A Birthday in January

Your birthday came upon us as a warm outpost, long awaited, on a long hike
A beacon in our night,
Like the pooling of lamplight or a ship breaking ice

We feasted on cheap sugar, and you opened presents, to celebrate life
Toasting the beauty of you, with sparkling juice, at ten years old

Your mom and I were like a man and woman wandering out into the winter but staying close enough to home, for fear of cold, our bones already worn
But you are rising, as newly born, like a white pink morning after a storm
And you will soon break into the spring of everything
Your song coming as easily as breathing

More and more we ready ourselves by looking ahead,
And find ourselves grateful for any delay, like the breaking of birthday cupcakes, as holy bread

After the party, all five of us braved the cold;
We walked the dark meadow and made of it a museum ramble, after hours
Gawking at the silhouetted trees, covered in kudzu—
A tyrannosaur or dragon beast—
And your brother roared (but quietly, after our warning—for the hour and for our neighbors)

So we honored the silence of the night
Because sound travels so far on the cold,
And sometimes we don't want to make ourselves too big a thing
In quiet, silence, and small postures, we seem to bring the stars closer
And there is a comfort in being overwhelmed in awe
The better to hold close our hands and cling to one another,
Our little tribe

We fidgeted our fingers at the first line of snow,
Aligning our boots with our breath
Then we stepped onto the chaffs of wintered wheat, stripped at harvest
Thinking of how all was full in the spring
And, miracle: will be just so again

The world may not see hidden love which words cannot hope to name
But we are rehearsing resurrection all the same
We are pressing in, daily,
Just as we practice, always, whether we know it or not
The endless letting go

My Daughter in the Heart of Goodness

When my daughter came to the front of the church in mid-August for the blessing of those returning to school,
She piped up, holding up the show, to let the rector know that
She and her brother had already returned and that Monday would, in fact, be their ninth day back

She broke a spell and we all laughed—gratefully, from where I sat
As our humanity echoed against the altar and back
Finding us alive and alert with longing

We need so often,
And often without knowing it,
For sobriety to be cast aside and to find that sudden levity which frees us,

And a little child will lead us

Later, when we read the Lord's Prayer, her voice rose boldly above all others, and I smiled again, praying that all this would last as long as possible:
Her beautiful heedlessness
Her perfect lack of self-awareness, still endlessly innocent—
No taste of fruit upon her lips
Knowing this is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever,
Amen.

If Such Wonders As You Can Be

On some nights it’s easier to read fairy tales than others

On this evening, for example:
Since October is all clad in orange, and ready for the storm—the annual end of days and the blinding gallop to the finish, so that we may begin again,
The words drop so easily from the page

Though we know well there are no fell beasts out the backdoor,
The woods still implore us to believe in dark realities
And there could be trolls and gnomes and creeping things out there, across the street
Beyond that last courageous spray of lamplight

Who knows what lives in the night?
And all good tales—story or fable or parable—come from some true place
So beware
And tonight let’s focus on the unique delight that comes
By shivering and by fright

Still, that's not where my heart is, my dear;
I am too full of other seeing
I am holding on to things truly beyond believing:

Being near you, to tuck you in for restful sleep,
Is to put us both to dream,
Is to believe that angels are real and near and sing
And long, like us, for distant things

Perhaps the moon is made of cheese
Perhaps Santa will bring good gifts this Christmas
Perhaps the cow will jump over the moon
Perhaps the ugly duckling will swoon in the most beautiful of songs

If such wonders as you can be
How can I discount anything?
But rather, find in each tale some blade or root
Amid the swiftly growing grass, which tells all truth

That, in the end,
The most miraculous does come to pass
And the last of our hopes will not harass us
Nor leave us empty handed
Just as goodness will come home to roost at last
And stay long past the witching hour
To hold us fast

So Our Bodies Change

Our bodies change, even if all longing remains, its chorus always the same:
To see and be seen,
To be revealed, and stand without fear
That is all there has been and ever will—
That one sound and strain, in endless refrain
A train that never finds its station

But our bodies cannot withstand the pain of so much longing
The notes flail in their tired frames
So young love cannot remain

But take heart:
If young men did not tire, they would aspire to every prize, with violence in their eyes;
It's a gift that old age teaches humility and lends civility—
When we rightly see our place in things
Our bodies may go, while the earth remains,
And we stay sane

It is all a bridle and bit, when no other work would fit, for the education of the soul
And the body which once longed endlessly for unending eros
Learns contentedness in simple hand-holds

Wedded bliss does not need remain a smoking fire
But makes its way into something new—
A slow-rising Phoenix climbing up newborn cliffs
As its fire sets it free
In pure desire

Bodies will still unite and fly
Searching for that ecstasy that only being seen can bring
But it's something more subtle that fills them now—

This quiet contemplation of the moon before midnight, like
A fish coming into shore
An ocean waiting for the night
A horizon looking for first light
A raven planning the next flight

How Could God

How could God be out there, somewhere, seeing and feeling all this
Like an old man looking down from a tower
And not jump into the battle—
Overturn some tables,
Heal the angry and sick and tired
Strike down the ill-willed
And stand at the grave and say "come forth" and "no more"?

