I told myself I would
Swim the coldest days
Knowing the river runs
Warmer than the air making it
Rise in Holy Ghost waves
I turn to watch the tide
Tell me you remember
Every day you stayed with me
When all the cool kids
Left town
She once gave me a raft of hand-me down clothes.
Of good quality, and competent craftsmanship
But off somehow
I tried to alter them
To make them
Something a young woman could find comfort in
But this has never been a story about
Young women finding comfort
From what is cast off and
given away
The little boy in the picture wore the most adorable overalls
And brand-spanking-new shoes
He approached the chicken in the unfamiliar garden
With the utmost deference,
The pears still hung on the trees, each carefully wrapped in old newspapers to shield them from pestilence
An unseasonably warm day to worship one’s ancestors and
The food at the restaurant was good
Something about historically accurate food
In the last few moments before
The two little red-headed children
Reported
All they saw–aggressor-accomplice-victim
The little boy in the picture wore the most adorable overalls
He walks into every room looking for someone who might comprehend
what it is
he has seen and heard
He weighs their solemn waiting-room-faces
Do they have
Better memories now? Do they still need to write things down or
Know every word by heart?
Are all the lambs among them and
can we see their scars?
Who can end this waiting
By calling us out
Out into life
It would be an ordinary basking day for the spiny and the green
Lizards who sun on the rocks and the fences
We would beat the palms of our hands on the opacity of windows
Before we opened them to warn off
night so late that morning is just a nap’s distance
Away
The fans would beat their wings
Now while we can
Let us forsake
all our wasted days.
John 12:2-3 NIV
[2] Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. [3] Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
What do you or I know about spikenard? It is named for a place or places, it grows in the Himalayas, it came from afar, a pint would have been a fortune, an amount of almost incomprehensible treasure.
I say almost because Mary knew what she was doing.
The incomprehensible treasure was the Man at the table.
This scene so similar to the earlier one–
Martha served
And Lazarus was at the table
Only we know now, what Mary knew then–
He is the perfume that fills the house
Dead raised to life, his life for mine,
Nothing will ever
Be the same
As you well know, I have been trying to focus on the presence of signifiers–the feral blender noises the dogs make when they are behind the dark door–the way the clouds pool and furl in beautiful splendor–let us say our daily prayers
Swap the signifiers
Killer clouds for beautiful dogs
This savage world/all ripped to pieces
While the light of one ordinary star is enough to
Remind me
Just how good you are
At holding on to me
All the same.
What happened to me, that in a moment of gargantuan hubris, I smudged it out? So what if it lived in the books or the play things? So what if it preferred the damp and closeted nocturne?
The moment before it was a glinty, wriggling alive
Then it was just an undoable regret
A life I should not have taken
We all have them–
Our ghosts, the ones we wish we could
Bring back whole
A parade of The Returned–
Uriah, John the Baptist, Stephen, Joan of Arc
Leaping and unfettered procession
Amidst the boundless sea of
The Redeemed
these trees of life
I could be a quark or an hurtling star,
A duck or a chicken
Living on one side of a beat-up plank fence
With knots in it, and scooped out holes
Signifying they all used to be trees
and the fence and the yard and the girl are just
Another kind of spaceship
Prone to sunset
Nothing can stop the Splendor from breaking through
Every hole in the fence.
I pretend the river is bottomless because I cannot see it to the end
Because, so blue
when I come up for air she asks–does it get all of its color from the sky?
Hold this
river in your cupped hands
Until night falls on us all
Carrying Light 