What the Ravens Know

The ravens know, and the crows—they rise and go, as frenzied mists,
With talons clinched like fists around a fallen berry or a stolen egg
They steal but never beg
They fly but without fear
And then, as if they’ve heard some song through their flapping wings,
A few among them stop to pause upon a fence post, in strange repose
And a communion that none can name or know

All animals—and angels, I suppose—partake in this solitary parlay
This delay of seeming pointlessness;
They do not think it odd to take a closing glare
To survey the land behind and stare, as if they grieve to go

They look back with conciliation, nearly sighing with acceptance—
Of what I do not know—
And then, just as suddenly, they take wing again
As if a bell has rung
As if the train has come
As if some date needs be kept

Maybe it is their sense of loss, like us,
Who see what was only in the looking back, and what true gold there was to grasp,
Among all the shimmers that invited us—

We who did not know the treasures held right there in our hungry hands
Until we had, at last, to up and go
Into the throes of the inevitable

But surely
We, too, can choose to stand head held high and still before the final bend begins
And Nature will not begrudge us, like them,
A final looking back, as sorrow and regret rise to be beat back
By wings spread in heedless hope, unrestrained,
And a heart that knows the way to go
Into a future not bereft of its own bright gold

Suddenly Awash in Sorrow

Suddenly awash in sorrow
So quickly grimed with dirt and muck, to find that
Grief has ransacked certainty
Has made all the things upon which I built my life, so stolidly,
Suddenly, only impossibility—
Pillaging every easy promise, and a future in which I could trust to know anything

And yet still, this morning
The sunlight was so sweet
And I think I actually saw the trees—
Stood and saw their branches and their buds
As they moved leafless in a cool, quiet breeze
Helping to scatter the cold mists of March

The Bear

I remember still the thrill as the long snout took shape beneath my quaking fingers, which strained to lay things straight 

The wet nose was only partially captured in clumsy charcoal, but a suggestion of light through a bit of page left white—addition by absence—made me feel what Rembrandt must have: utter delight
The shivering wonder of shaping reality enough that some other could see it and know its name—
"Oh, nice bear," they might say,
And I would grin despite every impulse already burgeoning within me, to play things cool and quiet

Letting the world know nothing—
Isn’t this what we call growing up?

To the eyes, too, I added small flecks of white, as our instructor had showed us, and brought everything to light (if not quite to life)
Amazed at what one small glint can do

Standing back, I could not see the bruin’s odd shape—
That his visage was like play dough left to sag too long under its own weight,
A clay vase thrown with lumbering hands
A face that could hardly stand another child's scrutiny

But love, they say, is blind, and
I felt the absence of sight and of distance from anything—a part of everything, I was, suddenly—as if I had drawn a portal and absorbed myself into all time and space, through an act of true creation

Beneath the bear, I signed my name
But left absent the words I was too old to say
I only felt them, keenly, in every ounce of my burgeoning frame:
"I made this"

So I inked the practiced cursive with steady focus belied by nonchalance
A thin line of lip pursed with hidden pretense on my unrevealing face

I stood signing, standing between two worlds
Seeking new ways to draw the future forward
With clear and steady strokes

Packaging the Paintings

Imagine packing and crating the artist's paintings,
Playing the corner edges just slightly, without tweaking the frames, so that they can be shipped across oceans in air-tight cases,

Hazarding their way across salt and ice and the great undulating drifts, a case enclosed in steel and ship
To be opened on a far shore, by immigrant hands grateful for work,
And then sent on by coach and train, across the plains

When they arrive, images of white marble ruins jut from a green garden, under azure skies
And a cobalt storm races down an unnamed coast, above a fishing boat, while
A mountainside teems with wildflowers and a deer looks up, beneath an Alpine hill

Each is to hang above a mantle in a well-appointed house, so that, for a moment,
Those who see the scene have a glimmer of ecstasy—
Their longing stirred up so fiercely that they have to look away