With such suffering, how could God stand still?

 It seems to take long years of unlearning, in suffering,
To start to see
That God slouches, just like you, just like me,
Against the onslaught of things
Shaking his head, bracing his shoulders for the day
Seeing love, holding onto it, desperately, above all things

God rises like the sea
Like the possibility of sunlight on leaves
Making his path among the broken shards of clay, on the painful way
Rising again, to be crucified,
With the breaking of the day

Fingerprints on the Wall

Now I just let the fingerprints sit on the wall
They don't disturb me at all

In the months after we moved in, I had a wet rag at the ready
To fall upon any dirt that should defile that good and creamy white, to defile its light, and
To do away with any dread that I was failing or that we were falling into some early state of disrepair
Ever vigilant, in that vigilance that teeters towards despair

Now
I pass them at ten pm, to climb the stairs
Or I walk by them at noon, to get the mail
And see that oily patina
Which has become holy, in its way:
Touched by three children, as they face the day
Meant, as they are, to leave their mark upon it all
(And why should my wall escape unharmed?)

So I resolve to only see this holiness
Will see it only as a marking of time, as the walls have grown ever so slightly closer to me
As if seeking some message to speak to me

Would that those three would grow as slowly
Before they go

Though it is holy, too
The letting go

Did Every Mystic Have a Dog?

Did every mystic have a dog?
And learn from him or her how to stop flogging themselves, for lust
And to simply love, like God?
Like laying out your belly, with trust, to the world above?

Did they all learn by looking into those eyes
So intent on running wild, but tethered by their need for constancy
For loyalty
And their need, late at night
To come close and lay down, quiet, with tender eyes
And feel the warmth of on the floorboards
And the silence, deep within the darkness
Because it taught them, and us,
That somethings happens deep in us
When we trust
And that all holiness opens
When we love

The Best and Most Beautiful Irony

It is the most beautiful irony—
Of comedy and tragedy—
That this house, which nurses you
This home, which wraps and binds you, to protect you
These hearts which love and hold you so 
Will bid you go
Will send you, in fact
With hopes you find your own self and way, in the bright, good world

Will let you go 
Knowing you are brighter still,
And the world needs the marvel that you are
If it will rise at all from its long slumber 

You will go,
An individual, and no one else's, 
Just your own, to make your way
With fire in your bones, the world to know
Yet connected, yes and always,
To these roots which held you and bid you grow
Which sent you, as the day sends morning light and follows night 
As the sun rises
As the moon sends sea tides

And as the dandelion sends its seeds
And lets them go without knowing where they will land or grow
Or what their life will be
And so grieves
And also,
Feels the joy of all things, 
Rising through the dirt
The joy of earth
In every longing tree and leaf

There’s No Relationship Until You’ve Fought

He was always good and just fine and no problem, almost all the time
But the problem was she wanted something more and real
She wanted problems, something she could feel 
Like hard lime she could push up against and climb;
She did not fear the falling down,
She wanted miles up, above the ground

The great paradox of love 
Is that it's safe only when it allows no safe space
It can be a platform to hold the world's great weight
But first you have to burn it down:
There is no relationship without conflict
And conversation is, always, the relationship 
It only goes as far as the next true thing we will not say 

So, there's no trust until it's earned, in flames 
And until you've moved into that place of grace— 
That place of conflagration and flames— 
You are just trading information about your days

You must become, instead, like two climbers finding, in tandem, perfect balance
Dangling above the frightening space below 
Only then do you look up and know
You've never seen a view so glorious
You're terrified, perhaps, and afraid of dying
But my God you're so alive, and smiling 

There is always this possibility, inviting you:
Start with the ending 
Perhaps it will become a new beginning
Burn it down and see what survives
Maybe you'll still be standing

And when you hold hands, after the conflagration,
The Phoenix will be in your chest, burning like fire in your breast
Your bodies thrumming not with the sexiness of youth (which is always fading, anyway) 
But something much deeper down, and stronger, beneath the dirt

You become 
The very longing of the earth, hard as rocks and mountains
And dappled, like April rain
Sun, and rock, and blades of grass
All in conflict
All in perfect conversation  
Creating every perfect season
Alive in endless resurrection

After the Accident

What she was she is no longer
And yet she is not gone

Though not the same, certainly, 
It's hard to name or say what makes it so,
When subtle changes re-arrange a personality
What is a self, exactly?
What can go? What must remain? 

