Space Now Between

Space Now Between

(“God blesses you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” Luke 6:20a)

Somewhere between complete confidence
and the quilt of unknowing
there are thoughts that once were strong as
mud-bricked walls. They have not fallen,
but they speak underneath my consciousness
and call me to listen above their current frequency.

Somewhere below my previous expectations
and above the poverty line there were verses
of poetry I had not written. And if I did, I swear
the meaning would be hidden. If only I had learned
the song long ago. If only it was committed to
the filing cabinets inside my mind.

Somewhere away from manufacturing
and toward clear crisp creation I faced a
new situation where want became the previous
shortcut I always took. Now I walked close to
silence, the stillness of innovation unmeasured
on the page.

At this point I would honestly say that finances
frightened me
like fire consuming my innovation. I pictured a
some day that would be a sunnier day without
the halting breaths between words. Today
I cannot tell you what will break between
midnight and noon or what phase the moon is
as it circles like a hula hoop. But there is space now
between what I know for sure and what I will never
discern
for sparks to ignite an avalanche of blessing
on the mountain slopes beneath my feet.

The Space Between Us

 

The Space Between Us

(“Offer the parts of your body to God to be used in doing good.” Romans 6:13b)

I would have shown up, I think you know that.
I would have given you everything you needed,
everything I have that could heal your broken heart.
I would never hold back,
never blame you for the uncured wounds you carry
like hastily written plans for a defensee strateghy to
keep you from being hurt again.

You knew I would show up. And that is why
I wonder where your words for me have gone.
I would walk as long as it takes to be by your side,
to write the letter that sets it all straight, to
line up the sights so you can see the distant
daylight again. I would point you toward the full moon
filling the wintery darkness with new light.

I know it must still hurt for you because it
still hurts for me. Oh for that one last conversation
where we hug like it means something and we walk away
with tears or smiles. Oh for the open words that
salve the wounds that cripple us like walkers on the road.

Here is my hand, offer my yours. Here is my heart,
still pained over things I can never change. Share with me
your own heart
and pernaps that days will shine brighter

We are both beautiful, you and I, and have been
since before we met and we doubted our worth.
I, me, thou and thee. We are pronouns to everyone else,
but given names to each other. I call your name and you
speak mine and we get closer to resolving the unhappy
nature that led us to doubt the intimate cradling
that surrounds the universe, that invites us all to
discovers the space between us immeasurable.

I’ll Stop by Tomorrow

I’ll Stop by Tomorrow

(“I do not deserve to have you come into my house. Just give the order, and my servant will get well.” Matthew 8:8b)

There were no shadows in the house,
the shutters were closed and the drapes pulled against the sun.
I tried to divide my attempts to be seen from
my instincts to hide.
Slowly the scene shifted as the sun found the
cracks in my defenses.

I meant to mention, I’d like to sit alone on the porch,
wave at the children on their bikes and sit with men
of my age
thinking out loud about our past and painting the future
something brighter than gray. We all admitted it was easy
to embrace our halcyon days when we thought life could be
lived in layers we never completed. We lived from
playhouses and swings to pens and musical things we
hoped would help name us forever.
We pretended there would be reunions where we
remembered every spiral adventure and made plans
to get together only for time to steal our best ideas.

But now in the epicenter of my life I’m too shy to invite
new faces to my porch. And that leaves me friendless in space.
Locked away, my heart waits for the night lights to take over,
and wonder what I would say if I ever came out under the stars.

Exactly how long I’ve been this way, probably just long enough
to notice the damage. But I’ve been invited to the
grand opening of a friendly space but slept through it.
I’ll stop by tomorrow.

A Garden with Poppies

A Garden with Poppies

(“He joined them at the table. Then he took bread and gave thanks. He broke it and began to give it to them.” Luke 24:30)

I would let you stay for free.
I would start the fire and sing the first song
that came to mind.
I would announce it quietly, like candles
entering the stage for the second act.

I might not recognize you. I might think
twice
about the facts of your existence.
Sometimes you are a conflagration;
sometimes you are a whisper.

I should take a walk today along
the road where the tar inscribes cracks
in the asphalt.
I should turn where your driveway ends
and see if you have time for
a leaden heart today. I should experiment less;
I should make the most of my time.

I remember when we first met. Do
you?
It must have been winter when our footprints
turned the snow to ice and children used the
crosswalk on their way to school.
My heart has always had an empty space.
My eyes tear up within minutes of being alone.
My face is far older than the person I replaced.
My songs do not come easily. But I would sing
them anyway,
if only you would stay well into the afternoon.

My intentions are mixed like wine at the
bottom of the barrel.
My last night home might become my first
look at a portrait I haven’t seen since we
learned each other’s names.

