forgive me for that day in September when I wrapped you in a Mao-green papoose
Indescribable light
I understand we are only metaphors
Allegories
Parables
For feral mother love
Howl at the moon
Stalk the night forest
Accost the brothers Grimm
With the spindle-pierced grief
Through sinew and heart
I held on as long as I could
Then looked for you on each horizon
She-wolf helpless
Caught in the trap
Of human law
I am familiar with stolen
Children stolen names
Borrowed children stolen names
Borrowed stolen beautiful
Girl metonymy
Is when you
Become a face in a crowd
The crowd then becoming
You in every face
I have looked
You in every
Looked
Have
I
No.
Can’t do that or you will lose
Her you never truly
Had
Only a name
Crumpled broken paper fluttering down from the blown-apart skyscrapers which once defined our empire
Mushroom clouded elephantine weight falls to its knees
Compressed neutron star mother
Heart the size of a sugar cube
Weight of 300 million
Cars
On my chest
As I walk through the dark
Singing off-key these borrowed breakup songs
Fierce to the teeth
Lost until I know
You will be
Safe.
haunts me with her gray
Soul, robbed of light
Too young to ever choose this
She is a ghost
Who in all other aspects
Resembles me–
Breastplate taken in battle.
Which is why I see your face before
Me always
The iron bars invisible to all but
We two
Jailed by men with carved out hearts
I carry you, darling
Close to my own
Beg the God of air and light
To teach us how
To fly
Away from the shadows
Where ordinary humans claw and devour
All but unaware
They have bartered their own
Nearly extinguished
Eternal selves
For shreds of ashen dung
if you are
Obsessed with light
Then the darkness will stalk you
Apex predator night
Until you
Strike the first match
Chemical explosion
So small you might discount it
Unless…
I told you
This was a two-part answer
Ironically framed
By the disembodied voice
Selling cars in the next room
It’s like calling
A cathedral
A room with four walls
And a ceiling
Huh…
I think as I finish
Stuffing variegated laundry
Into the high efficiency machine
That is true
You my darling
Are no mere room
With four walls and a ceiling
You are a cathedral
And should be treated as such
Tear down this temple
And I will raise it again in three
Days
He said
Evoking all
The foundations in the womb
Baby pictures and toothy grins
Girls whose smiles light up the room
Do not be content to be
Measured the way a man will
Span an ordinary room
Know instead
It takes a lifetime and a fortune
To raise the extraordinary
Cathedral
Flying buttresses
Stained glass windows
Columns and impossible
Arches
All to the altar
Rising incense
Gaze of the Infinite
God
Paul raises the question
(He says
You asked of me)
What does she think of me?
And while
I would prefer
To tell you
Face to lovely
Face
I will give you two concurrent answers
Simple one first-
My beautiful
Daughter my
Beautiful daughter
My beautiful daughter
Beautiful.
Daughter.
My…
Infinitely beautiful girl
lately I have begun to speculate
About the geographical location of
Peter in the hours of the crucifixion
Because I am a coward too
I want to say I would be
At the foot of the cross
But my feeble heart
Suggests otherwise
Snacking perhaps
On ancient Aramaic Oreos
In some forgotten corner of
The praetorium
During the inexplicable hours of
darkness
I would slide my helpless hands
Along this cavernous darkness/
The wound in his exposed chest
Grief an animal
Grasping for crumbs
In the dark heart of the world
The sermon was solid, but my attention was caught by the cross behind the pulpit.
Resin? About 5 feet tall? With a base set on wheels for handy transport.
I have always wondered if Jesus had been hung in a noose or electrocuted would we have made the noose or the chair an easy talisman around our necks?
We cannot afford to think that the cross is a light and movable thing.
Jesus’ cross was massive, heavy, and blood-soaked because I am a sinner. I have to run the horror straight back to me or I run the risk of not taking it personally.
If I don’t take it personally I don’t mourn.
If I don’t take it personally I lose my hunger for justice and my debt to grace.
We all search for love stories. And many of us find them in the cheap trinkets of small gods and egoism–no love there at all.
But for a man to give his life for his friend?
And to be that friend….
I love wakeboarding. I do it everyday–I wakeboard too much.
Most days I am proud to be a wakeboarder. Last Saturday I was not. Last Saturday I saw a side of wakeboard culture that did not showcase the full potential of the beautiful young women in the contest.
Women who wakeboard.
These beautiful young women were given no forum for their skills in a tough action sport, but they were encouraged to define themselves according to the barest number of centimeters used to cover their rear ends.
Or not.
All the women who made it past the first round were wearing a style of bikini which deliberately exposes the buttocks.
And after that I could not watch.
I would like to direct the rest of this letter to any action sport sponsors who marginalized women athletes:
Because I am deep in the sport, this hurts me. I know you. I own products you sell. I don’t want to associate your brand with the exploitation of women.
Wakeboarding is still a young sport. We still have time to change this.
Women can add so much to this sport–on the water, throwing spins, hitting rails, in the kind of clothes it actually takes to be brave.
I beg you to consider putting your sponsorship clout into women in wakeboarding, not women in sexually compromising positions.
update:
This post had a first stronger iteration which I modified after the owners of the wake park told me that I would have to apologize to one of them in order to allow my family to enter Points Chase National Competition.
I apologized. They competed.
More bad stuff happened….and I no longer can say that I wakeboard almost every day with enthusiasm.
I am no longer able to separate the degradation and shame of what happened at the bikini contest with the lovely process of riding a sliver of wood and fiberglass at 19 miles an hour.
It takes hundreds, maybe thousands of people to look the other way (or in this case stare voraciously) as human beings are exposed and humiliated.
I am not proud of any of it
I am not proud of “us”
The wakeboarders who let it happen.
i will stay with you forever
No matter what you
say or do
I will see you as a baby
Despite your sin and stink or view
I will never bring up “maybe”
When you ask me if I do
Love you here forever
When you have squandered like a fool
All the treasure I have never
Ceased to give to you
No act of yours can sever
The strength of love renewed
Dearest heart, eternal child
My one and always you.
Carrying Light 