There is joy and there is loss, like gold and dross:
As we attempt to grasp in hands which once knew how to hold her
We gasp at the cost 
And the risk we all take in inhabiting human frames

Altered as she is, it feels an end
Our hearts quake 
Our own bodies begin to shake
But so they do when we put out to sea
Or gape at beauty: 
As seeing a seabird on perfect wings,
So we breathe

We breathe and hold and let it go
Like letting ourselves into the autumn sea
Like swans washed out by too much morning light
Like trees, holding ourselves imperceptibly 
Or fog on the mountains, the sun slowly burning through us,
Until we see

That we can only do this together
That is the gift of broken things
It takes many hands holding each other to make things whole 
And though what was is gone
We are here, and we are with her, still
We hold her, come night or dawn

As we walk out
From the lonely forests of our solitary ways
Into this new clearing space
Reality takes on a different shape
And we marvel at the beauty of all these faces around us
Brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers
Wondering why, like hermits, we lived so many years
So very far from one another 

Some Bright Soul

It was a strange place for a beacon 
That light 
That burned in the backyard all night, breaking apart the darkness

It was a strange X on a map, to mark
Nothing more than the backside of a house, some grass, a broken down truck

A passing crow or kite might find respite there, a rest from flight
But last night, a storm struck and knocked the whole yard senseless;
Like a boxer, defenseless, in pummeling cloud and rain and darkness
The black of night filling every nook

Our whole house shook, 
But then I looked out the window and saw that light cutting through the rain, as the seas, insane, could not stamp it out
A lighthouse, as on the coast of Maine 
Holding down our world
Keeping us tethered to the earth

So the dirt was turned to light
The storm was pushed away 
And this, always, is the way:
Some soul holds back the night 
Some soul faces the rain and does not blink, but 
Takes the dark ink of night and re-writes it 

Someone will not let the light go 
Someone sees the storm, stands up, and says, without a raised voice,
Just one word:
"No"

Charlotte, Jumping from the Rock

She must have stood for ten minutes on that high step of stone, alone 
While all the trees were so patient, as if to put her at her ease
And nothing stirred, not the sky the rock the breeze 
As she stood, trying to breathe, her body close to shivering in fear, which she pressed down 

The rock she stood on, asleep for ages and eons, slept on still
And though rockets launched within us, we mimicked that rock with our own bodies, still as the water
So as not to startle our little girl
Our beautiful one who, her body tensed, 
Balanced between two worlds: who I am and who I could be 
She struggled with all creation to let go of that fixed rock, that high place, that sure standing ground
Looking down, wondering what would hold her, should she let go 

Always, this is the pattern:
We stand on rocks in the wilderness wondering about the journey, should we let go

If you are blessed, there are loved ones close, to love you
But there are times when even they can't touch or hold you
And you know, somehow within yourself, it's for your good
We come in company, but there are times we must make the pass alone
Into that gap which, this time, is simply the wide swath of air just in front, and below 
The water which will thrill our bodies, freezing us with all the cold we will not even feel or know

Because we did it
We leapt
We let go

So our daughter soared through the air—more beautiful than a heron 
And rose from those waters like a fiery Phoenix, full of grace
A smile, so well-earned, upon her lovely face 

Now All the Words About God Become Smaller

Now all the words about God become smaller

They shrink away like the edge of day 
To a point on the horizon, 
They fade away

I want to hide them, like treasures in a cupboard, that no eye despise them,
Trusting the right time again to find them
I want to secret them away
Until that day

I want to hide them like my own nakedness, truth be told,
But not for shame 
Because, rather: preciousness is made profane
In the plethora of many voices, all around,
Proclaiming the way of God with endless sound
As if we should put up a sign and charge $29.99 
To sneak a peak at the Divine

And all these “prophets” speak with such rabid certainty,
As if their faith is doubtless
When we know
That great souls reveal the hidden path, covered in dust,
Only through great doubt, 
And the great cloud of unknowing 
Through which all saints must pass

Only in unknowing can you walk a path of trust, 
Faith demands not knowing, and the courage that says, 
"Still, I'll go"

Faith speaks with a still and quiet voice
Faith seldom roars 
Faith often smiles with subtle mirth,
Like Mona Lisa,
While speaking not a word

