a story lived, now story told
we, early young, now later, old
see stranger things than daytime held
but not without our sorrows quelled
____________________________________
we fluff and tuck and yawn and brush
pray God remove all sinning blush
the air now cool in silver glow
what dreams may come we do not know
_____________________________________
divested now of time and chance
we bid adieu and leave the dance
till thricely woven round with grace
the nighttime songs our fears erase
Given the raw materials from which come my best advances
into grace-filled days and hope-tinted nights,
there remain the questions – the queries in restless sleep,
the mystifications of workday afternoons when
sorting through memories is more haunting than charming.
Exchanging token cautions smeared with crooked remembrances
that laugh their way to a poorer destiny,
the torn and sad reaches for glad that tips a hat to
the best of what’s behind but incomplete.
Shards of broken passage return their wounds,
still ripe and weeping, for any chance at a future,
not sequined, brash or over-confident but light, fresh and pale
with songs not new but revitalized, like Lazarus,
his face paler still but beautiful, because all that was barren or ugly
is forgotten in the grave.
In the right hands, days in a dank cell of nothing turn even the
deepest pain into something beautiful.
Painting: “The Raising of Lazarus” by Vincent Van Gogh
The light was thinner today, unplagued by summer arrogance.
The aging, iron-grey sky cooperates fully with the falling day,
pouring out one particle at a time onto the browning green.
I watched it pool in elegance, gathering
in the playful dance of moths and paupers.
Lower down, close to the roots of things,
my feet can touch the back of this place, falling simply
as eyes preparing for a blanched horizon are caressed
by the autumnal bounty of God’s spare time.
When the reprisals of our souls,
too young to love, too small for pain,
repeat their mistaken ventures into
the uncolored light of mistaken journeys,
then it is that the walls whisper
their ghostlike songs of ever after –
sighs of the imperfect.
* * *
Here there are no endings,
only endings of old beginnings
that transform by a refusal
to submit to the indentured servitude
of the hollow and broken,
preferring instead the ancient newness
of Cistine handshakes.
* * *
In the cowls of earth, her ears of stone,
hear fathomless time, tonsured and teased
from her birthplace deep in
embowelled truth whose Name Is.
Encompass within yourself this
faceless sojourner only now
learning his name.
Photo courtesy of my friends and fellow monastic-creatives at Abbey of the Arts. Thanks Christine Valters-Paintner.
Here, in this place awash in daylight grace,
I live my entire life on the head of a pin
on which is inscribed a single word:
surrender.
When todays are saturated in
a low, crawling, redeeming sadness:
surrender.
When the all-pervasive pall of a greening grey
removes dead soul-skin and tastes
like eating raw sewage:
surrender.
When the bitter pill of leafless desire
gets stuck in my throat and
stops up anything nutritional:
surrender.
When the wafer thin moments
of happy times bought at another’s expense
rob me of me:
surrender.
When my lover who shares
my bed, my skin, my guts, my hopes,
becomes nothing more than a side dish:
surrender.
When, in convenience, I sidestep
responsibility to another
and choose the busy road of non-involvement:
surrender.
When I’ve surrendered all I am and have,
all I’ve been and will become,
all that was, all that is and all that is not:
surrender.
When I’ve surrendered all,
I gain the one thing,
the Pearl of Great Price,
the Lily of the Valley,
the One who is in all,
who is all
and who needs no introduction because…
my soul knows him.
I recognize this is not the first of its kind. Others have also shared just such things in the wake of the recent, horrific atrocities in Syria. I feel impotent to change much of this. But I can write. And I can pray. Here, I do both. Join me…please.
Lord, they did not ask for dusty feet
sandaled and sore
to walk over the flesh and bones
of neighbors and friends,
of brothers, sisters and parents.
They didn’t ask to be brought before
someone else’s tribunal on imagined
charges of being what they should not be,
what you created them to be.
They did not seek out this desperation
that found them huddled, fearful and crying.
To see the bloated bodies of fellow pilgrims
floating down the river, under bridges,
stuck and floating on rocks jutting out
and shaking bony fists at you for justice,
is to see a God too small to save.
