I am grateful for the rain
On this dry patch of earth
I know the difference between
Accidents and miracles
And wish to thank
The God of ordinary sadness
Who sits next to me
on the sinking-in-the-middle
Patched-with-a-heart
-on-the-back
$35 couch
Willing to abide in the center
Of my vertiginous grief
He says
Take courage
It is I
Do not be afraid
I have a friend who fights. She has brightly colored hand wraps that she uses to protect her hands beneath her boxing gloves.
She bandages each hand so that the knuckle is protected, the wrist and all the space in between.
When I have watched her wrap and unwrap her hands it has reminded me of Jesus.
I think of him as a baby. In the primitive conditions of his arrival, the Bible records his swaddling–wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger.
Descriptions of ancient infant swaddling talk about cleaning the newborn with oil and salt, then wrapping the child in strips of torn cloth.
Lazarus was swaddled when he emerged from his tomb.
The ancients swaddled their newborns and their dead, wrapping both in the same strips of cloth, washing each for the journey ahead.
The story of Jesus’ anointing at Bethany bears striking resemblance to his washing as a newborn and is a stated preparation for the soon-to-be swaddling of his dead body.
Three days is a long time to wait for a resurrection, four days is even longer. But for many of us 20, 30, or 40 years is how long we have waited for our dead to rise to life.
And if eternity is the span of human existence, then it is also the length of time we must measure each human soul, inside or outside our dark and solitary tombs.
To believe in the resurrection of the dead is to believe in the extreme triumph of Life over death, heaven over hell, good over bad.
To stand at the mouth of the tomb and know that someday each of us will be called to walk out of our tombs into Light.
I see him addressing
An undiluted crowd–
You are the light of the world
We are?
Sheep, maybe
Or chicken (I know my coward heart)
But surely not light
Too strong, too bright, too burning
We must burn on
This Mount of Olives
This Garden of Gethesmane
This history and geography of light poured out in the crushing weight
Upon olives rendering
Oil and salt rubbed on the skin of the newborn child
Anointing a king
The King
Of light
Who holds
Each burning
Coil of a star,
The core of fire within each churning planet
Our ordinary souls
In the palms of his stretched-wide
Hands
Dante, in his fictional portrayal of hell, put traitors at its dark, tortured core.
To betray love and abandon those close to you was a big deal for Dante.
As a writer, that is…as a man he was no hero.
Few of us are. We are all unfaithful to someone or something–our high school crush, our diet…something.
To be human is to cheat a little, I guess. But we must acknowledge this–we, each of us alone are responsible for the lines we draw around what we hold dear.
Draw the lines wrong and the “dear” slips away.
We tell ourselves–I will not go past this point of demarcation–a line drawn just past a “something” we should already not covet or consume.
We say to ourselves either–
I will not do this
Or…
I deserve…
It is the “I deserve” part we should pause to examine. Sinners (a quaint old word for all of us) tend to justify their infidelities with deserve and must have. Then cloak the indulgence in the illusion of secrecy–no one will know.
But Someone always knows.
He knows because He is God, and by definition omniscient.
He knows all our secret stories of unfaithfulness, squalor, and sin because they were poured out on Him
In the rictus of the Cross
In the jeers of the crowd
In the agony of physical abuse
In the final unbearable…
In the final unbearable He bore to make us
Faithful.
I have a friend who punctuates correspondence with the lovely benediction–know you are loved.
Elegant, but a bit abstract for some of us.
I love you–more direct, but can you believe me?
Sometimes celebrity can be a strong drug. Knocking out some of our healthy need for solitude, privacy, anonymity, and humility.
When you lost the fight with Holms I grieved with you. Her win was methodical and clearly well-thought out. But some of us love you for your slugger’s heart.
You did not need to hide your scars on the way home. We all have them.
Glory in the well-earned blows.
But watch out for the body paint. SI has been treating legit female athletes like sex doll pin-ups for years. Playing to the testosterone of their average-joe readers is not good enough anymore.
Women like you deserve to have the paint of your fame be in each well-fought achievement.
Not your sex appeal.
Keep your clothes on and fight girl. Know you are loved.
love don’t say
Whatevs, Girl
Love plays for keeps
Wraps itself around the words and places where you been
Leaves the have out on purpose
Because when you were young, you…
But when you are old you will..
Know this loss
Feel what it is
To not be found
Without you, Girl
when discussing
Atrocity
I find that it is best to begin
With scenes (at least a single scene)
Of domestic tranquility–
A sister reads a children’s story to her little brothers who have memorized the words. They punctuate the story with lines of dialogue and laughter…
Because
If you do not see them–real
Alive
Vivid
Indelible
Then you won’t understand the tragedy when they go missing
Completely legally, of course
The voices in support of holocaust of one sort or another are always quick to point out
Everything they did to destroy the wee ones was completely legal
–The stripping of their rights
–The dehumanizing monikers
–The methodical pillaging of their history, family, identity
–The medical framing of their naked deaths
–The sanitized commodity of their skin, blood, stems, and cells
–The clinics where they do their tinkering
Piecemeal
Tiny pieces
–All government sanctioned
–Legal to trade in and cultivate small
Parts
Tell me again
How
Piles of skin and hair and blood
Can be so..
Bought and sold.
Where was the conference room? In what hotel?
They served a light
Lunch/over the topic
How to separate the spine of a…
living soul
The way a man would gut a fish
My darlings,
I owe you a writing assignment. Clear diction, even sentences.
Instead
I give you loose
Verse
Words spilled together on the floor of my anger
Over forms I filled out long ago
A victim’s impact statement
Should never just get
Lost,
Flutter to the ground through exploded sky
Drift down in a mute opera of
Tragedy
Is when the antagonist
Betrays love
That is such a simple thing
You throw a rock through
A stranger’s window
Draw lines of
Demarcation between
What we forgive and what cannot be
Forgiven is such strong
Drink
In the prayer of a child
There is anger and confusion
What God? What Prophet?
You look among these spent and bloody stones
I know he is gone, full flight
And we will all
Rise, birds in flight
In this winter-dark sky
I plant the tree
In sight of the house
Hoping it will ease
The pain of losing you
I look to it
As the winter wind sweeps in
Tempted
To wrap a deep
comforter
Around her
Nymphan shoulders
Through the storm
This is when I know for certain
A tree is not a child
No marker, nor even
thing with living roots
Can supplant you
My lost daughter
Only fragments of an old, old story
about tears, feet, hair and costly perfume
Broken, poured out
Can signify
This loss between us
And what he is willing
To pay to bring you,
–us-
Back again
Whole.
so much processed sugar
And make up, bath soaps
Festive pjs
You name it–
Well meaning people trying
To fill a void with empty giving
Insulin shots and loneliness
To gap a story so unsparing
God born in a barn
(Is bad enough)
But what is up with putting a
Newborn in a trough?
Trough? Your voice rising to the question
Why a trough?
No downy blankets here
Most unlikely place for an infant
King
Amidst the crap
Because…
Because…
That is where so many ordinary children are born
And die amidst the squalor of a loveless world
A Light shines for all of us
Not an easy path
From dung to gold
But more like alchemy
Tiny child born
To make treasure
Out of all our crap.
