Worn Jeans and Acrid Flannels

Worn Jeans and Acrid Flannels

You miss the meaning like you miss the
beauty right before your eyes when a man
in worn jeans
and acrid flannels
decides to sing before the choir begins.
You don’t like the tune, do you? You’ve
never heard it before.
You don’t care for his toes barely tapping on
the newly laid carpet for the band?
You used to call them hobos,
and then drifters,
and the homeless,
but now they are houseless. Even inside your
sacred space
you’ll force him back outside after the final amen.

Or sooner if the light falls on his forehead to reveal
the tattoo of a horned being, a goat, a devil, a simple
young buck. But the horns are red, and hooves are cloven
and the doors may soon be closed and locked from the
inside once
he
exits without ceremony.

For five minutes he had never felt so free. He was baptized,
he was holy-ghost-filled, he was speaking in tongues, he was
prophesying, he was catechized, he was confirmed, he tasted the
eucharist before it was served. He never had no demons, he
never had any possessions at all. He just walked in, walked right
up past the kneeling benches and sang because he had the time.
Then the band tuned up, the choir hummed, and someone touched
the crust of his elbow
and escorted down. He sat bewildered and besmirched,
also sweaty and free; he sang every day after that for a week

On the street, behind the stairs, on his stained bedroll, where

Angels gather, listening in concentric circles for his morning song.

Plywood Exposed to the Sun

Plywood Exposed to the Sun

(“Then they sat on the ground with him seven days and nights, but no one spoke a word to him because they saw that his suffering was very intense.” Job 2:13)

Afterwards the plywood peeled after the rain,
exposed to the sun,
darkened by age,
with nails in the corners and
splinters in the grain.

The power went out overnight. The winds
grabbed ceilings and families in its teeth.
Shingled a year ago, the roof shuddered like
staccato notes played by sonic booms circling the
the town
just before the county fair.

The lawns had just been mowed,
the dew was stubborn in the early summer light,
the wine was spilled on broken concrete,
the silence moved in layers across the
river to the hills. The grieving began

Once the shock had worn off.

So they sat in the dust, mudded their faces,
turned their backs to the sun, ached and held their
tongues long enough to let the suffering sink, a heart
ballasted like a stone.

Taken on its own, the week changed very little.
Hours without songs, days with fire for bread,
nights with the moon mocking overhead.

But four bodies bore a single sorrow for
days without words. If only we knew the
power in the hands and eyes, the feet and fingers,
the heart that cannot find the downbeat anymore.
If only we stayed, took our sick days
and loved the way we are made: fully fleshy,
fully torn, complex and worn by time like

Plywood exposed to the sun.