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I am
a modest attempt,
a collection, no, a collective.
A living gallery of all
sponge-like
I take in.
Literary here, philosophical there:
melody, handicraft, tang, flora, fauna, story,
a sensorium
splattered Pollack-like,
bound, wound
seared through in tightly
tethered verse & prayer.
Words, always words
set forth
rising up
bled and burnt,
habitually expanding,
mend-making,
holy and wholly new.
Pleasing aroma.
the dark comes into the light
marring, decimating safety.
when the felt-experience of love
settles upon me, descending,
resting, cloaking, covering …
I feel sacred, connected to Love;
that possibly I am loved.
possibly.
we come from chaos—
internal, external.
our hearts frenetic, reverberate around,
knocking about, hoping to settle—
to alight on some solid shore.
but we can’t quite get our footing,
and we slip back into chaos.
always away from love
and one another.
(inspired by “V”, 2005, Sabbaths by Wendell Berry)
memories and time,
the unresting thoughts
absent of the present.
our bodies housing
Love's eternal work, always unfinished.
beauty, faith, gratitude persists
expands … lives on.
Who are You?
it's a funny thing "who we are."
our breadth & width obscured;
functionally we're either the sum of our fears
or freedoms
depending on the day | situation | person.
maybe saint or wolf, but sometimes neither.
i am:
incarnate
embodying what came before
& harboring that which is yet to come.
buoyant
rising up, past, around all that
desires to contain, suppress & maim.
expansive
truth and words of spacious presence;
generous invitations to come. be seen. known.
strong
absorb & contain
i carry biographies; bright beauty birthed in broken places.
but also this:
dishonest
rebellious, stumbling in dark drear
fear-bound, hard-hearted lie believer.
isolate
hostile heart disintegrate - thief of love -
hiding behind intricately pieced-together detachments.
and yet, always,
always,
i am beloved.
carried in & by THE story, tethered.
convergent narrative-led love. oh, Kingdom come.
in the craw & cover of night,
longing pushes past all my
good and fine sufficiency.
and i, ears reaching toward dawn's trill,
labor under the weight of
absence, lack, & not knowing;
three-pronged grappling hook.
weary with waiting,
i question complex pronunciations
of proximity contained.
the length of you
against the breadth of me;
a tangible grounding.
the damned injustice of your spacious soul
now so intricately entwined in my heart.
so near, yet nonconvergent.
re-integration cues
aged & forsaken detritus to rise
breaking benthonic from roily depths,
like slowly ascending air bubbles,
slipping past & around obstacles both
blanket-like and insular.
strictures {carefully coded & well placed}
upend with every surfacing blup,
blup,
blup.
heart | body | mind
skilled competitors,
mucking about in discordant rhythm, yet
synching in ever-weighted vigilance.
(for Dakota)
I see now
what I couldn't before;
how you've been leaving from the beginning.
(Born to do so in fact.)
We, wholly new to the other, cross pollinated. Me to you, you to me, creating life in the other where there was lack.
Foreign, I came to marvel at the breadth of you.
Drawn to that oh-so-winsome space you inhabited;
space carved by fierce commitment to what is good. And right.
There, I found a kind of shelter,
forged undeserved under your able and tender wing;
where seeing past everything I wasn't, and didn't turn out to be, you loved anyway.
Harbor.
And, so it is here in our story, that we arrive. That place where you pull away, even as I withdraw.
A sacred retraction; where your person, informed in part by me, becomes your own. And, I reclaim all those strands that both bound and protected. (Which if I'm honest, were really just tethers cleating my own place in the world.)
Now, together, but separate, we move out into environs unknown. Loosed to become our next selves.
out of the unseen,
and contrary to the evidence,
(the flip & fail of futility)
a light shines
upon the sacred and the profane both.
binding the dark.
always at work.
in everything.
IT, lodged on memory's edge,
threatens to topple carefully
constructed me. the mind's eye
beholds a quick & lusty inhale
(i'm not ready). freedom thrown
wide, coaxed forth, drawn deep
within lungs; expanded. oh here
IT comes {i brace for impact!}
whipping over under, emitting
a too-rushed exhale {whoosh}
that raging, will rime asunder,
& s p l i t me.
(for Maddie)
I watch you as we wait in line,
the bitter warmth of coffee hanging in the air between us.
I stand behind, and just off to your side so I can watch you undetected.
Clear-eyed with a tempered freshness,
your gaze is locked on something unseen by me
(your future perhaps?)
and in an instant an unwelcome truth arrives.
Your life is becoming your own… innumerable moments will be lost to me now.
You are less mine.
More yours.
And this,
this is how it should be, it is the way of things.
As a child you looked to me for direction, purpose,
now I will take my cues from you.
As you age, not just this year but all those to follow,
your past, in thought, word, & deed, will travel with you.
A sort of companion, both welcomed and not.
Much of it will be forgotten (a blessing and a curse!),
some will be in need of repair or bring a moment of joy,
but all will have shaped you into marvelous {complex, generous, quick-witted} you.