I would set a place for you.
I would create a garden with poppies.
I would decorate my face so you could not see
how much I fear that you may not stay.
I would say all the things I wish I had heard.

With all that I write
I still cannot empty my mind of
words etched upon wet cement.
I am too old for another breaking.

Sometimes you are a fire in my bones,
sometimes I sit at home and waste hours at a time.
My words scatter like yearling rabbits,
my thoughts like toy magnets clack against
the inside of my head.

If you receive my invitation,
if you think of me at all,
say the words I fear to say, tell me
everything you have never said.
I will listen.
I will listen,
if you would only call.

My Soul is Wrinkled

My Soul is Wrinkled

 

My soul is wrinkled,
it is dislodged from the space where
it once felt like a home on the edge of fire.
My soul is shrinking,
it has lost weight. It is buoyant and
leaves its moorings when I am not looking.
My soul is tingling,
it is super-charged and overheating.
The songs that used to feed it now
send it cringing to a neutral corner.
My soul is marooned,
it is waiting for the rescue to arrive
but the sun has blinded, how unkind,
and the waves have erased the laughter of
the pardoned.
My soul is narrowed,
a tiny flow between the cross-stich gullies
fully wanting the summer rain, the kind that
falls on miniature and massive, the kind that
no one predicted.
My soul is swallowed,
it is reversing the recipe that once made it
palpable. Now it is culpable for every heresy
councils have denounced for centuries.

My soul is ageless,
it once was captive but
now is captivated by
a world so fully stained that
every sunset is as viscous as an oil slick,
every breeze plays in a different key than
the day before.
My soul is effervescent,
my soul does not fit within the
bottled expectations of factory-made songs
meant to make you put your hands up,
meant to make you wave them,
meant to make you clap them,
meant to make you stand up.
My soul know what is needs now,
my soul knows it very well.
My soul is wrinkled with time which
is just fine with me. My soul has
enwrapped me with a handmade name and
will speak it to me in a whisper when
reversals attempt to revoke it again.

Would You Cry with Me?

Would You Cry with Me?

(“He helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others who have all kinds of troubles, using the same help that we ourselves have received from God.” 2 Corinthians 1:4)

Would you cry with me even
when
I could not tell you why
the days roll into one another like
boulders left behind by an ancient glacier
and a mind frozen by in time?

Would you bring me cake?
Would you buy me a day on the beach?
Would you give me your island in the sun
and stay as long as I needed
to hear someone’s tears besides my own?

I do not mean to bother you,
your life is no different than mine. The air
between us is space or it is connection.
But the fences have divided us into sections
and served us up separately.

I would rather sit with an ailing friend,
play with the neighbor dogs and laugh with the children.
And I can, a few minutes at a time;
but mostly I sit inside wondering
how to find a river in the desert,
a place to visit where it does not matter
that I speak less often than I used to.

Last night I dreamed I was going on a trip with
my two sons,
but we never finished packing. We could not find
enough socks.
And that is how all my dreams end,
anticipating a life that looks more like a mirage.

Your hand on my shoulder,
your loaf of fresh-baked bread,
your song when I cannot find my own,
your heart traded for my fainting;

I hate debating. I need only eyes that
tear up
because mine do too.

There is More Space

 

There is More Space

(“Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see—how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him.” Psalm 34:8 [The Message])

There is more space around me than I will ever
need,
unused cubes and shipping containers.
My walls are lined with books I seldom touch
(though my taste for reading is still afire).
Stay in the minimum,
talk with me in stories that whet my appetite for more.
Tell me why I still hear music after the band
is packed and gone.
Tell me how to hear it again.
Teach me the song the wind sings to the mountains,
teach me the sun when the windows are shuttered.
Meet me for drinks, stay for dinner,
let me hear only our voices in the happy hour buzz.
Choose the table in the middle of things and I will
lean in to hear it all.

There is less space around me than I predicted,
crowds of unused voices in cardboard boxes.
My thoughts are crammed with stubborn sanity
(though my taste for absurdity remains the same).
Play in the maximum,
meet me in the meadows that cleanse my palate for more.
Meet me between cornstalks and remind me of sunflowers
before I head back home.
Teach me the drama of dirt, rain and humanity,
teach me the sum of creation and the divine.
Let me have one drink, kneel by the streams,
let me hear it like crystal and taste it like starlight.
Choose the space in the middle of me and I will
green my heart to hear it all.

Greater Space to Roam

 

Greater Space to Roam

("The sun had stopped shining. The temple curtain was torn in two.” Luke 23:45)

Weeks exist that should be stricken from the calendar,
days in succession of moonless night, cakes dried in the sun,
thoughts scrambled while tears line up like children waiting
for a roller coaster ride.
Weeks exist where every pain from a life behind you
piles up like mud sliding from the oversaturated hills.
Then you wonder why you hide yourself
knowing it is plain to all who look on.