The New Earth, Again

I will miss the sound of striking matches and the crackle and cackle of wood 
As fire blots out dark skies
Death, in miniature, as night is, once again 
Defeated by light 

I will miss, too, stepping into pink morning as the bright infuses, like mischievous ink, the night
A promise and a prophecy that, whatever pain lies below, God knows 
Our grief and sorrow, 
And cares for our relief
And knows our grief, and how it grows 
He does not retreat, though we are waiting
And faint beyond belief 

By then, though, having almost fallen
I hope to be rising like a hawk on wings of wind, into colors that never end
Adjusting to those hues, not looking away, never more ashamed

The flames of heaven, they say, are hotter than any fiery flame or fiend of hell
And truth to tell, they’re just the same, seen in different ways, in the same place or places 

Still, there must be the mundane, unburning 
As we come back to here, knowing it well for the first time, the earth renewed
Holy things will reappear that we will, once again, grow accustomed to
Just as we did as children, the wonder of new eyes growing calm as days go on and on 

And yet, all will somehow remain beyond 
Beyond common, never growing old 
The smell of love walking boldly into a room
The scent of tobacco, wafting from a beloved box
The noise of a cello, 
The honking of a flock of geese 
Stirring hearts to pain with sudden beauty
And sudden relief 
Which we will remember—both the beauty and the pain 
Because
The promise is not the end of tears but their merciful wiping away,
And with it, fear

After all, how will we know love without pain?
How can we be comforted but in loneliness
As when someone, into our darkness,
Speaks our name 

A Prophecy of Mourning

On the long timeline of life 
We will someday remember: there was a time when grandpa came to live nearby, 
Moving in with his daughter, your parents, my in-laws
And this remembrance will give us pause 

As we think about his death, and how he lived and died 
We will remember that smile which said, "I’ve been beat down by life”
And the eyes that questioned, “Surely all this longing cannot be denied?"
That smile, those eyes were like Oliver, pleading, “Please, God, I’d like some more”
And surmising that there was no more sustenance and no more time 
No stairway to heaven to climb

One of us, then, will comment on how he loved going to the putting green
And traded stocks in the afternoon, and lost his money
Defrauded and left bereft by cold souls who prey on the old, both thief and victim groping for some rope to hold
And we will talk of
How he loved sand and sun and beach, beneath blue sky
How he’d talk of water and start to sigh 

These remembrances will have some gravity, the weight of something beyond which we can just begin to name,
But we won’t stay too long in them, sensing the pain
So the orbit of our thoughts will pause before we let them pass 
As we realize—not with words, but with an intuition too deep down to hold—that we have no words at all to hang on the sadder mysteries of life
Which ended in grandpa, at his close, with strife and yet, no more strength to fight 
A good life which sought some safe harbor and did not, we think, find much clear water

This we will mourn, and the world will turn
And one of us will look up at the sky and ask where we should eat
And we’ll numb our losses with wine and meat
For this will remain the way of things
And it will be pleasing, though incomplete
Like waves and like the sea

That Green Summer

There was a poetry that summer that I had no words for
With its need to work, to earn
And the lust to do nothing but sit, as the world turned
To burn through those three months like the sun, before school began again 

We worked as lawn men, mowing grass
And between us passed a great poetry, walking on quiet feet, cat-like,
As I learned without words to speak something felt and not seen—
How the world fits together
All the parts working, in cities and towns
To make the merry-round go ‘round:
The buying of gas
The loading of trucks
The cutting of grass
For what?

For little kingdoms and dominions to survey before the day fades
Wherein sit kings and queens eager for a lucky play that falls their way
(Though, of course, it rarely does)
And in their waiting, they miss the consolation 
Because what you get instead is an orange sunset and the smell of cut lawns and constellations spinning endlessly as the day grows long 
And the far off longing to be “gone” or “there” is revealed, at the end, to be deception,
Since what we get, ever and only, is here and now

We tasted the drink of longing that grinds us down, in the end
But which first befriends you and makes of you a god, too young to touch the ground
As the fruit of the tree, still ripe, like morning rises, awakening and singing in you its song
As if the branches could only, ever rise
As if the sky could only promise and provide undying freedom

Little did I know then that we already knew the secret:
All that matters, in the end, is friendship 
And someone to enjoy sweet, hard work with 
And the quiet passing of poetry that knows you before you know it 

Black Jesus

The first time I encountered Black Jesus was above the Mass Avenue Baptist Church soup kitchen
I was sent to do some errand and passed through the sanctuary, where I met him on a huge canvas, above the pulpit, baptizing souls lost and found, his dark skin so different from the white Jesuses I grew up with

