Once I encounter the divine crossing my path
I stop to let it by and it fills me instead, even though
It still feels like emptiness inside.

You Had Little Choice

You Had Little Choice

(“For this is the word of promise, “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.” Romans 9:9)

This cannot make up for the promises I made;
I always hope to be better, to play the scales more carefully,
to walk the log across the stream more cautiously.
I probably should have stood up for myself when
seated in front of a dozen accusers trying to get to
the bottom of my offense.
I never defended the charges, never insisted I was
innocent.
But I lived with a crowd of people pushing my pedigree
like they were judges waiting for my next indecent apology.

There is no one to blame but myself. My only wish would
have been for a phone call now and then, not to catch me
in a verbal twist of fate, but to prove there was grace when
I was convinced there was none.

Sometimes babies are born by accident; sometimes they
come like blurry little hailstorm. Some come right on time
and some drag their feet when entering this world.

Sometimes children hide in plain sight, thinking they
are invisible. Sometimes adults shroud their intentions thinking
their privilege projects their intentional interrogation that
sucks all the faith from the room.

You cannot stop the coming nativity,
you cannot prevent the child that is to come.
There is preventing the birth that accompanies
the dawn.

After the pledges come the completion.
The acceptance following the words pregnant
with promises. There are no more words to surround
your preoccupation with squeezing the souls of miscreants
like sweltering lemons in the sun.

You had little choice; we all know that. You had fewer
options than we understood. And yet, and yet,
even the sinners can be cured by a word, or maybe two,
about babies that carry on the unfinished consequences
created by God’s partnership with mere humans who,
surprise or not, trip themselves up, stubbing their toes
like toddlers learning to walk.

A Better Vocabulary

A Better Vocabulary

(“Now no discipline seems to be joyful at the time, but grievous. Yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness in those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11)

I hear from somewhere beyond the hills,
there is revolution in the air. There is movement
that turns the breeze away from nascent factories
to cedars spreading their aroma across the valley.

I found myself hiding behind the window
wondering if anyone
could see me at all.

I hear there is a renovation on the beach,
a multi-level casino, or maybe a resort. It
could bring in millions and employ locals for
a few years.

I don’t know if it is true; I find myself doubting
my purest thoughts. Sandy oceans sometimes pull
me out to sea. I’ll swim parallel to the shore to
find my way home.

I hear there is repeat performance in the park,
a group of friends who learned a few songs together.
They hadn’t spoken to each other in years until one asked
“Do you know this tune?”

I think it is true. They invited me to play, though
I had to learn the music for the first time. I had to
play the lead guitar on my keyboard sounding like a
Hammond B3.

I fear from somewhere in my past,
there is a reunion planned like rain. The last time we
met the words were hot, the words were iron, the words were
hidden beneath un-sunny dispositions. I don’t know why
it needs to be this way.

But I would attend. I can constrain the polyrhythms
for a day. I can coat the syllables with intentional goodness,
I can refrain from rehearsing our old ambitions.
You’ve hit the rocks, I’ve hit bottom. We both know
a better vocabulary by now.

An Oblique Ghost

 An Oblique Ghost

(“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21)

I have sat bent in half
on the stairs into the garage
with its concrete floor and mildew smell.
I have waited to confess what everyone already knew,
and had not passed the test,
but had not lied. Had hoped grace was in the air
though I feared I would lose everything.

I was naked while they stared.
I was white, pasty, such an oblique ghost
that my skins showed the stains from every tear;
they were rivulets down my temples, my arms,
my chest and my thighs. I should have learned how
not to cry.

I don’t go out much these days. Don’t look for new friends,
old friends sometimes scare me. My wife, my children, my
beloved grandchild and my dog, my social circle is safe
but small.

I have sat with my darkness longer than most. (Although,
that is not fair, I have no measure to compare your darkness
to mine.)
Pain heals nothing.

I am not cynical, and maybe bitter. But there was a moment
lifetimes ago when I heard laughter rise from hallways and alleys,
alpine lakes and friends always too silly to dwell on the
consequences for long.

Today I might call you, take you away from the crashing crowd
yelling at the asphalt concert,
to a quiet café for an hour or two,
and ask you,
or even beg you

To let me cry as long as I need
and to allow me to say anything, anything at all
once again.

Sometimes a Note

 Sometimes a Note

(“Provide her with anything she may need, because she has provided help to many people, including me.” Romans 16:2b)

Sometimes it was a note on the windshield
one winter day that froze the ink and paper to the glass.
Sometimes it was the merest glance,
or a song shared with lyrics you both had memorized.
Sometimes it was silence when pain
shouted too loudly to overcome. 

I ache when I see others
who brag about their latest silkscreen
shirt:
“Let’s Go Brandon”
thinly coded to mean
“Fuck You Biden”,
and then teaches littles about the Bible
on weekday nights. 

No one recorded the phone calls
or archived the memos
but each word was an invitation to
relax and create space
for gnarled feet limping from the journey.
Sometimes it was dinner,
sometimes beer and wine,
sometimes a movie,
but always time, always
time. 

