I Think You Already Know

I Think You Already Know

I think you already know by now how
our hearts are entwined. I think it is easy so see
the secrets we have not hidden, the scars we have not
covered in shame. But I want you to know, if you did not
know by now
that my heart is healed because of your love.
My anxious thoughts do not invade like they once have,
my depression occasionally paints it dark, but then I
remember
the way you have taken me by the hand and walked me
back into the light.

You have let me cry when crying seemed unreasonable,
you have made me laugh on days I would rather pout,
you have touched my face with your hands and I cannot
draw back.
I would never draw back.
There is so much love in that touch, in the warmth of
your fingers on my face, that I breathe more slowly and
find the place of grace you have created for me.

I don’t know how all this works, I do not understand eternity.
But one thing I think I know, our hearts were born this way,
our souls were dancing together, interlaced and finding
infinite positions to touch each other with such joy,
such passion, such joy, and such love. We usually know it without
saying a word.

I would do anything for you. You have done everything for me.
I would end the nights of frightening thoughts, I would kiss your
lips with loving warmth, I would hold you close when the
words from outside your mind demean you in acrid proclamations.
I would heal every bruise, every heartache, every undeserved
lashing upon your heart that you never deserved.

Oh, my soul, I cannot describe how you have brought me to this
healing. I only hope you know, my dearest of dear, that I will never
stop loving you, never stop holding you, never stop hoping for your
hand in mind as our hearts wrap around each other even though miles apart.

The Silence Spoke Volumes

The Silence Spoke Volumes

(“(He) gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and said, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” 1 Corinthians 11:24)

The moment was intimate, the silence spoke volumes,
yet we felt like strangers, caught beneath the weight of his words.
There was a line that went out from him through all of us,
there were tears unbidden for we knew not why they came.
There were days we were so obtuse we missed the meaning
by miles.
But tonight we felt so helpless, like we should have grasped the meaning,
we should have joined in the metaphor,
we should have pieced the parable together.

We did take the bread, that was the custom. It was his words that
caused our confusion. We remembered the words that
admonished us before for missing the point. What should
we say now?
We were better off silent.

It was subliminal, it was suggested and silent but
when the bread was broken, we could not understand
how the body was his bread, how the bread was his body,
and now, the silent part, we were also broken and given.

Our throats were frozen, our words garbled, our vocabulary
suddenly so limited we could choose no coherent response.
We sat in the moment and could not dream a future without
him breaking bread with us again. Was that what he was hinting?
We could not conjure a memory that would invade our quiet
misunderstandings.

You asked us to remember, a simple act we thought we could do.
We had not planned on you leaving so soon.
But, if you are given for us, break us open like bread to
spread us across the meadows and plains to help others
remember you, here and there, again.

We Took the Backstreets

We Took the Backstreets

We took the backstreets too often
trying not to be seen, hoping not to be heard.
We were convinced that everyone was happier than
we deserved and so we made the shadows our friends.
We deserved nothing brighter than the alleys,
or so we thought. The spotlight blinded us and sent
us scattered across the way. What would they say when
they saw us dressed so differently from them, handsewn
rags from mediocre wardrobes. We never thought the songs
were for us and so we never memorized the lyrics.

We took the long way home nearly every time we
returned. What would we say to those who thought
they knew us and paused to chat or ask us questions,
or insist we swallow some offered food with them.
We should have trusted them. But we had trusted others
and their food nearly poisoned us right in front of everyone.

We had no way to measure the honesty of the light we met
along the way. He had no means to assess what harm there
might be in giving them space within our shivering minds.
We had been treated as paupers before, morsels received from
clenched hands. So we found ourselves suspecting every
motion from shoulder to elbow to hands.

We would give anything to walk through the neighborhood,
stop at the cul-de-sac and chat with the children and puppies
with eyes happy to see ours. We would throw our hearts wide
open to let the better words lodge as their parents saw us and
laughed along with our improvised conversations. Maybe the
light can shine again, maybe we can come out of the shadows,
take the front road and not the alley. Maybe the pain we
experienced
was inflicted by people with as much pain as ours. Maybe
there was a place to play like sunny afternoons in meadows
that musically laugh the healing songs of human bonds. The
clash we once felt might be the beginning of lively moments of
daily discovery like a child finger-painting the sky.

Springing from Within

Springing from Within

(“But if someone loves God, it is certain that God has already known that one.” 1 Corinthians 8:3)

Suddenly the air was clearer, the skies without fear,
the echoes without terror. What we were used to hearing was
war muted by the long lines of melody played over the
top of the clouds like a violin motif inviting us home.

We felt it like love streaming in tropical dreams,
like a mother’s nickname for her newborn child.
We simply sampled what had been offered from
eternity past into late night conversations loosened by
a couple of glasses of wine.

How lovely is the handiwork, the sculptured horizons,
the landscapes of brilliance and the offers of peace
on earth. Why we had ignored it made no sense to
some who had hummed that tune from their earliest
breaths.