Of course, Jesus was a Jew, and I realized we all want a Jesus to look like me and less like you
But Black Jesus met me in some other part of my soul, where I had been long in waiting, as in a room, tapping my feet, knowing there was someone yet to meet

His eyes, piercing, invited me
And I sat in the cavernous sanctuary for an hour that winter afternoon
On long blue pews worn down by so many souls sighing in the longing to find something beyond a vague
sense of love:
A scent specific as fire 
A look as knowing as a lovers' desire
Something we’d not only live but die for

Love, always specific, in flesh and bone, is why I believe, after all:
Love cannot be other than eyes and skin
Not an idea but a hand, to open a door and let you in, and say your name

A mouth, too, denying difference, saying “All is the same”
But revealing, too, that all is resolutely different 
To humble you, to help you fall 
Which is the only way you gain your sight
And just enough light 
To see anything at all 

To Be Caught Between Desires

My daughter nearly wept as I stepped out the door 
Unsure whether she should stay or come with me 
And I was only going down the street, to do an errand 
But she could not decide—to come with me or stay inside, with mom

I remember being torn by such desires
When, to young hearts, such choices seem the stuff of destiny, of kings and queens and squires

O, you are fully alive, my child, and still in that holy space before we embrace a lesser flame, tapering down our heart’s long burning wick, to cure its lovesick ways
To be alive and feel as you do, hard struck by the world’s strange beauty, your soul blown open by the wind 
To take and taste your tears and not despise a one of them

I hope you learn this trick (I want to teach you it and learn it new myself),
For I can remember, my love, what it’s like to have your heart so confused, 
Balanced on the spires of competing desires, each earnestly entreating you, 
You, soft and pure and open, befuddled by the need to refuse any pure thing
You, learning what it is to choose, and confused by life's sharp sting

The truth is, I hope you will keep weeping, in courses more broad and more mature, in keeping with your age,
That you become a sage of feeling
Always retaining and maintaining your grand capacity to feel, 
Even as you learn to steel yourself against harsh winds, that still you’ll let stiff breezes in 

That you take in every scrape of the world and the joy of every bee and butterfly 
This is my prayer for you, my child, 
As you become a high-wire walk over green gardens, and streets where the passerby looks up at you, so high above the ground and never looking down 
The clouds white in your eyes, their light shining as the other side draws ever closer in their view 
Your hazel irises still wet but shining
Above a wise and happy smile

What God Wants (Pear Cycle III)

What God wanted for all those medieval kings and peasants and all peoples of the earth
Was the ripeness of a perfect pear 
Or a tomato redolent in red 
Or an apple whose good skin when cracked was temptation unto besetting sin 
So close to holy love is carnal lust, when it cloys our deepest sense

But you and I just ate better than any medieval king, my love
Or Senator of ancient Rome
With wine unmarked by bitter earth 
And fruit unfettered by assaulting herbs

And as sure as moon pulls at the earth, you’re my sea of deepest mirth
My far away journey, my return to home
Your lips, your laugh, your smile, your breasts,
You kiss of God’s bright love, 
You crown my head which is always shaking in wonder
Because
This ecstasy before us could be chalky dust:
If you don’t have love, the food of gods is not enough

But
Sitting across from you, how high the moon shines down
And how deep the swallow dives into our cups
As we sit so close to what God’s own self wants 
And is always giving endlessly 

Love 
Whose alchemy turns the gifts of earth 
To gold, of so much dust and dirt

Before I Go, to All the Books I’ve Read

I believe on the day I die all the books I’ve read will rise 
To thank me, and I them
We’ll shake hands in a long line, and spend a quiet time wide-eyed, with lips pursed to hold down all that is inside us
And before some of them I’ll pause, a sad and knowing smile on my face, and I’ll touch their spine, 
For some, that will be enough, but to others I’ll whisper something just loud enough for them alone to hear
They’ll laugh and cry in that sacred mix of powerlessness and love and letting go
And each will hand to me a stem of fruit in different shapes
Pears and apples, oranges and grapes
Before I come down to the ocean water and the waves which will take me home

I will try to screw my tears down then, but if they come, so be it
Then I’ll nod my head and look up the beach
And perhaps, a unicorn or stag will appear, breaking up the sand as it runs towards it freedom—and it may all be real, for by then I’ll be seeing clear through to the other side

But before I go, of course, I’ll walk the fruit back to that fabled tree and place it on the branches
The tree will receive it, suckling it back onto its breast to hang there 
Until someone soon after me plucks it and drink its juice down to their young roots

