It helps me sometimes, to picture all of us in our sheep costumes, thin elastic chin straps, holding on our faces.
Helps me to remember
We are all sheep
If you don’t count the wolves among us
And all we, like sheep have gone astray
So you will not be the one to forgive my helpless anger
At all the lambs lost to slaughter
While the Shepherd was away.
We are collectively surprised at how ephemeral the boat is, balloonish, easily punctured. As are we. I wonder if the others have drawn the same conclusions-we have become ghosts in our erstwhile stories, still haunted by the house, by the spouse, by the hope we left behind.
Only Lazarus whistles a chipper tune. Why is he so happy? Because nothing is a cool hand to lose.
We sit in the shade, it is all shade here, so incorporeal, so many of us, all waiting for a voice, for a light, for The Before The After, the now and forever, we talk of sunsets, the way the sun might send one last piercing shaft of light up through the darkening sky, faith-hope-love coming for us, they say, these men who have seen the-greatest-of-these-is-love
But when? How long until
We are irrevocably
Called to life.
I bought a boat in the hill country, she says to herself,
In this place where the Sky always becomes an ocean
We have lost so much, but I will have this beat-up John boat, recompense for years ago when I
Told you, leave your anger and walk home from here
As though we all don’t have to do that
As though there is any other way for stone-cold prodigals to
come home
It is just an email for something fun for the kids, but it reminds me of my former squalor, the way you might try to love someone who treats you like the bars, the cage, the meal set before them.
I could tell you all the symptoms and all the chaos, I could tell you the inadequate advice, the befuddlement of friends, the tragedies of children, or the strange calm caused by heavy psychotropic drugs, doctor’s office fish, surely unaware of the storm of a girl in this office by the sea.
I wake up from nightmares feeling that way again–mornings of dread, a low-grade fear of all our tomorrows.
What will become of them? Children without possessive pronouns
To guide them home.
Anger is a strong drink in the deep watches of the night. I have kept all the words, all the words for sorrow, loss, and the island, but there are children in the sun swept piazza, bell-less bell tower, and the sheltered colonnade perfect for freeze tag, as the sun goes down, beautiful ring-leader
conspiring to keep you will always be so different than conspiring to
Let you go.
You tell yourself it is just food, knowing you want
To keep it for another time
when you could rejoice
For a year, for the first year after, for as long as it takes
like the frozen wedding cake
As though love could last forever
The way he says it does
Manna in our wilderness
I try to establish timeline–
It was the spring…close to Passover
How long had you been dying?
How long had you? he retorts, not angry, incisive.
Surely I have touched a nerve, who else gets bullied for coming back from the dead?
But it is the one question he answers, the one time I hear his speaking voice–
Same as you, from the moment I was born.
John 11:14 NIV
[14] So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead,
I tell him the questions I still have which remain unanswered, and when we are sad together I ask him about his singing voice, say I don’t worry about the faults in mine anymore
Both of us so far gone now
Past the scrim of polite society
John 11:1,3 KJV
[1] Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. [3] Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.
In the waiting room, I try to act casual, as though I have not followed him here, studied his story, combed it for gaps and terrible silence.
I prattle on about my own sodden sorrow
Unsurprisingly, he is an excellent listener.
But he holds his peace, his haunting piece, tragedy and conjecture, punctuated by improbable
Glory
Carrying Light 