The woman should be dressed in black, the color of mourning, sure, but also the color of the charcoal outline of her once too solid flesh turning quickly into whatever charcoal is made of, burnt things, carbon, dust to dust…the man the groom the former love turns to choices made willingly in digital time, ushering in darkness through every door, every window
Their home now
They are….home now.
Isaiah 41:14 NIV
[14] Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob, little Israel, do not fear, for I myself will help you,” declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
Badass Isaiah walks naked through the streets of Jerusalem, stopping occasionally for a tuna sandwich and thinking about clothes. Clothes of the invisible God. Clothes of the kinsman-redeemer. Clothes eventually gambled away at the foot of an impossible Cross.
Who trades a God for a worm? Who does that?
A fisherman, I guess.
Luke 5:10-11
Over my shoulder I hear the PBS lady tell my sons about blizzards, how they are just snow storms unless the wind is strong and fast. Here in Texas we have driving rain, not driven snow, and it is the percussive light which wakes the dogs in the night. Poised for a fight. Hurricanes have the eyes of Quint’s soulless sharks as they roll across the landscape of childhood and wakefulness I will momentarily regret the home I left in fear. Regret what I did not leave there. Regret what I did, but not the winds. The winds around the eye, the deceptively calm eye, of every storm that changes the landscape
Of who we once were.
This started as a break up but ended with old friend, Wakefulness here in the dark, in the storm
It was a dark and stormy night! But it was the dogs that kept me up
Dogs of the past
Dogs of war
That dog whose name* I can’t remember who re-enacted classics like The Prince and the Pauper.
When names and sleep elude you, there are sheep. They start out chalky, outlined, and two dimensional, but they elaborate
In depth, complexity, and general fluffiness, but also about the weather, dogs barking at night, and all the ways it was and wasn’t my fault this chance we took hurt so much.
*Wishbone
The weirdest thing how brave not knowing makes you. Not knowing the crash. Not knowing the presence of wrong. Not knowing the feral son has been a monster all along. He will not turn into a real boy instead he will be ever-so-carefully excised from the picture of the ordinary house, where trees have grown a rampart around all
who survive him.
He stands on the margin between the alley, and the volleyball court, next to the forest green electrical box, his very own robot buddy. After all these years I am shocked to notice him there, poised for intergalactic exploration, his left-most meter either an appendage or alien oculus, the rusting rectangular metal box on his back full of wires, maybe space snacks as well, photos of the wife he left a long time ago and the kids who have all grown so much as all around him–light, either from some alien star or our own, winter light, middle clime, splendor, in this ordinary place.
There have always been problems with The Cat in the Hat-
One day he reads the story with his older sister. When he gets to the part about Thing One and Thing Two he has a few horrified questions. Who are they? Why do they live in a box? Do they ever get to see their mother? Why does the Cat/protagonist/ersatz guardian keep them in a box?!
His questions are so good and true and terrible and she cannot really answer them adequately. When she tries he says, in grief and anguish–but they are children, little children!
In the picture they took of you we strain to see your numbers, strain to see your faces. Look for something, someone to tell us it will all be ok.
As the last few lines of this children’s story
Indict us all.
Something about Elvis impersonators, well-fed dogs, and raffles for them rattles around my head–keep asking myself what what can I give them? What can I do? When you were born I was still in college, George HW was president, both Princess Diana and Mother Theresa were still alive.
So many years of hunger.
I wish I could make it all better, like one of those chubby, diminutive fairy godmothers–change the immutable curse into a deep slumber, when you wake up
Wipe away all the tears from your eyes
Prepare a table just for you,
Things any decent mom would do…
Psalm 146:7 NIV
[7] He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free,
She storms in the kitchen finding bits of things to stop her mouth, wish it could stop the words spilling out. How could so many well-dressed people have their heads so firmly wedged up their
Freezing asses?
Fists should swing toward imaginary foes while the real ones all live among us, work at Walmart, never liked that effing little dog.
Everyday drawn to the water where the white birds fly so low they seem to touch the silk-spun current which wants a body to believe it is blue-constant even though we both know this is just a trick of light, just-reflect-the-sky-vigilance, the clouds, the trees, occasional sun hold still across the surface until the wind kicks up little waves, waves above the deep, deep color of something technically translucent if you were to cup it in your hands, if you could cup it in your hands, if hands could hold the sea.
Carrying Light 