Then, I’ll swim into those clear cold waters, my breath leaving me, and all the words and worlds will fade behind, as I come to the place beyond them, 
Where there is only sight and sound and once again, like a babe new born in the bright blue world, all is light 
To this place where all the books—when they stumbled into truth—were pointing us:
This place so full of You 
With ears now opened and the song of my eyes quiet, filled and full,
With all I never knew

I Cried During a Superhero Movie

I cried during a superhero movie, and then I smiled, because on the screen a green giant stood by a talking tree
Kudos—they had denied the fantasy and defied that part of me that keeps its guard up
And it is marvelous, truly:
The many forms of human imagination that grace us in these strange days
As we project outside us, on screens, all the things inside us
In forms which dance and prance for us so that we can see without being sighted
Which, sure, is why I go to movies—to partake in the clash of light and dark
Safely and without a scratch  

I suppose I could drive home from the theatre on the freeway at 95 miles per hour and pretend I had some epic deed to attend to, but
It’s lying beside you 
And the smiling faces that will greet us, pure as sunlight and unscathed by this hard life, 
So full of so much love, 
Which bathes everything in a flood of light
And sets the scene for this script of meaning, as if we’re filmed on every side 
(Maybe angels watch us, just as we watch movies)

The hope of tomorrow invites me to walk deliberately— 
As if some bit of eternity depends on me, and some small universe to save 
One as dear to me as any
Their faces and yours I hold ever before me
And I can only hope, as I mind my speed,
That all these small steps lead to a destiny and form the orchestra of a great symphony
A soundtrack not heard by many ears nor adulated crowds 
But heard by theirs and yours
As it echoes now across our world
And into some future place where our galaxy, indeed, is saved
A place full of light, and leave the capes
What graces us is a long embrace— 

The unseen future after the credits crawl
The hardest work of all, the work of peace when there’s no grand battle to distract us 
The work of tending frail and fragile human hearts
The work of feeding heroes, who grow into giants, like trees and gods,
With strong hearts, full of love, that guard us all

The Week After Christmas

There are still cars rushing about the streets, but for this week
We can pretend the world is resting with us
It’s not a holy hush—we’re no longer naive enough for that
But there is something holy in it, sure
Like Mary after labor and Joseph, sore from the road and from so much hope (for hope is so very hard to hold):
Before grazing in the fields of dream, they gaze content as the baby sleeps
They pause and breathe

And here we are nestled in a tiny corner of calendar, good for breathing, 
Where everyone at last says, “Good view, but that was a hard climb”
We nod our heads without saying a word
We all know it’s hard, and no one expects we should move on too soon, 
With time to remove pebbles from our shoes, we sit and rest,
Sensing this is what life should always be—
Time to move slowly, which means time to see 

Or we walk, with no place in view
And find, down by the theater, beneath the neon that bathes us in simpler times, 
That the sun is a perfect haze of sunset, orange and blue and gray 

It’s a metaphor, perhaps, that all will merge back into one:
The earth will be reborn in fire, without divisions of moon and earth and sky 
You'll open the door, then, on that day, and the whole sky will pour into you, and every color, for the sea, too, has passed away, and every pretense with it,
As evening succumbs to day

I felt some of that when you opened the door—
The air was cold and cool and perfect, as the earth tilts now on its axis, indifferent for this long moment, lending us time to take stock
I oblige him:
I take stock of your figure and your frame
The aspect of your face, 
Your head-shaking smile, fixing my soul in faith
And I know as I know my own name that somehow, in that future place, all these glories are preserved, too, by God’s good grace

After all, it is this night, just past heaven’s first appearing
That we’ll remember fifty years from now
Not the morning of Christ’s birth— 
No, I will remember how we held each other and found rest for the next good climb
As angels kept singing, “Peace on earth”

The Orbit of You

When you passed me, as the party petered out into its sad drunkenness, like a meteor losing light,
I was caught in the wondrous orbit of your yellow dress, with that fringe of red to match the auburn of your hair, and the smile that was only friendliness opening worlds within me

Time and space became nothing in my brain 
A thin fog, an oozing sense of electricity, as if I were the first to reach up and touch the mystery  
I wanted the moment to never unhand me
To stretch on into blind eternity
To shake me down for every coin and piece of lint inside my sad pockets 

But these moments pass, and so you passed into the kitchen carrying that unwieldly tray of marzipan, exiting like a Greek goddess, the door swinging swung shut to sew in the glory of you (and the perfect lines of your long waist) 
In the dust of ordinary life, at an ordinary time—such are all theophanies

