Imagine them as you will but never
Assume your scepticism will make them
Mythological again
In the smoke of our discarded daughters
/commerce of indifference
Shoots craps in crowded rooms
Sweat-palmed cash for common shame
Summon these
Monsters of righteousness
From this fire we
have made of love.
I try to write you
Words of place
Search for ways to make monuments out of sheer
Thermal paper…
Keep your receipts
Each time the shopkeep
Asks us the question
…need your receipt?
Say yes Darling
Take these scraps of who we are
Were, will be
You and me, Baby
This inkless, thermal magic only you
Can make your indelible mark on “we”
Words written on paper
Miraculously appearing with just the fire
Of the friction
Between our fingers
I love them when they snake totemistically through the clouds, smoke before the storm
And when they are filigree-perfect by the pool, along the slender branches of new trees
Skin the same green as the leaves
But when it is the serpent
Climbing vertically toward the sparrowlets,
I cannot either
Turn, ignore
Or observe with the objective skill of a naturalist
intervene
Knowing grace is more than words before a meal
Or a sticker you wear to church on your lapel
Grace is the Hand that
saves the sparrow
Even at the mortal expense
Of the dragon.
thin, dark, pretty girl in the roadside diner
Come away with me…
Crosses by the highway
Words from the language of lost tribes
Speak of both our solitary and communal grief
A crass apparition of the law
Hangs over each of us
Would be angel
Spies the man trudging
along the shoulder
Half-naked
Exile from a violated garden
Fig leaves exchanged
For the skin and blood of
the One who can save us
Along this broken road
We are all
Pilgrims
in my head
I sing off-key
Pick through the rocks
On the steep uphill
Dark of course
Avoid the fruit
They say
I long to look
Behind me
Willing you be there still
As though a woman of no particular gifts
Could summon the missing
With scraps of broken notes
Strung together
After so long waiting
Wild hope
quietly emerges from the crowd
Some unnamed Jewish festival in Jerusalem
Near the Sheep Gate, of course
Where we
Lame, blind, and patently foolish
Lie prone, waiting for angels
Angels and the ghosts of gods
Occasionally
stir the waters
Every plural word written of
our collective loss
Reruns the ambiguity between
Our healing and our disgrace
Clouds in our eyes
We fail to
Drink such strong medicine
Poured out
For us
You want less?
Probably not
Save the sagging bits of self left
Clinging to your soft middle
You want more
More sunshine and more rain
More fame, more privacy
More love, more oxygen in the lungs
Once filled with more
Sing loud, sing more
Full-throated
This four letter word for greatness
Expanding out into
Infinite light
these ordinary words
Hewn from a tree
To the curve of the foot
Or simply endure
Itself a stone, a hard place
To be in the presence of God
As he dips the bread into wine
Supper of blood and agony
Last…
Supper
Day
Glimpse…
Of who we will be
The first and the last
The last shall be
First.
First you must know
The beautiful feat of God.
you deserve
Truth clenched in both hands
For years I have puzzled
How would she know
“The real story?”
The only “mother” she ever knew kept her locked in a tower
Named her after stolen
Salad greens
Tell your twin
Running to Canada was the
line I could not, would not
Cross for love
Unlike a man we both know
Who crossed lines of law and love
Abandoned wife and children
Hid his treasure
Said he could not pay
No fairytale love-
Story for his first wife
Little ones
there are records of these things
The faces of the abandoned are familiar to you now
Unlike your own mother’s
Who they kept from you
Fear and sin will make an ordinary
Monster out of us all.
Sadie’s foster mother told me once-
They are Christians, you know!
Christians do not steal babies
Live lies
Or put their assets in their girlfriends’ names
But how would Rapunzel know that?
She would have to borrow her sisters’
Plaited hair
A ladder to
Set all three free
Then look for the small stones
Of Truth
Scattered along
the long road
Home.
the car crash in slow motion
The snake coiled to strike the child
The mother seeing bad news
In the doctor’s eyes
Some moments are so unforgettably awful
The spirit rises out
Of the body, off to one side
Hovers over the disaster
Snapping shots of all the carnage
A heart just beginning to break
Operates differently than
One far gone into the cave of grief
the last evening you were mine
Was the first time you met
Your new mommy, new daddy
Strangers then
You were delivered back to me
Sleeping I sat with you in my arms
Time folded around us
Everything paused
For our unlikely pieta
I had just enough sense
to stop everything
just to be with you
A little longer
Carrying Light 