But for others those days gave way to harsh assessments
of diving expectations, adopting overbearing stances
like brick walls disguised as fences. But some refused
to let go of their notions of liberation, their images of
deliverance. For them every heartbeat was another reason
to sing the most astounding of songs. Eyes upturned,
their hands were full to share the food and warm words
to the onlookers simply hoping for something better than
hyper-critical evaluations of the crowds.

They knew the jargon but found it empty. They
used to use the same language too. But, astounding,
and alarming, the moment their hearts had turned the
old dialect was found wanting
and empty on the scales of exuberance.

Now, where once there were armaments of warfare in
the names of their god
they found and sang and walked the ground like
pilgrims and nothing more. Their nothingness was
turned to cantatas of simple tones that toddlers
could learn and fill the rooms with unqualified love without
judgment. A new song of emancipation springing from within.

Danced Like Toddlers

Danced Like Toddlers

(“As soon as I heard the sound of your voice, the baby inside me jumped for joy.” Luke 1:44)

Could all this mean that we were born to be dancing,
scooting around the rhythmic floor with higher dimensions?
Could our feet move at the first sentence sent from the
purest hearts? Could our hands clap at the sound of the
leaves falling for joy? I’ve fallen for stories like this before,
and was sometimes deeply disappointed. But what if we still
were meant to listen for the next story, then turn our ears
toward the familiar music with a new way of hearing. We hear
the frequencies as we listen with new angles, as we attend to
the old tunes with simple guitar and drum and feel like
sliding all the way across the ballroom.

The pulses of joy rearranged our thinking,
the words barely full-throated and we were ready.
The echoes off the walls and mountains, the repeated
verses from peak to peak celebrate
a dawn like no other. A day hardly begun
and we are ready to walk the way we had
hoped to follow so many ages ago.

We swore we had attempted it, we remembered
the day it left us behind. We mourned our losses,
we grieved the silent pain. We could not resurrect
a single note of the ancient song.

But this refrain, reframed in such solitary silhouette,
opened the cracks where the light had filtered
in for ages. But now, unhindered, the music drew us
to cacophonous celebrations. Oh, that we were still young
enough
to cartwheel across the yard. Our voices are aging
and barely find the notes, but it matters less than the
dancing that renewed our crooked feet. That day when
the song crept in to find us in our darkened caverns
was the day we walked into the light, finally, in years. And
old as we were from the hiding and cold, we danced
like toddlers trying to hop for the very first time.

Across the Great Expanse

Across the Great Expanse

I stood on the steps and gazed across the
great expanse stretched from yawning valleys
to sheltered coves. The complexities sent me
spinning. I’ve had days when all I do is
remember people 50 years ago whose names
I once spoke out loud. I watched you laugh
dozens of times from corner to corner dodging
the looks of thawing foothills. We followed them
there
and hiked the slopes like we were as harmless
as we looked.
We cheered the occasional thunderstorms that
scattered us across the landscape. We counted the
seconds between flash and boom and knew they were
getting closer as hair stuck to our heads dripping rain
from our faces to our shoulders.
We slid down the fall line, mud escorting us to
the flattened overviews where we wondered why
the cows didn’t follow our downward adventure.

What I miss is the bliss that rises from the thought
of one simple day acting like a child who wants to be
an adult. The sweet adolescence when everything mattered
but nothing was sacred. The time of our lives when
we treated scat and the blues and rock and jazz like
parts of a whole we imbibed like wine.

What I miss are conversations till midnight, slightly
tipsy;
just enough to make the truth come out. And we
dabbled in open-source voices and sounded out our
serious vowels as if they were jokes looking for a
punch line. I miss talking with you and thinking we
knew everything about what was to come.

Shall we meet up at the park where our kites
would fly above us, and where salamanders soaked
in the sun on the banks of the stream? I’ll meet you there,
these many years later, and see if we can recreate the
scenes we once shared without fear, sharing them like
warm sun that begs our hearts open fully and unafraid
to laugh at how silly we are at these late days of our lives.

Unsnapped

Unsnapped

(“To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless.” 1 Corinthians 4:11)

I became unsnapped from everything that
held me tightly,
untethered from the orbits that explained everything.
The strings of lights hung from the eaves,
the deer wandered through the yard. I was
learning to walk, to explore, to live like a
vagabond, a drifter, a nomad. We were better
at being ragamuffins than royals, so we pulled
up an old folding chair and wondered what the singing
was about.
We were enriched in our poverty,
homed in our wandering, healed with balms
of lowly scents from the muddled petals from
flowers that grew in the forest.

The truth is, I always feared being poor.
And I missed the beloved’s smile that looked on
my paucity as a gift. What should I give away
to know your love deeper than I have before?

Once again, I hold onto the things that have escaped my grasp,
the memories that were felt so deeply that they
color my moods like finger-painting.  It is too late
to learn to play a new instrument or think about
buying one. I should play even if I play alone,
leaving the sound to encase the walls of my sitting,
to gently adorn angels I imagine live between the
strings of my mandolin.

I unzipped myself from velcro attachments and
found, though poorer, my days were fuller than I knew,