I ache when I hear others
who silence the voices
(and thus the heartache)
of the traumatized who cannot enter
the buildings of american worship because
the triggers are everywhere. You learn
who you can tell your stories to. 

Some homes were heated with wood,
some were trailers dangerously cold,
some were nomads, others sojourned longer.
They entered the friendships like doors to a cathedral
and breathed the air so ancient that you knew the origin
of every word. No one took anything for granted,
but most gave more than they had.

Sometimes Hidden

 

Sometimes Hidden

(“Weren’t our hearts glowing while he was with us on the road, and when he made the scriptures so plain to us?” Luke 24:32 [J.B. Phillips])

I was thinking about yesterday when
I spent the day on the couch,
my head in a vise,
the sun fully risen,
the questions aligned without reasons,
the town below alive,
the sleep and dreams between
the hammers that played my head like
steel drums. I would do things on a whim,
but all my big ideas are locked in
a makeshift cavern waiting for reunion.

I was walking around today when
I saw the clouds kiss the hills above the river
like lovers who only want some privacy.
Chilly for mid-July, I wore faded jeans instead
of my summer shorts. I still saw questions
buzzing like gnats. I still shivered (not from
cold, but from mastering the art of dreading
the day.)
Some insist I pray in this hollow,
others that I read more emotionless cookie
fortunes and staple them to my face.
Some simply erase me. Memories are as fickle
as clouds hugging hills and dancing away.

I started writing today and reflected on
fire.

Who is this sits with me in my brokenness?

One who breaks bread in a stranger’s house and
leaves without addressing a single query. One who,
like hills, like clouds, like sun, like quasars,
is sometimes hidden in the most ordinary
things.

Sometimes Being Hidden

Sometimes Being Hidden

(“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3)

I must be hidden because so many friends
cannot seem to find me.
I don’t blame them, I’m as dead as I am alive,
more dead if you look inside
and see the sticky black tarmac
where may takeoff seems to
never get off the ground.

I must be hidden, I cannot find my own self,
my true self,
my do it well self; my death knell self
has done all the heavy lifting.

I am hidden in the world but seen so well,
I am not yet invisible, still vulnerable.
I am on display the way they catalogue fingerprints
from suspects who try to hide in dens and alleys.

I trust my smokescreen, the dense debris of intellect and
good intentions; who would guess the rest?
I’m too easily discovered, my hiding place is indiscreet,
when I’m finally discovered the street only laughs
and the grandstands grow deadly silent.

I could be far too dead to change,
but alive enough to try.
Sometimes being hidden
feels like being lost.

April Undefined

April Undefined

(“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.” Lamentations 3:22)

April sometimes sits undefined,
a bird who sings and a gale that hides
new beginnings.
We move through it, the square numbers on the
calendar wall. We move through it, black mud,
cotton candy mornings and charcoal evenings.

We hear the next tornado warning,
in the south they start early, like winter in the
north country. We swear there is nothing to fear
until we pass the little house where the trees have
crashed through the roof, with only their roots showing.

Some are captive to their thoughts, still frozen to a dozen
winters past. Some are more active, breathing fire like
summer smashing into September.

Some inspect, others infect; some build siege ramps
upon the walls of the unexpecting. Some suggest quackery,
some just quake. Some cannot sleep, others will not weep;
some ritually send scapegoats over the cliff.

Some suggest wrath has blanketed every enemy, some
imply the enemy is us. 

But the few that view the first rays of morning see further
(sky-up and down; lake-mist and clear; earth-full and washed;
clouds-float and near). The few know that love
peeks through everything and fear hides in plain sight.
April sometimes sits undefined,

But always underlined by appointments with the breeze
that wafts sweet songs to children, oh! dance! Sage
and bluebonnets wear their jewels of the dew.

Sometimes the Desert

Sometimes the Desert

(“But you were unwilling to go up. You rebelled against the command of the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 1:26)

The drive is too far, the desert cold;
the needles bite the sky and capture the clouds in their teeth.
How quiet the pain when mountains crowd the horizon;
but it shouts when the road becomes too full of ghosts.


We leave one giant to face another. We hope to leave the effort behind.
For more than the best of us, and careful for the rest of us, they loom after one hour’s nap at a midlevel rest stop.

The rest is never our final destination, another winter wind whips the sand in our face.
Crossways it captures our coats and our hats and tosses them into the desert alone.
We stand at the edge of designated borders, feet obedient to the signs and fences.
It does not enter our minds to seek another passage.But we have come too far, resigned our bridges, retired our employment and
vacated our tents a long time ago. To return from our turning only postpones
the new land of promise. But we fear. 

So we wake the next morning, manage our pain, and venture on the next leg
that leads us closer to anonymous towns where life is larger, names are sharper,
roads are confusing and the earth harder than before. 

How do we face the giant when it was the giant we thought we had left behind?
When pain is the master, the driver and the passenger, even pebbles threaten the
passage of time. 

Sometimes faith is not having a choice. Sometimes forward is the only gear left.
Sometimes the corner forces you out into the cold. Sometimes the desert opens your eyes.