But I have not been able to pass through any space purely
Always breaking the newel post or the last rung of the fence, 
Dropping mud into a clean tankard of champagne
My soiled hands, much as I've tried to keep them clean,
Mussing up the dearest dreams of me
And breaking things along the way

Still
I feel hope at the perfect kindness of your lines, your eyes, and that sweet smile, 
Hope in second birth
In a cleaning, down by the river side
Of desire finally finding the star that guides it true
And pulls up from the earth of me the best parts, that God has long been so patient with,
As stars are patient with the earth

Driving with My Daughter, at Sunset, in a New Place

The sky is a saddle on the horizon
And my daughter is fighting sleep in the back seat as we drive through hills formed so long ago that you just have to ignore how small we are in the expanse of things
That we are kings, rather—now glad explorers newly finding this ring of road,
Blazing trails on pavement

The stars blink on, revealing the void always there, the never-ending night
The ocean we always sail, the sky,
As we chase the purple clouds of sunset,
The orange leather of last light

She is new to this world (give or take four years), pure and perfect
She doesn’t have the words yet, even in waking day,
To say full what she thinks (of course, what year ever grants us that, complete?)
And what she feels is still a churning sea, a geyser, a quiet lake
Always being discovered, sometimes surprising her
All this water in the world, around and in and through us

You can see the look on her face when she has no words
Like tensile hands just learning to touch
Trying to pick a grain of sand from dust

Before the end of this day’s world, and before words,
In the embrace of a hilltop on which we pause, as on a crest of wave,
Before speeding gladly down into the bottom, where the night is formed more fully—
More sure the dark there, and pure
Together, we have no words, just wonder
As the next hill looms before us like a great, breaking wave
Of perfect quiet

No Poems Today I

I have no poem in me today

I’m aware it’s either ironic or lying that I’m writing
But sometimes the soul just needs to say, "I’ve got nothing,"
And learn that it’s okay

The sun will come up again tomorrow
And lean into us with rays, like words, that warm
To help us realize, it’s never much about us, anyway
Just the dance of light jumping between every living being
And, come to it, every rock and dust and slumbered thing
Which still write a few words, in their quiet, and throws them, like paper into flames,
Into the dance of fire
Where what’s burned, crossing through, is refined, reproved, renewed
And stands there, across the river, a fully formed Phoenix
In the world to come

No Poems Today II

I guess the fear is we know someday, it won’t
The sun, I mean—come up and all that

But for now, my friend has left town, and my birthday's gone,
And I spent so much energy running around, my soul has pooped out and said, “enough”
Like a jalopy on route 66
We are like circles which, running into happiness, running into sorrow, grow tired and
have to sit once again before the great silence

But then, "Don’t try to wring from me any words," my soul said,
Your brain will judge them all as trite, if you try
And you know the drill:  
You’ll think what you find is never true, that your young energy just deceives you

I don’t have a poem in me, though they remain all around,
I must simply sit and say, "the waves come in, the waves come out
Let’s hope a new tide rolls about"
(See, that rhymed
...I tried)

No Poems Today III

A good substitute for truth is rhythm and a line in time and two words
That stare at each other, from across a line
But this moment won’t yield to cheap tricks

After all, I had a moment which now I can’t remember
Can’t recall with rhymes, like a magician calling a hidden card forth,
But it was poetry

If I can just find and pull the string of it, like a line of hankies from my sleeve,
I could write a poem
But all I can remember is, it was something about how you laughed and smiled
And shook your head while you read your book, a world being born inside your brain,
And me standing in the doorway, an unseen shadow, shaking my head and smiling in my turn
A world turning, like a kaleidoscope, inside me 

Hard Candy

I bought six boxes of my favorite candies—
Hard coffee toffee that tastes like Christmas and childhood
Figuring that their presence,
There in the basket by the pantry,
Would fancy my delight after each hard daylight

Men used to come home and curse Kennedy or Nixon and pour a Scotch
It’s something close to that
To take the edge off|
But they just sat there, untouched
As calendar pages dropped one by one in a long film noir montage, through the seasons

When I came back to them, they had soured, gone soft
And I ended up trying to freeze them back to life before throwing them out
All rubbish

Then, at Christmas,
My sweet wife got me a small package of the same, nestled into the toe-nook of my stocking
And like a Phoenix rising,
They tasted, one by one, like bliss incarnate, bedeviling senses
A bite-sized shell of soul-song

I don’t know what it all means, but I’m quite sure there’s a parable or a poem somewhere inside this story, like a soft caramel center

Storehouses don’t always please the soul
It’s not the having, it’s the letting go
Delight is a dish best served slow

