There Is No Stopping the Rain

There Is No Stopping the Rain

(“Let the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be pleasing in Your eyes, O Lord, my Rock and the One Who saves me.” Psalm 19:14)

There is no stopping the rain, not by iron walls or
massive defense. It crawls over the peaks of the mountains
and lands just outside my window. I am so
hollow
I wish it would fill me, gauge me, let the substance
fill the hole shaped like the world in me.

I looked at your yard yesterday, with your flags raised like
Babel’s tower. I looked at your lawn and the stakes you’ve driven
into the ground. And the rain did not stop. And the rain filled
the gauges on your fenceposts, and the rain filled the field
next to you, and the rain filled the water dishes for
cats and dogs,
and the rain spilled from higher ground to lower life,
and the rain would not be stopped.

I would move to the desert if only for an excuse to remain
so empty. The rains come a quarter inch a month.

There is no hurrying the waiting, not by text or phone,
not by anguished obsession with killing time. I would
call you now
if I knew your number.
I would drive for half a week to see your face at the door.

I admit I saw a rainbow. You sent me the picture, remember?
I admit I heard the thunder. My dog hid underneath the bed.
I admit I could do more to sweeten my tone,
I admit, after a life of acing tests in school,
I have broken every rule and suffered the consequences.
You can check my expense account. I’ve shoveled the
muck
that accumulated when the rain overran my intentions.

Can the rain reshape me? Can it rise to a level in me--
that living spring in me--and stop the anxiety that has

Hollowed me whole?

Like an Autoharp

Like an Autoharp

(“My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27)

It never occurred to me, but I’m sure it happened,
someone recognized the riffs I had written so long ago.
So I recorded an alternate version. Disguised my voice.
Detuned my guitar. Hammered the piano strings like an
autoharp. I dreamed
I was Bob Dylan. I thought I could compose something
like pinball percussion. I tamper with the tempo too often.
I staged a guitar circle like it was 1973.

My lyrics stood the test of time, but rhyming was not my thing.
I sat down to write and rose up to play. And nothing new was
created. My mind runs on synthesized loops, my mind runs
in circles. My mind collects bracelets and trinkets and
turns them into idols.

I hear another voice, in the sky, in the earth, in my flesh,
in cricket clicks and blue jay calls-and-response. If I
ever find a way,
I’ll repay those anonymous composers with a cover
of the song
the Shepherd sings.
I’ll recognize the patterns I have heard all along.

My verses swerve from angel-hair skies to red
eyed
monsters in the night. My themes were never good
enough
for jazz. My fingers swell with age and forget
fretboard playfulness. I’ll try again,
listening to the wind,
remembering the way we used to change keys
in the middle of a measure. 

Raining Down in Pieces

Raining Down in Pieces

(“You have heard the desire of oppressed people, O Lord. You encourage them. You pay close attention to them.” Psalm 10:17)

I’m raining down in pieces,
pellets that hit the sizzling ground and
are gone before anyone notices.
Today was tiny and massive,
today was storm clouds and placid
hopes
that someone, (you know who you are)
would walk through my door, see the empty eyes
I hide from everyone,
and fill them with the kind of quiet that
embraces everything.

Perhaps we could busk down by the river,
next to the brewery,
late in the afternoon. But I would stall,
I am out of practice, and nothing comes easy
at all.

I’m opening the puzzle,
pieces that used to fit but now, edges worn,
are more or less fragments. The picture on the box
was colored over decades ago by children with nothing
else to do.
I never minded. Children were always the ones
who taught me the tunes I almost had forgotten.

I slide the pieces back into the box and a dozen fall
on the floor below the table. I’m tempted to leave them
there.

Perhaps we could play chess at the coffee shop;
I haven’t played in ages. I fear I would have to concede before
we were halfway done. We could leave the board set up,
I guess,
but I don’t know when you’ll be back and when I’ll wander
downtown again.

I’d venture out, meet someone new, but, like I said,
I’m raining down in pieces,
and can only be seen these days by someone who
sees me these days the
way I am.

Something Caught My Eye

Something Caught My Eye

(“You gave me room when I was in distress.” Psalm 4:1b)

I nearly caught up with the day
that I
followed the fall line across the
East Bay hills
below Mount Diablo. I nearly saw the
place again
where play was more likely than
definitions constructed behind fenced-
in
yards.

But I locked the gate myself, I
guess;
I thought better of sitting in the sun while
a friend smiled
and admired my silly guitar chords on a late
afternoon.