Daughter, you came to me that September afternoon,
(in a fiery pain, not experienced before or since,
proving that fragility and fierceness co-exist out of necessity)
and I breathed in such life; flat-nosed and baby-sweet.
In clinging to me, I clung to you. Need.
And you were quiet, so quiet it was foreign to me. For years I would miss that crucial part of your wholeness. (Forgive me.)
Punkin’, sissy, peanut, Millicent the magnificent, Moxie Turner, and finally just Maddie.
Of all the names you have been, and will be,
"more" is the truest.
You are already more than I ever could be;
braver, truer, more lovely.
Like a fawn,
wobble-legged & bursting with the feel of near-freedom,
you have stayed close, been prudent.
And, I, a cautious-heavy doe,
all too aware of the dangers beyond the cover of the wood,
have rested in our togetherness.
But, now I nudge you: go!
Have courage. Be wise, love well, and hold fast to
faith, your true north.
My mouth can not say all that I long for and want for you …
so I pray.
I pray you’d be rooted in truth,
{there is such freedom in the truth}
grounded in the care of those who hold you in their heart,
and rest in the joy and awkwardness of discovery.
On the eve of your sixteenth birthday I leave you with a reminder to
be fearless.
Be fearless because even the mistakes lead somewhere good.
“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” - Jules Verne
my life sounds like a
psalm you said. how Provision
tempers fear. freedom.
We approach the best-seller table at the same time.
I select a hardback, browse the flap. Non-fiction.
You, much taller, glasses, grabbed Khaled Hosselini’s newest; now in paperback.
I’ve been wanting to read that one. I move in, closer to you & your maleness, discreetly searching the eager up-turned covers vying for my attention. Pick me. Pick me.
You sense me hovering and move back mumbling, “don’t mind me, I’m just taking up space here,”
I smile a sideways glance and offer up, “that’s okay, we all are."
Forgetting the book, I move off toward the magazine rack.
i believe. oh, help my unbelief.
You have determined,
promised to cover & love.
to reshape, teach.
a sweet comfort.
in learning to live in the brutal expectation of it
{hope}
often lamenting the frequency of losing sight.
believing,
and when I don’t,
believing again.
All those words just came
tumbling out of your mouth
like a whole lot of preposterousness;
shocking me, exposing me.
so many F words: fear, fall, fault
and some L words: longing, love.
I just sat there
watching your lips move,
in all your bold confidence,
as my secrets spilled from your mouth;
a kind of determined liberation.
A release
of the darkness
out into the light,
giving voice to all that had been crawling around inside of me; like so many tiny white moths exploding out of the shadows.
How dare you. And thank God.
(And how long have you known?)
(for M.R.)
you’re a writer?
yes. sorta. poet.
"and, wow you practically exhale beautiful words…"
first things first.
we begin,
you and I,
in the dark.
stumbling upon one another:
me, walking the dog, oblivious to what’s coming
you, running, drenched in sweat & {heart} sickening fear, breath coming in labored gasps
the dark exists so light can be revealed,
the moment our two realities collide
light is created & by it we see.
second; you should know
the trick to prose is to find words,
not just words to write,
but words that grasp, hook, and bind one heart
to another
so that in the heaviness we do not drown.
instead we find new life;
possibility.
all that was built, tended, watched has gone to pot.
words spoken, once ripe with intent, now lost to the void;
dispersed into the everydayness where
mundane competes with surprise for equilibrium.
sentiments and confidences dissipate in the fog of this new unknown
& I struggle to find my true north.
truths, just discovered & held dear, slowly slip away and
I may
may not
find my way back to them.
bereft, old friend.
I have worn you these many years. An austere companion cloaking loneness; bringing heavy comfort.
At least there is that.
I do not recognize
or am unfamiliar with this self (like a distant cousin; once met years ago)
and these thoughts
all despair and {death}.
unbidden, they come bringing a {counterfeit} comfort
a closed-eyed jump
a quiet slice
{release}
from hope
damage, trickery, vetting
the repetition of one minute
and the next.
{lavender pouches of calm sun smell
aggregate concrete rounds
rust red lava rocks
strangers gather and flock, flock and gather between us}
memories that remain are heard
faintly feigning overseers …
and I wonder,
is it the booby, or the prize,
that leaves me pure,
tamped under un-uprooted asters
in the light pink to white range?
stealing softly behind closed curtains
lewd lovers create chasms,
that like dirt,
absorb parceled words
packaged in pretty paper,
then minimized
by too-late intentions,
and anyway,
foretold by the ‘73 almanac.
I know I’m not nearly learned enough
but, everything
literally
is an unopened box/jar/container
of something antiquated.
© aapl 2001
Razed & raised
I have been re purposed
Gut checked. purchased.
Humbled. shedding,
Turning from
Ever ending futility.
Oh, long suffering & i am still such “a long way off…”
Unfettered restoration pursued
Securing right to use.
© aapl 2010