Still,
Soon enough they will all look too quickly, and then not at all
Someday, they will see nothing, as if the painting—by strange alchemy—has become only a wall, and the frame no more than a shape to take up space
So that the place within that wants to stake a claim (in a gracious garden, in a boat, or on mountain slope)
Will not feel anything too deeply, nor be disturbed by too much wanderlust

Soon enough they will see no pigment at all
Will see, only, a filled-space, and no need to further decorate
But their children:
They will come into the study on a cold afternoon when warm, orange light pours profligately through the window,
And they will wonder if such things can be, mouths agape

They will ask if the artist actually saw or created raw, out of pure mind,  
Marveling that such climes might exist,
Calculating what it will take to break their tethered mooring lines and fly to find them
Promising in themselves to never compromise

Imagine encasing such longings in a crate
Imagine discovering that we ourselves are the ship, with paintings full of longing ready to emerge like paint from an artist's tube
Imagine all this packed so deeply inside us
Waiting to be revealed

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

Some Trees Still Stood

Some trees still stood by the brook
Their trunks were secure, despite the September rain that bruised and battered the streambed and all the woods
But they grieved their leaves, as only a smattering remained
Like loafers at a party, disdaining the long ride home

Even the most beautiful refrain must end,
And the same sad song brings us here again, on the last Sunday in October,
For a final walk, in memoriam to all that's been
In the most beautiful of mausoleums, vaulted in cobalt

The river ran louder this afternoon
Or perhaps we only had new ears, perked up—
Grief does help sound to sing
So here we hear more clearly, and feel more deep the sting:
Our best hopes cannot save that which is consigned to earth
And the divine still becomes dirt

But the colors in the orange instant before us,
This red revolt
Speak of never going quietly
Of fearlessly diving,
Of jumping from a rock into water you trust will hold you
Of holding no pennies back, but thrusting fistfuls forward wildly
Forsaking life-savings for the final ride

Then they fly;
To earth, yes,
But first they fly

And as their last act, they promise something which hovers just beyond the ability of words to purchase
They startle like a hummingbird hanging as miracle above a branch
Hanging with unseen wings, for just a moment,
To prophecy of spring

Like One Great Web

My dog shivered at the top of the mountain, in the cold morning before the sunrise
And I held him, just one mammal to another
Our limbic brains connected across that speechless gap, from man to beast

He may not have words, but he, too, laps at the great moon  

Perhaps, in that moment, our hearts in synch, in beats that found a rhythm,
Our breath reflected some communion
And of course beneath our feet, in the forest’s deep sub-floor, an endless network of giving worked itself out, like breath and beats
In harmony—as trees poured light like heat from leaves to sunken roots, through fungal sleeves, into each other—
Yet another act of union to hold dark death at bay:
Trees who, in their own way, breathe and hold each other,
Souls planted in one another

Every time we draw breath, we connect,
And the same air fills every part of us
Perhaps no matter how big the gap, every human (and every being) connects in a great, invisible web—
In the dance we don't have perspective yet to see

I can picture it, blinking like gold,
Its strings lighting up where good is done, and love
While other strands grow weak and turn black, as ink fills the filaments,
Night overtaking light 
Through self-consumption, and deeds that hurt to speak

I wonder what the web would’ve looked like that morning, from the mountain's height

Probably blinking in and out,
In and out,
In the endless dance
In the battle to overcome the haunting fear that, even in the fullest light, we will be left alone
Bereft and unknown, to even the most generous eyes

Longing for some heart, some body to enfold us
Through the shaking cold, to lean down and hold us
To light us up with gold
To mark a larger road
And all paths home

Jesus Wept

I.

We learned it as trivia, “the shortest verse in all of Scripture,” and I suppose that knowing such things can only help and not harm you on the long road to salvation

A funny thing to trivialize—
A man's loss and devastation,
But we were so damn desperate for the mini-candy bars they dangled before us,
Our own lives felt on the line

Besides, it’s what we did:
We rode sacrilege roughshod over every sacred space
Then we called it the way of God, and we embraced how right we were
(As if one can be right about tears)

Meanwhile, the longest human story, told this time with just two words, eluded us,
Unable to haunt us with its morale, message, or warning

But there was a drumbeat beneath
We felt it
A pounding—vanguard of a coming storm
And maybe some part of each of us knew it would break over us, eventually
Asking us to ask the question that questions everything:
How can life cease to be?  

