Tomorrow the Hurricane

Tomorrow the Hurricane

(“We have been speaking in Christ and before God. You are our dear friends, and everything we do is to make you stronger.” 2 Corinthians 12:19b)

Tomorrow the hurricane may come,
the centrifuge within, hidden from view.
Uprooting trees, disintegrating leaves, and
smothering thought with its humidity.

But we keep the tempests contained, don’t we?
We wrap our skin around the pressure that threatens
to suck us in, and then,
to implode everything we haven’t nailed down.

Till then, of course, our skin looks the same; our eyes,
our hands, our knees, our feet. If we curled one wrinkle
on our anxious foreheads the whole building might explode.

And, gauging from the last time our home was in ruins,
we are unsure how the rebuilding would go. Will people walk by,
wondering why
they escaped the storm that destroyed the corner lot?
Will couples stand just outside the caution tape, filling out forms,
promising help, and going home to air-conditioning and amnesia?
Who can blame them when the catastrophe is blamed on the skin
that refused to hold it in.

So now you know, if you read closely, that mostly we would love
to let the air pressure equalize,
reveal empty earth already denuded by unrealized dreams
and hurricanes trapped within.

And a few have known the scale of the storm, and a few have not
railed that I should have known better. And a few have nailed back
a couple of boards when they could. And a few have mailed love.

And a few, with their own shaking hands, have planted roses in
the dark, bare earth.

When You Speak

When You Speak

(“To Him who loves us and has set us free from our sins by His blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” Revelation 1:5b, 6a)

I.

If you come up my walk on an afternoon,
winter when the shadows are low upon ground,
my dogs will greet you (or warn me) and will not stand down
until they have finished their security check and wagged you
in on hind legs hopping. Dogs are hopeless. Mine always
seems to be smiling the grin of a Husky ready to do the work
of a hundred men and do it again after a nap on the snow. Mine
always sounds angry when she barks at the sounds nature never
intended:
door knocks, car latches, rumbling engines and plates dropped
on the kitchen floor. When she sniffs a deer wandering between
the house and fruit trees the growl is guttural; deer and humans
alike
cannot hide the frightening image of ancient predator and prey.

But, give her sway, open the door, and she is ready to play,
though every auditory cue suggested dinner was upon the
canine menu.

II.

I have aged longer, a decade in five, as pain has depleted
the cistern of joy. Each day alive takes longer as the
knives in my head slash each thought from origin to
completion; from truth to unreasoned hallucinations.
I hear nothing but noise (though my best songs have
hibernated long enough to voice my first recollection.)
My best friend’s words (they are comfort, always and first)
are grit and dirt to ears sandpapered clear of resistance.

III.

Oh my God, and my Good. You have not change,
you have not moved.
You have loved and are the Healing Pool in which
I drift, I sleep and I wake. And yet

When You speak
I hear the pain cringe, I feel the clinch in
my shoulders, the drain of emotions
and my default is zero when once
Your words
were infinite joy to the hearer.

Speak to me though I startle, for,
Your words, mistranslated by my pain,
are the reason I still speak of my God,
my Good, then, now, and again.

Live so Loud

Live so Loud

(“When food was served, he said, ‘I will not eat until I have said what I want to say.’” Genesis 24:33a)

Live so loud they can hear the love at the end of the street.
light the candles so high they compete with noon,
tell your story so well no one will pick up a fork or spoon,
live so loud every word is clearly understood at the end of the day.

Always speak of vision, laugh of motion, sing of the twists of fate
that make the hook of the verse sound like a two-word hook from a
ballad by Dylan.

Repeat your tales often, before the meal is served, before the commotion
of clattering silver against hot corning ware diving for the medium-red
slices of steaming roast beef. Don’t let gossip or the office chatter keep
you from what matters; and let the story rest as the final course on
the family table pyramid piled just before laughter.

Sometimes you will feel lucky, sometimes the tale is perfectly woven,
sometimes you have to dig for details, sometimes the word is perfectly chosen,
sometimes you stutter, sometimes the butter is served fresh out of the
icebox. The story takes an immediate station break, waiting for someone
to soften the margarine a round or two in the microwave.

Sometimes it is utterly beyond your control, the events occurred before you
every sat to table. Sometimes, wonderfully, like the flutter of
butterfly clouds
no one can take their eyes off the words as the story weaves around
the aunts and uncles, cousins and babies; and no one ever forgets

The reason you started to speak that day.