at the edge of the edge of the silver dance
the stuff of space becomes so attenuated that
a single floating atom
cannot see the ghost mama
(because there is, by definition, nothing there)
Yet she is.
Curled around her lone, fetal darling
So much smaller than a human
blastocyst
Just a nucleus, protons, the usual electrons
Would be panicky lonely
Except for the unseen but still
so present
Modern ghost.
What we saw was
the pudgy placeholder for the law
In his uniform, high alert
gun drawn at the suspects
Through the bullhorn they hear the same grim warnings:
Put your hands up
Don’t turn around
Walk slowly to me
Pantomime of imminent demise
The laws of physics make the same demands:
Put your hands up…don’t turn around…walk slowly to
The pantomime of imminent demise
Twenty years ago the doctors never read me
The Miranda Rights of motherhood
About the presence or absence of DNA
Arms, feet, a face on the ultrasound they never let me see
Swimming in the dark
Pebbles with new names
Ask God for answers
Hands up…don’t turn around…walk back…
Was this child real enough?
He prophesies
children from stones
Not unlike dragon teeth
Heart pierced through
So we can all come home
By nightfall.
think of the worst book
Each page, each word, each sentence
Awful for a long time until
They are re-written
With the simple line drawings of a child
Obscuring words and pictures of
darkness, evil, or moldy and stained
garden-varietal venality
With the loveliest trees
Birds in flight /charcoaled nimbi
Outlined halos
Their feathery heads tilted
Ever-so-slightly-quizzical
Asking why are you sad?
Each page of darkness
Transformed by this
Ferociously tender
Child-
Light, where there used to be all those
Terrible monsters
Crayoned over/ into heaven
By this poet-redeemer
word spoke to life.
I have thought of this, my little love
Rifled through the pockets of my diminished
Powers of speech and human governance,
To find you all good things:
Enhanced night vision
Kick-ass ninja skills
The irrefutable assurance of your loveliness
Not enough.
So let us add:
Dragons rise to your command
Eagles lift you to the place where air grows thin
and may you
always see
The clear road home.
Too much, you protest
So down to this,
voice of love
what if it was perfume
or acorns stashed in my pockets?
Bits of things remind me
of you
Lost to me for now
I trace all the
Alternate
timelines of our
Would-be existence together
How did you
sprint past me, Dear?
Leaving perfume, acorns
emptied from the inside out
This pocketful of
Birnam Wood in my hands,
in my hands, this forest floor
Dirt, mulch, fallen leaves, roots, baby trees…
Saplings, timbers, interlacing
Limbs outstretched toward the warm
Light of God who takes away the sins of the world
…the story we will be.
the tape is a blur of
ordinary splendor
songs sung loud in a messy
house vivid patchwork
some mention of a circus
close to the tear in the hand-made quilt
I touch your brow
tell you
take your medicine before you go out to play
Round, pink, chewable analgesic
as you lift your head to receive the pill
Eucharist in the living room,
old and beautiful
Words for “good” and “grace”
So close to your already liturgical
Beautiful like…
A rose
A ruby
A diamond
A butterfly
A boy in flight
preoccupied
with the ghosts of children,
She
hammers nails into the wall
for improbable angels
they float above
small, intricate, perfect
real girls
each flicker just a moment then
Snuffed out
Because they were not…
Because they were not…
born boys.
I am a big fan of Jesus, even though he is a little scary.
Why? Well, there is the dying for the sins of the world thing, but there is also the stuff he idly seems to throw into his parables–weeping and gnashing of teeth, something about being salted with fire.
CS Lewis is right, he is not a tame lion. He is the only and original badass and he more than deserves to be the divisor of before and after in human history.
Years ago I cried when I read an article about a nurse who visited new and at-risk parents. She said that years later the babies she had visited would recognize her voice when they heard her in random places.
This mattered to me because I have a baby out there somewhere who might recognize my voice even though she was just 14 months old when she was taken from me.
The voice of love–that is what I hear when I read Jesus. He is, by turns, funny, deadly incisive, ironic, and passionately in love with us.
Crucifixion and resurrection kind of passionately in love.
When I lost my little foster daughter I grieved beyond what is comfortable to describe. I took my cry to God–why?
His voice was clear–if you have to choose for her to know just one of us, you or Me? Which would you choose?
Him, of course.
Always and only Him, baby girl.
Hear his voice.
John 10:2-5
Viola Davis has recently joined the long list of celebrities who have spoken out against sexual assault–rape, often in the context of their own victimization.
I could write a list of the men and women who have helped other victims by speaking out as sexual assault survivors. I could not give you a list of the names of the perps.
Why?
The ongoing controversy surrounding abuse allegations made by Corey Haim before his death gives us some clues–
And yet if we are honest, we all have a list–the creepy uncle, the duplicitous coach, the father who harms his own child, a neighbor, a brother-in-law, a once-beloved actor. People we know abused someone because that someone said so, maybe at great personal cost, maybe with no positive protection of the law.
Keeping silent about predators gives them freedom to continue to abuse.
So here, a name–
My adopted son is short, overweight, ginger, born February of 1994. Last I heard he worked at the automotive center at a Walmart in Kansas City, KS. His name is Charles Allen Lee.
He has sexually abused very young children. He has exhibited cruelty toward animals. He can be very persuasive and does not tell the whole truth.
And if you asked him about me? If you ask him about me he will tell you I just bring the drama.
And if you ask him about him? He will not tell you the whole truth.
…because the whole truth is…
Devastating.
Looks like deep
Sleep
Draped across the seat
across the bodies of these hungry
Children
Immobilizing poison
Shot into blood vessels, skin
I call to you, no answer
Try to warn you
This venal monster
Hunts then kills its prey
No answer, Sleeping Beauty
Already heroin gone
Who takes apples from strangers in a storm?
Do you believe in ever after?
All the tropes of fairy tales will not save us from
The story of a little girl trapped
In this worst kind
Of nightmare tries to call
for help
Nothing left
As the anatomical apparatus for sound and breath:
Lungs, rib cage, windpipe
Collapses beneath the weight,
The force of blows to this chest,
All alone,
Of the used-to-be
girl.
Carrying Light 