II.

It's forty long and short years past now, and this morning, waking again to push back like cobwebs the dire sense of desolation which so often stands insolent at the foot of my bed, at first breath,
Here in the middle stretch of life, there's not so much strife as the simple knowledge, again and again, that we will die

Life requires an insurance policy, in the end
All that's left and needed now is to see clearly, without distraction

That takes walking in the woods and letting the morning absorb us into the rising slant of sunlight
You grab your stick and put on your hat and notice how the forest sits so still, without asking any questions at all

So we, too, stop asking "why,” and we trivialize nothing 

III.

This morning, outside my window, a white squirrel jumped from branch to line and back,
Its only morning task

Aware and in peace, he seemed, that all things are held by something
(The morning itself, it must be)
As pink light stretched in long strides across the high rise of September clouds

I wept, in a way, as always
But in sudden comfort I was also held

How can such beauty be reality?

We are in God’s own dissolution, surely, as at a graveside
As God weeps for all things
As Christ’s tears wet the still morning, so very dear
As beauty touches grief, and sorrow holds us near

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.

And One Day You'll Be Taken From Me

We sat, on a Christmas Eve, beside our tree
The one our firstborn had been so proud of, for all its green
The same our three-year old cried over, for its lack of leaves
Such is the way of things: it’s hard to make everyone happy

And after they were put to sleep,
Because we could not find the remote, there was no tv,
So instead we read that story from Capote,
'A Christmas Memory'

After our tears,
As you sat on my lap, you said
"And one day you'll be taken from me"

Our dog looked up at us, as if to mark the truth,
And we laughed and I said, "Yes…or you, from me"
And we cried, but not in despair, nor touching all of our tears,
As there was yet work to do—
Cookies and milk to be set out, and presents to be wrapped

Yet sitting there at the folding of the year,
On its nearly longest night, at the very end of things,
At the feast which is like gathering curtains, to let in light,
We sat, pre-mourning
Grieving what, inevitably, is to be

It did not seem indulgent or petulant but, rather good and right
A ritual, even, to crown the night, for
This is the way of all things, strangely:
Joys and sorrows kiss
And there is a holiness—and even bliss—
In letting go

Then, like a wave coming back to shore, new strength pulled us forward
To heave our breath
To feel for light and good, firm ground ahead

To know of death and dying, yes,
But to keep rising
To forsake despair
For the here and now and for the future, and how we’ll need our wits about us
For what is coming quickly:
First the spring,
And then the way of things

Above all, for our children—for three dear hearts who need to see
Strength married to supple awe, merged with quiet fearlessness
And faith that transcends dread, without denying weakness

With sure knowledge, deep within our bones, of second comings—
Of life for the weary and the dead
Of mysteries pursuing us through rain and fog,
A hound barking at our heels, to find us, and lead us home
To the very heart of God

Afternoon Rain

It was such wonderful permission the rain gave us, solicitous and kind,
To sit still, do nothing, and remind ourselves that
Speed would have us rush on past, but in some things only slow is fast

We were unskilled at it, like trying to remember the cadence of a forgotten joke, or the movements of a magic trick
So I stood fumbling awkwardly at the doorway, wondering what to do

But when you invited me to lay down, the blankets brought it all back, and we sat with our backs against the headboard, hearing each raindrop splash

We were commanded to sit and be still, by God himself, that was clear enough,
And in this world where divinity seems a trick of things,
There was only Spirit in that room

In every droplet—booming down with such a magnitude of prophecy
Here and on the storm-swept sea which, four hundred miles away, we could sense and see so coherently, through the rain—
It was also clear that everything was being washed away and cleaned
Here and there and in between

Blackbirds

They never saw me until I was nearly upon them
Then, startled into a sudden poem,
They scattered like birdshot across the sky
Cawing like madmen with clinched fists, guffawing against the injustice of it, as they went
The ravened morning suddenly flying

