Overflow

Overflow

(“Your barns will be filled with grain, and you will have too much wine to store it all.” Proverbs 3:10)

There were nights when the only light from the stars
could be seen from the bottom of a well. So narrow the
constellations
were lost while the earth turned toward morning.
The problem with homemade telescopes is
they whittle the sky down to only a sliver view.
Pointed so accurately they could not see the
waving grain or the vats full of wine just a few
steps away from the bottom of the shaft that kept
it all watered so well.

Climbing out to see the midnight sky, the expanse
was effusive with pinpoint twinkles a million years old.
And the moon, large as harvest, lit it all like a ragamuffin’s
lamp. The wheat waved like happy scarecrows,
the wine flowed like a bride’s long veil.

We heard the sound of a distant choir that hung
above the night, the angels laughing like teenagers
caught dancing on the hills. Our point of view
opened the set list of the universe to our ears and eyes.
It all seemed an accident, a lucky alignment of
coincidences that conspired to break us open from
the inside out.

This was the beginning, the answer to the refrain
that repeated the verse and chorus over and over
again. This was the overnight song we had heard about.
This was the overflow, the existential evidence that
there was more than just the wingspan of our limited reach.
This was the abundance promised by voices that
translated divine music into the lingua franca.

One Sunday on a February Morning

One Sunday on a February Morning

(“But you are merciful and gentle, Lord, slow in getting angry, full of constant loving-kindness and of truth.” Psalm 86:15)

I heard the sound of Your people rustling,
I heard the talking, the prayer and listening.
I heard the babies high above the others and,
for a moment their squeals held the floor.

I saw the old men asking, the young men grasping
their ladies by the hand. I saw the old women planning,
the young women juggling their children and their man.

I felt gentle flurries, foglet drizzle that dampened our shoulders
and hands with the first greetings of the morning. The grass
glistened from asphalt to sidewalk, left too long after summer’s
last trim. Some mud in the entry, more children with their pennies
to drop with laughter in the willow baskets with dollars and numbers
back, forth, up and down. If mom let them, they bombed the
offering plate with their tiny ammo.

One of the littlest, black hair, round face, believes he owns the place,
wandered to the holy steps where the man who always shakes everyone’s
hands stands. The old blonde table was absent its juice and crackers,
but he still was slow to touch it. The pews are for playing, but this table
is always where people are praying so solemn.

I saw the burdened, I saw the tangles of lives lived backwards
and forwards, and beginning and again. I saw the love (I
cannot lie)
when, for one hour it did not matter why children disobey,
spouses walk away, jobs are scarce, darkness scares our
little ones awake. We did not need to make up for
our mistakes or wear our usual daytime masks. Our
thrift store faces are just fine when

We enter the meeting one more time to
touch the gentle spring of Eternal love,
with breath coming easy in this dancing insanity,
the divine and humanity seriously at play.