I Made a Pilgrimage

I Made a Pilgrimage

(“He led them with a cloud by day. And he led them at night by the light of a fire.” Psalm 78:14)

I made a pilgrimage to find god or
some other unfunction the world had begotten.
I climbed the sand dunes, I separated the leaves of every book,
I listened to the radio, I evaluated every halo and hook.
I scanned space past the asteroids, I peered into DNA,
I learned the bark of the neighborhood dogs, I learned their names as well.
I drove by a few churches, I read their signs advertising spiritual delights,
I noticed some were under new management, I noticed some made no boasts.
I drove round the river bends, I stopped to watch the salmon climb,
I watched the horizon burning, I breathed the ashes from distant fires.
I called a friend, they did not answer. I left a message, they did not call.
I sent thank-you cards, I sent flowers by mail.
I sent photos of my children, I sent selfies as well.
And I waited for the light to explode,
I waited for the cloud to overflow.
I waited for the sun to move across the sky,
I waited for the rain to blow under my tent and tell me why

I need wait at all.

I went to the doctor to test my blood,
I went to the preacher to fall under sudden conviction,
I went to the teacher to learn my lessons,
I went to the hillside and hoped heaven would be in view.
I lay down in the grass, I was weary at last,
I needed another reliable silence to finally fasten
the springs and winters of my past to
the present where my heart beat too fast.
The hideaway was tucked between a dive bar
and a craft store
and so I decided

To find God there.

Under a Single Sky

Under a Single Sky

(“For the High and Exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy says this: ‘I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed.’” Isaiah 57:15)

The corner is no place for someone like you.
The shadows are not your home.
The teeth of the cavern,
the shards of the abyss
are not the place prepared for you.

And yet we put you there.
We never meant to.
You didn’t fit in and we were not
elastic.
And now we have moved on and left you
behind
to take more drastic measures on your own.

You belonged at the table.
No, you belonged to the voices that are
rarely heard;
the colors, the genders, the spectrum, the splendor
of intervals between the tones. You
stopped speaking when
you were not heard.

Your prayers were interrupted by syncopation
we rejected.
Your pleas were dismissed. We left you
unprotected. And then designed our bylaws
to exclude the rest that came behind you.
We did not mind knowing you;
we could not risk the questions that
fell from rafters like concrete on our heads.
We assumed you knew that too.

Do they still call it a remnant? That leftover
fabric, that unused yarn? It always made me think
of leftovers, the last thing left in the kitchen.

How can we know you if we insist on a quorum,
how can we hear you over the small talk of majority?
How can we encircle you? Tell us this time and
we will remain silent. We have put down our pens,
closed our notebooks and want to join you.
We were not allies, we were pedagogues and
insisted you learn our lessons.

A few of us are grieving.
A handful are shattered that we preferred
leaving to learning your story.

Let us sit in the corner with you,
visit the cavern and study the abyss.
We have smashed our clocks, our scales
buried in the rubbish of our myopia.
And if you do not speak,
we will not depart this time. We
will sit on damp granite stones,
pour the wine in a common cup
and pass the moments, the minutes,
the hours, the ages,
where the divine dwells like incense,
where our souls revere the placement
of one to one. The you, the i. The we,
the us. The just and unjust under a single
sky.

Under the Sun

 

Under the Sun

(“I tell you the truth, you must change and become like little children. Otherwise, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3)

They draw pictures on the back of shopping lists,
they turn their moms into angels,
their dads into astronauts,
and their dogs into superheroes while the
cat sleeps in the sun.

They believe in prayer though they do not understand
the answers,
they believe in hugs and heaven,
they believe in god and tears and smiles and
afternoons spent in the sun.

They will whisper their answer to puzzling questions,
but sing like Elvis with a mic placed in front of them.
They dress up like kings, they dress up like princesses,
they dress up like the preacher and turn their furnace room
into a church. The pets all were saved the very first service.

They count stars and start again where they left off
every night of the summer. They wander through grandma’s
kitchen full of ceramics and pies.
They sneak into grandpa’s garage that smells like something
burning
and discover the pinball machine up against the wall.
They explore the backyard because
Nana and Papa said there was a family of rabbits next to
the south fence last year.

They believe a kiss can heal an owie,
they believe cartoon bandaids heal the fastest of all.
They kiss their puppy’s booboos
and heal the heart of the lonesome neighbor
who sees it all. Mom always took him cookies;
what else are paper plates for?

They sprinkle imagination like confetti,
put notes inside daddy’s books on the shelf.
They compose poems for mom and perform plays
on the porch. They see more than we see

And, faster than motion, they rewrite everything
we thought we believed
under the sun.