A Girl I Once Knew

There was a girl, lived just up this road
Pumphouse, named to hearken back a century,
Before so much iron made things spin,
And they used instead the wood and water of this forest
Which hides, now, the long path to her house
Or, more likely, where she used to live—  

For surely a new family lives there, and she’s moved on
And that is part of the mystery of changing rooms like we change days
The residue, though…that’s always the same
The filmy wash of love and longing, and so much pain
On hearts and windows

We never dated, never touched, but
Dear my, the lust of those brown eyes
“Chestnut," “mahogany," “coffee" and such
If they were written in rhyme
On some love-note inscribed
"Dark eyes piercing their own mysteries
and piercing mine" 
The tall longing to be known, a sunflower breaching sky
And strawberries, her skin
Grown warm in our Alabama sun

Her mother died and there was tragedy
She might as well be a maiden or her lady’s waiting maid
From some sod-trodden century now romanticized
The hardship of rock and mud forgotten

It’s all the same, after all—the same longing, whatever the time
And whoever owns the skin that contains within it
The taste of strawberry
Its scent wafting on the wind, still
Wading through so many years

A Circus Memory

I remembered, when my son came to my bed
Still stumbling up from his nap, just awake
That you took me to a circus

I don’t know why
I haven’t thought of it in years and was, in fact, surprised to find any memory of it,
Let alone something so pristine and clear, like a photograph dusted off, but
There it was, a file suddenly found

I was focused on the subtlety and smallness of his breaths, minutely filling the minutes,
When suddenly I saw the great green hall of the civic center,
The concrete once swept clean now filling with popcorn and peanuts and sunflower seeds
And in my hand a yellow fan they’d handed out, advertising a dealership, cross town,
As children bounded in and sat down in the delicious dark, waiting for the start

It had been raining—a good storm, too
So we were wet, which was part of the fun:
To step from storm into a place where the soul heaves away from sad shores,
For just a moment even, to remove itself,
To be restored in those tents
And in the centuries of trains traveling cross country, long before the show was contained in the big rigs which rumble now, with such melancholy, into town

I don’t know why I remember it, except perhaps that you loved me in it
In-between the crazy of our family and the broken glass of pain,
The ruthless love was there, rooting me
And I stand amazed—or sit or lie, as the case may be—at how deep and strong the love goes, covering (as they say) a multitude of misses,
Like ink which colors the whole pot of water

And my son, my son
His face without lines,
His life the very meaning of miracle
With such a heart to hold so much love:
Wordlessly he crawled up the sheets and lay down, smiling sleepily to find me here
And I tried not to move, still as a lion
As he slid beneath the big tent of my arms

Arms poised to hold, and also aware, already
Of letting go
Because that’s how love goes—
The tender breath of it so subtle
Though it builds worlds and holds us, through the storm

Origami

Love is like a child folding origami
Always for the first time

She discovers, slowly,
Crease by create,
The paper 

Animals at the Door

I can't untangle my daughter’s necklace, so I stand
Hidden in the hall
Before the door,
While they wait for me,
The honking of the horn imminent as a charge of bulls

First I must wrestle it from my headphones
Like a huntsman prying open the mouth of a bear

A small bear, but bear is bear
And the hunter is flooded with frustration that flags his agile fingers:
He wasn’t expecting anything but a bright orange sunrise on his way to the day’s work

It’s not urgent; I could just lay it down ‘til evening
But as I think of my daughter’s face
It just seems like such an important catch
A fisherman hauling in the day’s first big prize

A Birthday Poem, For My Wife

Words are such wonderful things
Winging all around us
Giving us shapes to play in
To put our thoughts and hearts in
To make worlds that spin in infinity

How strange then
They can fail so fast
Falling, utterly helpless
Shrugging and sighing
Dropping the box they were carrying
And calling it a day

They’ve seen the writing on the wall,
Poor things
Set such a labor
They have no friends or well-dressed cousins
Could describe your air
The sunlight on your hair
The way you hold those you love
The way you grieve and weep and care
And return, always, with such hope

No, I can’t blame them
I join with them
I sit with them and sigh
And watch the long, slow slant of sunlight
Catch your silhouette
And marvel at how apt the silence lays
So still across the yard

I Love the Spectacular Song of Your Heart

I love the spectacular song of your heart,
My love
And still, there is some music it hurts too much to hear in full
So sometimes I turn away from you
And take the melody in small bursts that, all the more, make be breathless
And in this way there's some feeling
That I won't be swept away, like sand

I’m like a child stealing the song of a seashell for the first time
Over and over
I pull it in close and hear the sound then, marveling,
Pull it away
And give myself to time and wonder and to awe
Before pulling it close again