Or am I missing something, Lord?
I am not smart enough to know
the fancy talk at long, important tables
where cigar-smoking men carve up
the world with a wink and a handshake.
I am not wise enough to understand
how to discern what most is needed.
I am not strong enough not to hate,
nor still enough not to stir up
my anger, my outrage.
Lord, if I am forced to sit and watch
what looks like the refuse of hate-filled politics
paraded before a God with weak arms,
and no stomach to move into the fray;
then, help me to forgive you, God,
if only long enough to dive in myself.
Who knows?
Perhaps we’ll meet each other there.
Picture: www.blogs.common.georgetown.edu
Morning has swallowed whole the night
and out of its belly is teased the day,
dripping with invitation to ingest what gifts
are ripe and waiting. The tree of good and best
sits silently in the midst of the garden
and beckons me to investigate. Look
not for the reddest, brightest fruit,
blushed and bursting, it says.
Look instead for the fruit which looks for you,
pregnant with promise. Let it choose you.
Bite into it with abandon and let God anoint you
with the juice running down your chin that aims first
at your mouth, too full to speak,
then to your heart, hiding beneath your shirt
and to your feet, now wet and sticky but ready
to leave this place where other mouths
are hungry for fruit.
“…The stars need darkness or you would not know them.” –Dorothy Trogdon, poet
The day presents itself to him at an unacceptable hour. The time of night when end of one day hasn’t completely surrendered to another. But the early thin place wasn’t an enemy by any means. The typhoon-like week that led to this moment hadn’t finished depositing its day-timer detritus. He is tired, but a certain contentment holds sway and hunkers down in the deep parts that make themselves known at such times.
Faces like so many stars in a sequined heaven begin to seep into his memory. As though bobbing up from underwater, one face after another implores to be remembered, mentally photographed and then, in the quiet of gifted moments, developed into softly gilded perfection. Was this mere whimsy, the unfettered gloating of overly romanticized ideas? Life was good. Why then the unasked for intrusion of yesterday’s communion? Couldn’t the wealth of immediacy be enough, just this once? Is then always so much better than now?
He wondered to himself whether he should banish such ghosts or to allow them free passage through heart hallways a little dusty that often smudge such images. He chooses the latter and, for a few moments, coffee now cold in his cup, joins them in meandering parade through the ballroom of his conscious. Through closed eyes he draws deep breaths of the night air and touches each face. But in doing so, they vanish, leaving only his finger pointing heavenward – the place where each of them are called. The place to which they call others.
Then there is clarity. Without the backdrop of the deep black night, stars are not stars. Without stones, the river doesn’t dance. Without falling leaves, the wind makes no sound and the world is just a little sadder. He smiles, dares a sip of cold coffee, and steals another breath from the evening, not so quiet after all.
Image: www.pptbackgrounds.net
The evening, purple and plush, is tender.
Her breezy suggestions of tales, told late
well, often, and loudly from tables
laden with good friends. The fingerprinted
beer glasses fill with memories, plump with
well worded love, seed the new day
and push just a little harder toward joy.
Glasses emptied, giggles abounding
posture themselves as little brother
to guffawed grins on quivering chins,
twin bearers of gladness and gloom.
For soon the night must absolve
the room of her secrets, and
invite the neighbored goodness back
to places now refreshed in
the exercise of lingering laughter
late and perfectly balanced,
found only among the best of friends.
The periphery is the place
where dreams are most visible.
On the edges, frayed and wrinkled,
my subdivided realities
open wide and spread out
before inquisitors pressed in close
with noses against the dirty glass
of my best kept secrets.
Let’s confirm that hope
spy that joy,
pin down that lie,
open that pain.
If one can make hiccups
in time and place, perhaps
there can be rejoined
the fragile messes,
the intractable chaos,
the static imperfections
with the faux pardon of time.
Drive the head of this nail
of perceptions through
already connected wood
with the hammer of bad choices.
What’s left is just one more nail.
Still, my need for love,
unprovoked and misunderstood,
is best found in lost time.
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
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