Watching the Dinghy

Watching the Dinghy

(“The philosophers said these things because Paul was telling the Good News about Jesus and saying that people would come back to life.” Acts 17:18b)

They gathered in thinly drawn lines along the
banks of the sea,
watching the dinghy. The prophets had predicted
its demise. Now all that was left was
to watch it capsize.

The clouds grasped its hull with gray fingers,
the winds mocked its path through the rocky waves,
as if to say,
“We already know how this will end.”

It was December and ice pierced the surface tension
like scorpion darts, like a fire so cold it froze everything
in place.

Bundled in overcoats from London Fog, the dragon-speakers
paced the beach, telling tales of death so dark that no one
could remember how
the summer ever began. They stuck hope through the heart with
unholy fear and called it the will of the universe.

Everyone checked their calendars, they circled the day and the hour,
everyone knew the gods do not meander. They expected the faltering,
the great apostasy, the permanent ink on hands and foreheads,
the devil stinging sinners. The Anti-All was there to
draw the dinghy deeper than Hades’ pit. The people clapped
when they heard:
Armageddon.

Across the lake, above the shore, behind the clouds, underneath the
uproar,
a single flare flew from the dinghy towards the dawn. A few looked up,
but most brushed the sand from off their feet. It was time for
the earth to split;
the elect forever, and the damned severed.

Ah, but why,
a few surmised,
would the little boat be saved
only to boil the waters and burn the waves
until destruction was all anyone remembered from that day.

Some still look up, see the sky, see the redemption, hear the cry that
announces
the way that all things
become new
once the rising sun burns the fog
and opens the mirror lake like
a tomb finally emptied. Like a world
finally free.

Watching From a Distance

 

Watching From a Distance

If you have been watching from a distance,
you would notice little difference from these days
after the
before.
But if you have walked tandem, I hope you suppose,
for the roundabout of years,
that my vistas have changed. That I have found hills
I frequent more often than the barren evaporation of all
that is human. You would hear the frequencies have changed,
the soundwaves are variegated between semi-tones of
pine needles on the forest floor. I soar now without
thinking.

And where I left off yesterday is woven through the
loom of dreams. I don’t expect a savior anymore, a godlike
motion
from the stratosphere.
Instead I breathe, I walk, I pain, I paint, I play melodies
in my mind
to harmonize with the wheat waving like the ocean.
I know so little

And embrace so much.

The world is more with me,
the sounds that wriggle past my pain into
the air of friends who left too early. And I learn lessons
from the final few words of those who loved me before they
knew who I was.

Without Watching

Without Watching

(“Whether he is a sinner or not, I couldn’t tell, but one thing I am sure of,” the man replied, “I used to be blind, now I can see!” John 9:25)

I’ve got nothing in my pockets except
shredded tissue that went through the wash.
I do the laundry now and my wife works.
She always emptied each pocket and
turned the clothing inside-out.

I haven’t filled up my car for a year and a half;
barely have driven except to see doctors and visit
an occasional mockingbird. I stay home now while my wife works.
She always detailed the car and never left napkins on the seats.
I forgot where the gas cap latch was when I filled it for the first time
yesterday
in a year and a half.

I live too much behind me. I mean decades behind me. I live with
stagecraft in my head, leading ladies and drama buddies, high school
presumptions and productions we took more seriously than calculus or
french IV. Every time we practiced, every time we performed,
donning burlap sacks of characters on a page,
we met truer than when using our own names.
My past flows through a funnel. Area codes are transposed,
and everyone I know from the best time of life
are mere digital connections; though for some of us,
the love has only deepened as we spoke each others’ names.

I haven’t stood behind a pulpit for over a year. I may never again.
I may forget decorum and study. I may become lazy and cry away
the mistakes, age and pain that did me in. I may never preach again.

Sometimes sight comes without watching,
blindness is cured while we lie in the mud.
Sometimes we were born that way, sometimes the sky
merely darkened, and others have closed their eyes because
perception is too frightening. I have been blind because
of everything.

Sometimes the good news becomes noon day and smells of
apple pie golden in the windowsill. Sometimes gospel is more than
pianos and banjos
and is heard in every birdsong sung to you from beginning
to end. Sometimes seeing is just spit and mud
in the hands of the Human One who rarely announces his name.

So we wash our clothes, empty our pockets, fuel our cars,
long for tacos our best friend’s mother always set out for
the half dozen always just showing up. We sit by the water,
we breathe the pastry baking, we hear music divine played by
earthlings like us, human or not

And hope one day, unexpectedly, the tears will clear,
the light will enter, the love will engulf and we shall
know as we are known; clothed or unclothed, named or
anonymous.