My family and I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for many years now. I maintain that it is readily the most beautiful part of the country, perhaps the world – well, the parts I’ve seen. The Grunewald Guild is a tiny oasis of assorted buildings, forest pathways, an old church converted to a library, and a whole lot of contemplative, liturgical artists. My peeps. After living in the Yakima Valley now for almost nine years, receiving their regular emails for that entire time, I finally decided that it was time for a visit. Of other poems to come, these are the first two.

Plain

The chuckachuck of sprinklers

slaking thirsty brown grass

drone me into an almost zombie-like peace –

a single note, unyielding, in its own

tonic harmony.

 

A thousand shades of green –

jade and emerald and pine –

line themselves up in the random scattershot

only found in perfection. Much too random

for the soldierish replants

of our brutish industry.

 

Even the highway wants a place

in this scene – wearing the yellow line

like a scarf around the neck

of its own movement and momentary digressions –

 

Like this.

 

The Smell of Grey

The smell of grey, old and musty 

books holding ten thousand curious fingerprints.

The dog-eared tales of dog-eared folk,

standing together like square-jawed

colonels of mystery, harboring

citadel secrets.

 

For so silent a place, how loudly

they shout for my attention.

 

These Lutherans have it right.

There is no distance or

false pings of conscience that

“The Exorcist” shares a shelf with

“The History of Israel” and something else on liturgy.

Here, my dangerously haphazard

story fits. Suddenly, my impractical 

arbitrariness feels intentional –

almost holy.

Just about the time the afternoon had worn off its edges enough to let the daylight leave, there came to mind a certain wave of thought. Lovers made love. Haters made hate. The rest of us huddled in between where incoherence meets yearning and found each other’s company. It was first names only but, cheek to cheek meant mouth to ear, and tales got told before long. So, about the time the afternoon had frayed its fringes enough to wink at us in passing, we found ourselves left-foot dancing to right-foot music. It had a good beat but lost itself in too much s  p  a  c  e between notes. That’s where we met each other. Bump and shuffle. Step and slide. Groove and grunt. We moved in moments like hands looking for each other to clap along. Things only got weird once the music stopped and we were left with nowhere to hide our inhibitions. Funny how musical awkward silences can be. Maybe that’s when we really got to see something other than feet and our eyes told the better stories. 

Image found here

It is rare that any of us are exactly who we think we are. We all project some complex combination of who we are, who we hope are, and who others say we are. Since self-knowledge is among the greatest of all gifts given by God, the lack thereof is perhaps the most dangerous weapon we wield. He hurts most who thinks himself one thing but in fact is something quite different altogether. This poem seeks to explore such an idea.

* * * 

A time there was when all were free

to breathe in your simplicity.

And everyone your name would call,

your words could all their fears forestall.

 

You lived behind the gaze of eyes,

and hoped no one would you despise,

but feared if no one knew your face,

then none would come to share your place.

 

You lived behind your polished days

where no one hurt, if all had paid.

It was no way to live a life,

but more a way to welcome strife.

 

You stood aloof enough to say,

“How lovely are all things today,

my heart is glad, my stomach fed,

all sadness is most surely dead.”

 

“Perhaps if I can sit and stare

just long enough to fool despair,

there’ll be a chance to run and hide,

should love become what I decide.”

 

You sat alone, a king or queen,

and hoped to God you stayed unseen,

unless of course you felt a need,

and then, by God, your soul must feed.

 

As time progressed, you callous grew,

to all but what bedazzled you,

or made you safe from pain or harm,

no lost control, surprise, alarm.

 

A choice you made: all friends ignore,

if souls are threats, keep hate in store.

You barricaded all but doubt

to stop your heart from getting out.

 

Though gently spoken and demure,

you fooled us all with charm for sure.

For underneath the face of smiles

was stealth, suspicion, schemes, and wiles.

 

Your words of warm felicity,

instead hid hate’s capacity:

“Prepare the stake and bone-dry switch

and burn to hell this devil’s witch!”

 

We dared to think you gave a damn

’bout more than life as telegram.

When really all you wanted then

was life unburdened with a “friend.”

 

What started right and true enough

was all untrue, a ruse, a bluff.

You hid behind such glowing eyes

in apathetic trickster guise.

 

Perhaps one came to help unloose

the tightness of your sorry noose;

some love and conversation brought,

to teach you songs your heart would not.

 

But, stay awake my sleeping friend

for pain shall be your sorry end,

your heart’s entrails upon the ground

where once a wholeness there was found.

