If You Decide to Dig in My Earth

If You Decide to Dig in My Earth

(“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17)

If you decide to dig in my earth I
hope you find something
worth your time. I know where the bones are buried.

My daughter prayed that her hamster would live
one night on New Year’s Eve. I don’t remember the little
rodent’s name, but when we looked the next morning
he was dead. I never could explain why Power
and Love
could not keep him alive.

I don’t blame you for wondering how
certain flowers grow in the soil of my heart.
I see the all of it, you only see the part.
I have piled layer upon layer to hide what
I hoped would never be seen. I figured I would wait
until I was
80
to dig to the bottom again.

We buried the hamster in the back yard between
bulbs for tulips and daffodils. The ground, nearly frozen,
broke beneath our trowel. We laid him in his grave,
hoped the earth would welcome him. We bought her
another hamster weeks later. He escaped one day,
never to be found and maybe still haunts the house
running around the rafters 20 years hence.

If you want to know what is unseen in me,
I am ready for you to ask. If you want to hold me
hostage to my past,
I don’t mind. There is truth in all of it.

Spring warmed the bed where yellow and red
popped from the earth toward the warming sun.
And my daughter wanted to exhume the tiny body
planted a season ago. The same trowel that prepared
his final place
poked beneath his grave. Unearthed, the plastic
sandwich bag which was his coffin
contained only tiny bones, a skull as small as
popcorn. Her curious eyes and curious hands
silently greeted the remains.

It is no lie that my garden hides relics
I wish you did not know. But I will reveal them if,
after seeing their whiteness and death,
you stay for coffee and see me the same
as you have from the first.

The Age of the Earth

The Age of the Earth

(“Don’t pay people back with evil for the evil they do to you. Focus your thoughts on those things that are considered noble.” Romans 12:17)

That was a rainbow you saw hiding
behind the backside of the barn. Those were
bended rays
that moved around the boulders in the way.
The barn, red slat siding, tilting toward the river,
had stood straight as time when the neighbors first
raised it.

The boulder, worn with age, hid eons and eons of
abrasion inside. A golden salamander had sunned
upon the edges that the waters eroded. A boy
and
a girl
had jumped from its gray table-top
laughing into the river.

That was before the borders were drawn,
that was before English was the only acceptable language.
That was before the fences were erected,
that was before feet were inspected for where they
had come from.

Stay put. Stay out. Turn around. Go back.
Pay here. Stay there. Hit the ground. Flashback.

Churches grew on ground next to sweat lodges.
God gave the white man firearms,
the native only had axes.
It was clear whose right it was to
occupy the dirt. Bullets were the proof,
power was the religion that turned moccasins
to boots.

Let us keep our stories straight, let us rehearse
the communal memory so
rocks and barns and sands and stones
remind us of our atonal ways of composing our songs.

The same sun that dried the buffalo hides
burns the skin of children too long playing on the shore.
The same atoms that began eons and eons ago
build the hearts and lungs and feet and hands
of each of us,
now, and ever shall be.

When I shake your hand, I shake the molecules of
both our distant ancestors and the fires they built to
keep themselves warm.

The Spelling is Correct

The Spelling is Correct

(“For from him, through him and to him are all things. Glory to him forever! Amen.” Romans 11:36)

What to say to someone who has
never known green,
or to describe the invisible spectrum that
makes the grape leaves grow?

I’ve seen less than I know,
I know less than it seems,
I walk slower when dreams
slip through the curtain between
perception and the beginnings of things.

Waiting for the day to speak out loud so
I can send a message. Words have left me
at such a loss
and my dreams disturb and
entice me. They play around the edges.
They resurrect the error of judgement.
They offer make-believe lovers.
The leave the day smelling of vinegar.
They are my only connection

To

A few of you.

If I would not spend the day inside my head
I might get around to sending a letter.
But then I think of all the things I’ve said that
--in their context--
should have been invisible. Instead

I place my fingers on the black keys,
count the alphabet out loud and make sure
the spelling is correct.

At least that is something I can rearrange if
it is pointed out to me.

What to say when
your heart feels larger than the world.
What to say when it feels constricted
at the end of the day.

These thin membranes that separate
thought from thought
still feel connected in wireless wonder
to something I am not.

Remember when we sat on the hills,
looked at the sun
and wondered why we were here?
Remember when every conversation was
epic until

Your brother or my sister,
or camp counselor or a dad
cracked a joke that...

Remember how
we forgot what we were
talking about?

Their Faces

Their Faces

(“Do not mistreat or oppress aliens, orphans, or widows…” Jeremiah 22:3b)

Have you seen their faces?
Or do you merely repeat the phrases you’ve read
that crawl across your screen?
Have you seen the shredded clothing hanging
from razor wire
in the river?
Have you listened to the babies cry,
do you understand the language that
drives the numbers through drought and desert
just to live without dying?