Across the street the neighbors sell their extras
before moving into their new home. You saw them
setting up yesterday
but did not wander over
because
your mind clamps down on your tongue and
your skin shivers at what
they might discover from your uneasy rhymes.

There was a time when you loved company.
There are days you try to magnetize, keeping your mind
in close orbit around your soul.
Now midsummer, your night dreams are fearful
schemes of unresolved pain that seems to infect
everything.

But what is torn can be entered,
what is ripped is visible,
what is broken is not damaged,
what is past, though remembered,
are only shades masquerading as biblical
proportions. What is rent has opened
greater space to roam.

And still the weeks persist. Perhaps balloons are tied
the scepter and the crown. Perhaps children know
that open doors are meant to be entered in.

Personal Space

Personal Space

(“Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.’” Luke 12:22)

The lines lie just below the surface,
the matrix of creation,
the embroidery of matter and space,
the unseen provider that protects everything.

What shall I wear until I die,
what shall I eat while “why” is
the most frequent word caught in the
woven synapses of my brain?

There are holes in everything, gaps between seen
and unseen. You can travel all day from the nucleus
to the orbiting electrons. And each syllable of thought
exists a moment and lasts a lifetime.

Today I will wear shorts, it is late June in Texas.
Today I will eat chicken, left over from Sunday’s meal.

But, dearest Jesus, how I miss collecting shirts from the thrift store
and discovering espresso in an Oakland coffee house with
a free mic for poets on Fridays.

Crammed into a baby blue vw bug
we graduated through the Caldecott tunnel to
Berkeley and beyond. Personal space was never an issue
but now these few lifetimes later we are scattered like
electrons orbiting separate nuclei.

But I shall eat today. I shall wear my t-shirt and sandals today,
but, dearest Jesus, I would love to meet today
just one friend who was a friend with so little personal space
between us.

On Post Office Walls

On Post Office Walls

(“Yahweh said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they tell you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me as the king over them.’” 1 Samuel 8:7)

We cannot survive on silence,
the space between molecules gives us
nothing better than the missing pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle.

Have you ever seen one of those posters hung
on post office walls, or stapled to a telephone-pole?
The picture is a wide-smiling woman, business-casual,
and glad to have been photographed. “If you want to
enjoy your life
like her” it says, “Call the number below.”
You’ve seen them, I know you have. And along the
bottom of the poster tags are cut like a dozen tiny tickets.
Tear one off and take the phone number with you. Only,
this one, the one that caught your eye, the one that might change
your life,
has been stripped of every tag with its magic number.

God, we cannot hold you. You are worse than water to grasp.
We would pull you down like a string on a kite; we would
tug the tail of your coat until you recognized our smallish face.
But we only grip nearly weightless mass as the air passes
between our fingers.

We cannot populate invisible planets. Even if we could touch
without seeing, each step would be dread, not seeing the green, the yellow
or red. Hopscotch would be impossible; prodigals would never find
their way back to the homestead. Most frightening would be the
demagogue who said only he could see.

We do not want your Second, your Administrative Assistant.
We cannot live on mere representations of the only thing
we really want to know. Nations beg for rulers; democracies are
the worst. We expect the one who says she knows you best
will make it all comprehensible; the one who says he’s closer
than the rest…but both remind us of

One of those posters hung on post office walls.

Everything I Need

Everything I Need

(So, my Christian brothers, when you come together to eat the Lord's supper, wait on your turn.” 1 Corinthians 11:33)

Everything I find, under my feet, over my head,
everything I need, into my heart, words never said,
everything, everything,
I find  in the silences, in the spaces between columns and
walls, in the unseen hollows and the songs yet sung,
everything, everything is sweeter to my ear,
more savory to my tongue because
It comes first from You to me.

I can wait until the Amen’s final sustain,
I can believe beauty inhabits delay,
sense indwells the crazy way a storm
piles up on the horizon moments after the
sunniest day.
I will watch Your eyes until the capture me,
I will look to Your hands until you embrace me,
I will know, though my “whys” increase,
I will hope, though the sighs release so little pain
they build upon each other, sigh, and another,
sigh, and breathe; sigh, believe; sigh, upheaval
from the hot spear that never cools; sigh until the

Breath is so large it fills the room; a sigh that
has grown, the sighing, the groaning, the hands
both covering my brow, in some way hoping to
kill the courier of agony somehow.

But still, storm and pain, crash and insane,
everything I need is worth the wait until
I see as I am seen,
and believe every crooked way has
been made straight.