She Crossed the Street Slowly

She Crossed the Street Slowly

(“Do not fail to show love to strangers, for by doing this some have welcomed angels without realizing it.” Hebrews 13:2)

I thought I recognized her face as she crossed the
street against the stoplight. Her gaze was elsewhere,
maybe her
shoes,
maybe her lost hunger,
maybe her words that once
were summer bouquets set upon
the tables of the unknowing.

I think she was a singer. A songwriter.
A minstrel. Maybe she used to be the
darling of the worship scene where every word
is scrutinized, every miscue recorded in
reporter’s notebooks for posterity. Maybe she
was tired of the same four chords. Maybe she was
weary of factories of uplifted faces. I think she
was still a poet. But her audience wrote her a
resignation letter before
she ever got started.

I think she liked women. I think she wanted to fly.
I think she crossed the street slowly because every
eye had always been upon her. I think she was ready
to cry as soon as she reached the other side.

She had drunk the vintage of diluted wine.
She had held it all in. She had lied for too long.
And to honor her truth

She was ushered to the alley. She wore a “no vacancy” sign.
She was put on probation. She was given two years, or more,
time to outgrow her fanciful follies and stand
in the back of the line.

As she approached the curb I wondered, where would she
turn
from here? Her eyes were steely and blazing. Her hair
was limp. Her lips moved in ways only she could hear.
Her arms were tattoos of every promise she had kept.

She stepped up and waited, though the light had turned green.
She sat on the corner, picked up a cardboard sign. She pulled a
sandwich from her backpack, tore it in half and shared it with
the man whose words were scribbled like prayer.
And she gave him half. And she sang the words that
had bubbled from her pain. And she explained nothing.
She made motions with her hands. She hummed the
lilting melody that only the rejected can sing.

And she stayed the day with the man who did not ask her
for a thing.

Campfires and Timeless Tales

 Campfires and Timeless Tales

(“I will be a Father to you. You will be My sons and daughters, says the All-powerful God.” 2 Corinthians 6:18)

Entrusted with mere existence I
often
cannot keep from trying to control
time as if the hands on the clock
can be speeded up by my anxieties.
It does not pass, it flows like jet-streams
laden with weather.

On the days when I can lay my machinery
down
and simply listen to the cranking of the gears,
the creaking of the years,
the friction of time against space
I discover something far beyond the face
of things.
Far slower than the pace of things.
Far nearer, by the grace of things.
A table filled with aunts and uncles,
a yard filled with first degree cousins,
an afternoon filled with siblings who happen upon
the bbq we serve whenever the summer sneaks
up on us unaware.

Did you see your brother waiting to cross the street,
stalled on the corner because the light stays red?
Did you see your sister ragged in the corner,
breathing on the backstreets waiting for the
curfew to be lifted?

Did you see the Power. like. love.
Did you see the campfires lit on a thousand hills
with no fences around them? Did you see
the maternal love latent in the universe?
Did you see the paternal care lately calling to
all of us?

Did you stop and stay though the wind blew the
smoke in your face? Existence will not wait
while we measure the time in nitpicking packages of
hills to die on. Instead, we rely on
the stories told that take the whole night to tell

And do notice the hours slip away while we pass around
flagons of wine, crumbles of cheese,
and more bread than we need as we
hear the kindling crack.

And each new tale begins.

Down the Middle

Down the Middle

(“Put up with each other, and forgive anyone who does you wrong, just as Christ has forgiven you.” Colossians 3:13)

I walked down the middle of the street just to
see how the traffic flowed. I walked against
the oncoming cars and left the crosswalks behind.
I walked toward the beginning to see the
source of the stream, where everyone was going,
where they came from, what was the scene at
the mouth of it all.

Later and later the sun convened its rays,
so I shielded my eyes from the western glow
while I walked up the middle of the road
just to see how the traffic flowed.

I am told there is a place where everything starts,
a home, a domicile, a castle, a studio,
and parking lots full of empty automobiles
waiting overnight for the forage of the morning.

I walked along the center of the highway
waiting for the law to keep me from my way
and send me to the shoulder or the sidewalk where
feet are meant to be.

I wanted to find the zenith,
for I knew the bottom-rock well.
I hoped to discover the king of the traffic,
the teller who directs these glaze-dayed journeys alone.

I hoped to find (out of my mind)
a director, a manager, who understood why
I had chosen

To walk barefoot up the middle of the road.