And all the while, all I wanted was to share the bright, white
Pink morning with them,
And pass them by without a warning

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

Prayer for a Eulogy

That I did not stay a stranger, and
That I did some good on this green earth
That I witnessed, every morning, the virgin birth
And stopped long enough to see the sun rise

That I found the despair beneath all things, and kept looking up
Clinging to the mast until the past, at last, became the past

That I sailed the winter river until the spring
That I broke the addiction to having things
And that I learned to sing, though I had no voice

That I sat beside the lonely ocean and was not scared
That when terrified, I bore up, and bore it well
That I reached out my hands in love, before I fell

So let it be said

That I gave my body—such as it was—broken, for the world
By growing old, and only sometimes hung my head,
That I drank and ate with gratitude, and hiked long trails and
Did not hold in contempt the dirt or dust or other men
And that when I did, I said a prayer to center me in the storm again

And that I learned at last that everything is an act of love, if offered up as such
That simple deeds are atoms of which entire worlds are built

That a tree or the wood or the quiet breeze,
Or the way my dog looked up at me
Were reminders to look up, at last, for love
And that I learned to see all such things, by the end, as clues to some great puzzle,
And markers along the way

That I did my best and strove to bless my dearest hearts
And looked forward to find, to my surprise,
There was no fear of death ahead—
That the fog gave way to warm skies, and orange light,
And a table set
With wine and bread

So You Must Stand Before the Painting

The same you've passed by ten thousand times
On your way to the bathroom or to shower
Or to cry on your knees in your bedroom at the senselessness of things
At the weeping hour
Or, removing your clothes, slowly, thrilling to the possibility of hands knowing you and the hope of being held

You must stand
Before the painting you had no money for and had no business buying and
Saved six months for, never eating out or going to the movies once
The same which you have now not looked at in six full years, except for seeing it as a lack of absence, out of the corner of one eye

You must stand before its pigments and its brushstrokes now and
Notice how they rise around you 
And you must let them fall about you, like a nakedness enfolding you

It will take a good minute before you begin to see
Though you knew it back then, so it will be almost like remembering:
It will dawn on you, slowly, like a winter breeze
Like a sapling from an unintended seed

You can make it down that path, like a mouse running to find warm comfort in the earth
But since you are so out of practice, you must stand before it, first, and learn humility
Then, only after,
Will you be asked to speak

By then, you will know better than to hang words on anything,
And though you’ll have the words for what you knew and know again
You will know more now,
And you will simply see and let things be
Without the need to say a thing

The Call to Prayer, in Early April

There is a moment after I’ve turned on the radio
In the quiet, before the announcer moves us all along into the action
When the crowd claps, and you can hear a stray holler—
someone yelling “peanuts," perhaps—
And that small space of almost-silence, within the crackle of the crowd, becomes a prayer—
An imprecation of something great, just bound to happen
As sure as baseballs will sail the air

They are miles away, on a field in a city sitting prettily by a great roll of water,
And this day is the very hope of spring, with fingers now rubbed warm
This day is us, after the storm
And those watching are, like each of us, always coming home

Between me and all those sitting in that great temple,
Are endless creeks and hills—
Woodlands and hollows and fields
Getting ready to roil in summer heat and August’s pitiless humidity

There are children running, still, after all these years, to a swimming hole, in untethered glee

And places that no foot will ever touch,
In the hidden and unseen sanctuaries of the world, unspoiled

That short snatch of silence holds it all—
The possibility of finding still the sudden surprises which reveal
What we were looking for, all along
So that baseball become more than sport:
Becomes our humanity, and what it means to be, as we rise endlessly in spring

For now, we can pretend that all lives play out happily, if we do not look too closely,
And that the announcer’s voice, breaking the quiet, is God’s own, filling the earth
With the only goodness fit to interrupt it: the crack of a ball and bat

And we can imagine, all around us, spreading out in endless waves,
The next great town, and then the city limits, rolling ever away,
All rising again, to crest until we rise with them,
Our heads unbowed and our eyes open
As we move from here to there—
From hope to hope—
In endless prayer

This Is It

The morning was so enclosed in cold, how could we know that
The farmer’s market was open or that so many brave souls—faithful or loyal or dumb, or perhaps just desperate to sell their wares—would show up there?
When two would have been too many

Yet we chose to keep the faith ourselves and made our way, in our own obeisance (since rituals keep us sane), down the lane and into the inviting smiles, which dutifully hid their own surprise, as we all eyed each other knowingly:
Isn't it plain that we are the wild ones, and that we defy all odds?