I still can smell that sweet mown hay,
I still can see the way clouds looked like angels
and there was no one enforcing the time or place
where we could get lost
and walk the same circles as if they were the first.

These days I swear I may burst,
I may have rehearsed my answers far to well.
These moments my reach is diminished,
my sight locked and myopic. My opinions have changed
(I have fewer), but everything still looks the way it has
for decades now.

I would give anything to play on the hills again,
to sing the songs that teenagers sing. I would find
the open space and
never
let it lock me in again.

Something caught my eye. I am trying to remember it.
I am trying to say that someone gave me open space once,
and I no longer own it. And I catch my breath like I
catch the flu
and stay inside alone until the summer is ended.

To sum it up, I could dance if you played the tune we
both know
long enough.

Just Those Eyes

Just Those Eyes

(“But you, O Lord, are…the one who lifts up my head.” Psalm 3:3)

My chest is heavy,
tight like iron hoops around a barrel.
There is a pocketful of tears
pushing out of my lungs,
there is no humidity and they dry
before they exit my body.
The silence, the sitting alone,
the constant refractive tone of my thoughts;
the sundown, the waiting for sleep,
the instant envelope with forgotten letters lost.
I cannot rewrite them,
I cannot recall,
I cannot undo the brief fragrance that now
has joined the crows that fly midday.
(Someone told me they were afraid
that,
if they cried,
they would never stop.)

But there are eyes, whether we see them or not,
there are thoughts like the still after the storm,
that clear a space for a campfire, a final conflagration
of fragments, of shards, of last wills and first loves,
of discontent and fundamental answers that pit my mind
against theories set in stone.
I no longer own them and that keeps some of my
comrades, my sounding boards, my tear-catchers away.

But there are eyes (and I have not seen them in years)
that look through the imperceptions. There are sighs,
those sans words utterances that expand the air for
just enough time
for tears to escape,
for uncertainty to be the wine we drink
to celebrate
something more than casual assent to doctrines
misused to exempt me.

And those eyes, I speak it true, are more healing than
prayers and hymns,
than ritual and fasting.
They are the food that takes us forward, those eyes,
that see everything true
and dare to look again and again.
And we find a place, a country,
an ocean fuller than heaven when
just those eyes
have taken our hidden fears
and painted them like sunrises
we thought had surely ended.

The Wind Was High Today

The Wind Was High Today

(“Worthy is the slaughtered Lamb to receive power, wealth, wisdom, and might, and honor, glory, and blessing.” Revelation 5:12a)

The wind was high today, but I did not mind.
The trees took it all into themselves, like they were being
born again.
It sounded like white water. It sounded like the
humming fan that puts me to sleep.
And I wonder why
men with only words for their authority
want to be Lions,
want to drive fear like a tank
right over the indigestion you feel
with their passive aggressive side dishes
they serve with every meal.

But today I saw two fawns, nearly ready to face
the adult autumn in the hills. I saw two rabbits
standing still even when dogs from two adjoining
yards tried to bark them away from their lunch of grass.
I saw a finch unafraid to share space with
mid-sky ravens and
upper atmosphere eagles.
And I wonder why
we’ve turned Jesus into a weapon of
mass; disgusting. Why we envision blood
flowing from his sword. Why we cannot wait
for him to stand on a mythical mountain and split
the wild world in two, leaving a hell of panic, a
Pit for nearly all creation to burn into.

Today I ate an apple from my front yard, greening red,
tart and perfect. I shared the same meal as
the deer who frequent my fields.
And I wonder why
we don’t invite more neighbors and share our pain
over pain de mie and wine in the sun.
Why we would not invite everyone;
to lay our burdens down and
dry the tears that nearly drowned us last time
and remember the suffering that spoke far more
of love
than a

Devouring lion ever could.

How the Universe Winks

How the Universe Winks

It was easier when the boxes were new,
special delivery left on the front porch
left no doubt of the sender’s intentions.
Time has
warped the containers and I cannot
find the
reminders of words I wrote to faces I
barely remember.
I never asked for refunds, only something to
exchange
to take the place of silence that has
worn me out.
People who barely know me wave
as I walk by,
but the ones that cradled my heart are at
the bottom of a storage container in the
garage, musty as cardboard, gritty as
8 track recordings.
Remember when we sang like we
knew how the universe winked?
Remember how we hid our shy inhibitions
behind every verse?

It was clearer when the fog rolled it
making the air touchable, making our cheeks
sweat.

Do you remember when we paid little attention to
babies
until we had our own,
until they had their own? Do you miss
finding scented envelopes in the mail?