She wasn’t yet fifteen years old
and knew the streets far too well.
She was marked for resale,
she was a loss leader priced by
a shadow manager
and paraded at night on concrete.
She still had friends, high school girls
still wishing for prom. They knew her face
better
than the bargain hunters who bought her,
than the wheeler dealers who sold her.
They found her, midnight blue, hiding under
a dark gray hoodie. They invited her, childhood friend,
to a house with husband and wife, and two wide-eyed
preschool brothers. It was

Impossible.

Until someone dropped off a mattress,
another shopped for new clothes. A judge gave
emergency custody to a family that had no idea
what they were doing. But they did it, and so did
dozens of benefactors who surrounded that home
that housed a teenage prostitute for a fortnight.
Fourteen days, phone calls every hour, a family
one hundred
miles away took her in. She was no longer an
emergency, no longer a hidden face at night.

Have you listened to the babies who
have no voice but
your own? Have you touched the mud stretched faces
of crackling tears? Have you believed that, though you
are only one,
and they may be a thousand,
that fish and loaves can still be multiplied.
Can you open your hands to touch the faces that once
were only phrases on the news?

An Invitation to Play

An Invitation to Play

(“All day long I stretched out my hands to a people who disobey and oppose me.” Romans 10:21b)

There are things I used to see only
from the corner of my eye. There was dancing
on the next street over,
there were puppies at the construction site.
There was handwriting I refused to read,
there were songs I set aside.

I never locked my doors, but I built my
walls high to
support the roof, to protect my head from
anything falling un-alphabetically.
I had categories for principles, labels so
the contents would not surprise me. I knew the
names by the languages I heard.

With my door closed tight, I lost sight of
the way the soul shines outside my structured steeples.
(Did I tell you I built my walls? That is not true.
I moved into domiciles manufactured well before
I moved in.)
I was never a carpenter. I occupied land and
closed the door.

It did not take a hurricane. I’m not sure, but it
happened as the earth shifted below the floorboards.
Overnight, over time, over my head, leaning over,
my walls fell and met the wet ground, all four sides
around.

And I saw.

The dancing was an invitation to play.
The puppies were prophetic, the handwriting
poetic. The songs were
nursery rhymes and soap bubbles I had locked outside.

I had lived in a house of mirrors, seeing only the images that
glanced back to me.
I rebuilt a house, a home of windows.

Today was the last day in my well-paneled home.

If I Sit There Silently

If I Sit There Silently

(“We do not know how to pray or what we should pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays to God for us with sounds that cannot be put into words.” Romans 8:26b)

What’s it to you if I sit there silently
while someone wails at the back of the room?
What difference does it make if my songs are wordless,
and I play in a minor key?
I used to think it was spiritual,
now I think it’s just mischief,
to stay one minute longer in prayer
than the ones who sweat for an hour.
What’s it to you if I’d rather hear
the air sing like wind than
repeat another verse of a brand new hymn
that begs for attention, that grovels like sand?

Once the noise dictated my definitions,
once the clock measured my piety.
Now the silence I always welcomed
welcomes me. I’ll sit with you in this
loneliness; I’ll picture that face that crafted
yours and
count every reflection a prayer,
every tear holy,
every laugh a prophecy,
and every raindrop the beginning
of a sacred dance.

What’s it to you if my notes are
indecipherable?
What’s it to me if I don’t remember
pronouncements well?
What difference does it make if I
still limp after a thousand voices have
declared me healed? What difference does it
make if
I’d rather be invited to a meal?

Once the miracles distracted me,
once I had to see ice burn and flame.
Now the morning fog welcomes me to
capture the name that has
been perfect in me day one until
the final benediction.

The Trajectory of My Ennui

The Trajectory of My Ennui

(“’For I am the Lord who acts with gracious love, justice, and righteousness in the land. I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 9:24)

The trajectory of my ennui
landed me at the corner of the sea.
I was too late to see
the tidepools and their creatures.
I wondered where the other seekers had landed.

The tide was up full, the sand lapped up
the foam and held the captured seaweed to
compliment the scalloped design flat until
the cliffs that rose above it all.

I tried to compose myself, I tried to understand
how I had missed the very
thing I longed for; how I began my mission
thinking there was so much more.
I shook without thinking, there was no one else
on the shore. The wind salted my day and I had
nowhere else to go.

The language of the waves was incoherent as
they hid craggy black homes of the
sea anemones and urchins. Nearly neon,
their green and purple sheen waited below the
atonal words of the tide’s uncovering.

A line of stone, a short-wall and a bedrock
cornerstone,
outlined the ruins of an ancient fortress. The
foundation was filled with
water and sand.
Once built to protect the legal citizens,
It was now a haven for starfish and hermit crabs.