 

For you’ve been found by one whose needs,

includes a narcissistic greed,

that scorns and mocks, ‘twill crush and bleed

till nothing’s left but pain and weeds.

 

‘Tis said, “to thine own self be true,”

but this supposes one who knew

what gifts are others, time and chance

for one to share life’s solemn dance.

 

So, this is how a bully came

to be set free to taunt and maim,

but to the eyes a gentle lamb,

who practiced how to give a damn.

 

If only time would e’er stand still

‘twould teach us that we mostly kill

whenever we refuse the time

to turn and speak in honest rhyme.

 

The greatest damage always comes

through danger in the tedium,

reminding all, who truth would seek,

that truth is found on lips that speak.

 

The constancy of time’s parade,

is proof enough that days are made

in moments pregnant with the ways

that pause we must, on others, gaze.

 

We hope to know love’s alchemy,

frustrated not by parody;

sometimes are those who will not see

the pain of silent apathy.

 

But still through Christ, the living Lord,

like falling on a sharpened sword,

our lives are made to bear such pain,

our loss is oft another’s gain.

 

And now I’ve stooped to tell this tale

that blessing come to those who fail,

for all will sing and all will rise

whose hope abides in paradise.

Sometimes the drops of air laugh at our impudent chuckle

and gather themselves into a breath. Sometimes

 

when the robin stares too long at the kitchen window,

we become her careless dream. Sometimes

 

the patches of nothing between the rain

know something, too, of waiting. Sometimes

 

I pinch myself asleep long enough to awaken again

to the resurrection of your scent. Sometimes

 

the sucking sound when pulling boots up from the mud 
is how I hear your leaving. Sometimes

the one goose not in formation with the others, 
heading where life goes are my thoughts without you. Sometimes

like old leaves pasted back on the living tree 
is the sound of my cracked voice next to your song. Sometimes

 
like a shower in the lobby with the door open 
is our talk. Sometimes

 

in the wordless poetry, alone,

is our silence.

 

For my wife on Valentine’s Day (insert goofy emoticon here_______).

 

 

 

 

 

Something indefinite defines you whenever the sun shivers. 

It speaks in whispers, whittling down uptown talk to you and me.

Leave the world alone I say, with its backdraft of naysayers,

too pale to know they are shadows.

Sometimes it’s okay to let the clock shrug off its own anxieties –

it disarms the passing minutes while the sky changes.

 The breeze pins hair to cheek and, with collars turned up,

we become convinced of our own slow presence.

Let’s just lisp whatever poetry stumbles out of our footsteps,

finding their rhythm on this uneven road.

Like a head, severed and featureless,

are those times too far from your scent.

 

Like limbs reattached, sutured to the blood,

is your silhouette in the doorway.

 

Like the dream after the waking,

is the smile of your skin.

 

Like the hours of insistence, drenched in purple,

is the declaration of your place.

 

Like a fish, drowning and drunk on its own world,

is the yes at the end of your fingers.

 

Like a poor man’s breakfast, waiting and ravished

is the moistness of your remembrance.

 

Like secrets in a barrel, floating high up to grasp,

is the welcome in your eyes.

 

Like turns in the park, the yielded path unknowing,

is the sound of our falling steps, together, sighing. 

For Rae, my wife of nearly 27 years.

In those moments most resigned

to their own solemnity, another’s lips

sip the freeing drafts of good, and are

once again wetted with a taste of new days.

I won’t just topple from this

tower of precarious teetering

when someone else is waiting

to drink what remains of

cold and distant promises.

Instead, you scope out my limits

and find them insufficient

to hold all that has yet to come. Trickle

becomes flow

becomes gush.

And I become.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O dear page, waiting and empty,

could there be a day better suited

to the recollections of a soul, overripe and

forgetting its light? Those things that once were

a willing fountain of refreshment have become

the sublimations of tired whimsy.

Sparrows only frolic where there is the bidding

of happy water, the promise of baptismal song;

the welcome of Maundy-feet in shared coolness.

When pools freeze over they are

fit for nothing more than a crystalline table

for airborne detritus, the gleanings of

the woeful. It mirrors itself, parody of warmer times,

more reflective but less refreshing.

Let no more the satisfactions otherwise suitable

to the salubrious spirit be hidden among

mournful weeds of forgotten bounty.

Rich the soil into which dreams are buried.

Light the step of the grace begotten.

Still are the waves of the undying.

Yet we call this to mind and

therefore have we hope…

Photo by Stephen Elliott