Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice

(“The cherubim had their wings spread upward, covering the Mercy Seat with their wings and facing each other. The faces of the cherubim were turned toward the Mercy Seat.” Exodus 37:9)

The room was dark, but their eyes were bright
like cats caught in the middle of the night by a beam of moonlight.
Imprinted, their space was inhabited by curiosity and
mercy; their timing was perfect, their projections
silently filled the place with awe and dread.
It took time to become used to the shadows cast
upon the curtains hanging like fluid waterfalls.

I had fallen asleep and assumed it was a dream.
I saw my younger son as a child pretending to ride
our Australian Shepherd like a cowboy.
He liked to journey across the earth, ticking the
boxes
of every planet he visited. He logged his progress,
and I leapt conclusions. He always preferred to
visit somewhere new until his card was completed,
until enough time passed to make its memory dim.

What would I see within the tabernacle,
what would I write after seeing angels in stone?
What answer could I give to the silent room where
no one could visit, except for high priests and novices
in dreams? In my enlightened imagination sunrise and
sunset inhabited the same moment and place. I could
breathe without pain;
I could speak without forgetting the refrain that echoed
relief from the unanswerable contemplations I had piled
in the corners of my mind.

The cherubim, heavy with the weight of glory,
unshadowed the primordial imprint that stained
my preconceptions.

It was a chilly and cloudy summer solstice with the
rain occasionally painting the hills. I remembered what
it was like to dwell with the ancient wings buffering
my descent and holding me mercifully from the moment
I stumbled on the steps to the temple. I was frozen
in fear
until the images of forgiveness played like light
from the sun a minute before it goes down.

Some Stay on the Same Square

Some Stay on the Same Square

(“Abraham was waiting for the city that has real foundations—the city planned and built by God.” Hebrews 11:10)

Some stay on the same square, never moving high or low,
never exploring diagonals that crossed their fence lines like
afternoon sunlight. They find silence one way to cope.
They think they are home. There is dirt between their toes,
but their souls are mere mirrors of every marionette face
that has nodded in approval.

I’m not sure where I fit. Some days the only speech I hear
is the buzzing of wings filling the air. Others the moments are
silent as snow.

Some wander like dandelion fluff, alighting on fence posts,
on the ears of lazy dogs in the sun, on the forehead of an old man
wishing he was young. Some never settle but are carried beyond
the sun. Behind the star where no one can prove they exist at all.

I have not wandered that far. But my feet are worn from red
Oklahoma clay, from black adolescent asphalt, from North Country
needles of ice, from imitating the fancy dancers on the summer plains.

The summer before high school, late for an evening walk,
two girls walked toward me who I had not met. They were eating
grapes
in the waning summer warmth. The told me their names, threw
the grapes on the street and told me they were making wine.
And one, I am happy to say, is still a friend of mine.

Some clamp down and never let go. Some hide inside the
doctrines that lied to them about the length and love and
shape and movement of things. Though they would thrive with
a single moment of brave contemplation, their diet is complete.
The healer they long for will never appear until their
lego towers crumble, random and underfoot.

I have built monoliths; I have worshiped granite. I have
longed for magical upheaval; I have written stone monuments
upon my walls.

My bones have become rigid while my heart melts beneath
the warmth that makes every turn of the earth my home.

Blueberry Days of Summer

Blueberry Days of Summer

(“The Son of Man came to look for and to save people who are lost.” Luke 19:10)

There was nothing stacked against me,
I knew the odds all along. There were no
enemies
out to get me,
I knew that I could belong to another club if
there were.
But the days huffed dryly, the nights wrung the
life out of me. I looked up for rescue, out for a
dollar in the sky. I looked down in the graying light
of morning, wandered the town while the laundry dried
back home.

They laid hands on my head; they told me Christmas
was coming. They hinted it was better ahead but
the past kept me succumbing to production lines;
machines that squeezed gears between the fibers of my soul.

I could pray a minute longer, maybe two, than the last people
to go home. I could sing a little. I could sing. I ate
ice cream cones and
made no eye contact with those who promised atonement.
I was determined to be a casualty of my own indiscretions.

I pulled my weight. I pushed some down the road. I watched
the autumn pull the sun below my point of view. My truth
came in packets like sugar. My hands worked hard and
were bored. I loved and I did not know how. Even now
I’m a beat behind what I had hoped to find in this
cross-country excursion. I would face it like a man (or
that was the plan), but I never got the chance. Once the
incriminating documents were found
I shivered. I hid. I shut down. And hoped I could still
love a little, sing a little, define the movements of dissatisfaction.

There is no happy turn, no resolution that makes it clear. There
is still this muddy journey, there is still the dissertation run over
in the middle of the road. I wanted hills and oceans of dance.
I wanted to finally believe in circumstance. But the evidence piled
up
while I ran circles around myself.

But today (did you hear the pause?) the
blueberry days of summer woke me like a
daydreaming boy who still remembers how
to play. And though my senses, my clarity, my
sincerity depart, I find the rising warmth from lawns of
June to be
the sweetest calculation.

A Star Will Come

A Star Will Come

(“I see someone who will come someday, someone who will come, but not soon. A star will come from Jacob; a ruler will rise from Israel.” Numbers 24:17a)

I have lost friends along the way like crumbs falling off
a white chocolate scone. Some are buried by time,
faces fading from memories. The first time ever I
saw your face
is how we listened to each other’s’ movement. But,
the last time ever I
saw your face
we ate burgers at Denny’s and talked shop.
Some are time’s possession.

Some have dropped at latest weakness, with each
new mistake I make
new heartbreak unwraps the comfort
of ageless friends who now are better than
I ever was. I have no defense, what they have heard
(or observed) is probably true. Although, one thing
I would note,
that what they hear is not
all the truth.
Some are my transgressions.

Some I have left in other states, though
part of the same Union,
too many state lines make for loss of breath
for people at our age. The hurdles have grown,
the route is longer. So from Baltimore to Minneapolis,
Chicago to Dallas, Sacramento mostly and
the East Bay I love; I’m in a corner that no one
passes through on the way to another.
Some are my vacations.

Some have left me like children turning over a rock
lying atop nearly melted ground; and having found
ugly bugs, earthworms and slimy colonies of
we-should-have-known, and having thrown the
stone in disgust at my feet, discuss my biography
like book clubs chewing through chapters.
Some are my repentance.

Some new have entered my breakfast routine,
though I am slow to open anything beneath my
wrinkling skin.
I carry my failures where no one can see,
but believe me, they are my closest companions
(when I know they shouldn’t be)

I cannot wait for someone to come,
a star on the horizon, a scepter over my scars,
when my sins and your sins,
my memory and your assertions

Are the zero-sum of the next step,
while listening to some vinyl like we used to do
all summer.