It was all we could do to find our steps along the wet earth, though the trees that stood at sentry to usher us through the icy depths
Their own breath, should they find it, would have frozen on the air, no doubt, like mist, and the way their lithe
limbs slendered out unto their ends, encased in frozen water, was like Belle's rose—
All the world perfectly frozen, as a warning to all live things:
To rush today for no thing

Except
I did not see that it was beauty, so fixated on each footfall above the squelching mud, until
I sensed you'd stopped and turning, saw you, as if in worship before an icon or the very Lord of hosts,
That bright invitation of smile on your face, your hand splayed satisfied on your hips, as you said,
"Yeah...this is it"

Turning, I, too, saw the beauty that was already everywhere
As we stopped, while snow fell down
Already there
Already everywhere, in the flood
In the bright gold thread holding the morning together
Warm like fresh-baked bread
The body and the blood

The Apocalypse

I.

All of it shines like gold, enough to fool us, one and all
Since fools we are
But like scratching a surface, only a little pressure reveals the falseness of mere appearance and,
Underneath,
There is no pretense
No smidgen of deceit
There is only human flesh and longing—
Hands stretched out, in hope,
For belonging  

The desire to appear—to seem to be—is contravened by a deeper desire, still,
Which is reality:
The longing to be seen

And since nakedness is a metaphor for something far beyond mere sex
We should not fear to undress 

II.

The message of the Temple,
With its polished marble and sheets of gold
Is that God is contained here, despite the cold 

Yet
Should it go to waste (as of course it will)
It will simply reveal the earth's longest metaphor, amidst the dirt:
That how things look do not signify what's real
And all appearance is rubble waiting for the other foot to fall
"And not one stone will be left on another"

Our job, only, is to wait on the signs that make things real
And point to the inner way of saying, "I am here"
And
"I'm ready to be revealed"

III.

And all will be revealed and, as the mystic said,
“All will be very well”

There will be pain and death and
All manner of things will be well
Like a river which, dried, finds new breadth
Like hungry stomachs filled with bread

Fire can burn or bake
Destroy or make
And need not be feared, if we will face the way
Which reveals any weight which would keep us
From moving forward, into the good, bright day

Inviting us to lay it down,
Like dropping a stone into the bay
So to make our way
Into the bright, good city, surrounded by field and stream and all manner of garden things
The spring to sing

The Moon is a Quiet Messenger

I guess all men and women have retreated, at times, from quiet climes,
And from the bright light of the moon,
To a bar, a brothel, a saloon

A pretty wink, a flash of flesh, a quick drink
Seem so close to what we're looking for
(In the short term of things, at least)

Meanwhile, poets upstairs write of a ghastly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas
And the moon looks down, while in a black-blue vault she sails along

Upstairs or down, we can't tell if she sits in tenderness
Or looks down ruefully,
But tonight
Fireflies beneath, dancing in the trees
Make all things seem to move more slowly
Closer to what we really want—
To earth and to reality

I’m old enough now to know I’m no saint
But I do want to be good, like the moon
Draped graciously across the trees and the night and the whole earth
And making no more the mistake of taking God’s seeming silence for absence
Or the quiet as hard-heartedness
Or goodness as a river we ford, instead of a sea we fall back into

We were too busy crossing from world to world to stop
And hear the swell of crickets
But thank God that you took my hand and led me, again, beneath the moon
While the night clung to good, cold dirt
While the woods rested and the nightbirds worshiped
In the quiet sanctuary of endless goodness,
Where no words at all are needed