Dark Going

Where once there was solid presence
there now is only this dissipating, this retreating...

silently fingering old footholds,
toe-deep, yet somehow grounding;
      repeating once forgotten rhythms,
now remembered.

But still there must be dancing
to the old steps (and trembling)
at the mercy of the familiarity of grief.

I pluck at the same string
to find I’ve still retained the melody:
the one I never wanted, but couldn’t live without;
the notes of unity, a song of empathy
that takes me back,
("back, baby"), back away from the world,
away from normalcy, and into the cloaking shadows.

They say you’re never the same.

But I wonder if we’d never changed...
how would we fly, then? How would we survive
the tumult of the seasons (always changing),
the melody’s unsung lines rearranging themselves
into the simplicity of needing human contact,
a best-and-most-human contract,
to come to the end of ourselves and leap in faith?

Pebble on a Beach

     Even now, months later, my memories of sitting on the beach in Ft. Walton, Florida have a way of enchanting me, calming me. You see, I have been thinking a lot about moments.

     What is it about that particular stretch of clean, crisp, white beach that beckons to my soul, even now? There is something soothing in it, healing, necessary, and soul-achingly honest about that particular environment, that particular moment. 

     For a long while, the moment was wrapped up in tear-filled anticipation, like an unopened gift. I envisioned it, hoped for it, planned on it, hungrily and desperately.

     Then, finally, the moment was revealed in all its tender glory. There it was in its fluid fragility. The moment did not remain, did not slow. The moment did not wait for me to wrap my mind around it. The moment slipped on in that subtle and delicate way that moments tend to do. The moment was not mine to command, but rather was a gift. It was a gift from the sea, and more so from its Creator. 

     And now and forevermore the moment will be tucked neatly in my memory, shimmering and again fragile, sometimes crisp and sometimes as through a darkened glass. 

     Memories are made sacred by our processing of them, relating to them, remembering them again and again. This particular memory- this impression of being there on the beach which had beckoned to my spirit for sometime- brings with it waves of refreshment. It is, more than its accurate self, blossomed into a deeper and more honest self: an impression of stillness, an impression of letting God be Creator, an impression of rest and wonder and glory. 

     I find that I am most my child-self when sitting as a pebble on a long stretch of beach with whose creation I've had nothing to do. I have had no hand in the sculpting of the ocean in its vastness, its power and the respect it demands with each crashing wave upon the shore. I cannot command it. I cannot even begin to understand it. I can study it, glory in it, admire it, fear it. But I? I am just the pebble, a fellow creation who has been gifted with a moment. This gift is a passing, transient, but powerful, moment that continues to shape and cleanse and refresh with each new wave of the remembering. 

     I remember. I savor. I reconcile myself with the majesty of my Creator. I bask. I am still. Meanwhile the beach is still there, sovereign of my thinking, unconscious of my feelings. My Creator God continues to act, to speak, to breathe His will into being, and it is in this powerful knowledge that I find my deepest sense of rest, not merely in my memories, but in the present, here and now, and looking toward an inscrutable future.

New Dragons

I don’t feel that I am good at praying,
but nor do I feel good at getting out of bed,
nor pulling on the tendons, the muscles,
nor bending the arms, nor undressing and washing.

Even the simple, daily ablutions come with effort,
the spirit and body protesting
their tired chorus every step of the way,
the old self objecting to today’s new mercies.

But prayer comes with fiercer objections,
every fiber of my being erecting its pride,
its cynicism, suspicion, and doubt;
prayer comes with ever new dragons to slay,
ever new selfish ambition to lay
prostrate, unto death, unto bended praying knee.

Slow Rise

Somebody once asked me, “What is
the eternal value of baking bread?”
Where is the longevity of the briefest moment?
What is the profit of a moving breath?

The flavors interwoven like delicate threads
Refreshing the air like white eyelet curtains
We close our eyes, we lift our heads.

Here, now,
Waving in the sun-bathed scent of tall grass
And the pastures murmuring with bovine contentment;
The hills clustered together and sprawling apart,
White puff clouds peeling back like a tea towel
To let in sun heat, letting our souls rise,
Slowly, pulling together the flavors of childhood,
Breathing in the aroma of dreams and hope

Here, now,
We sit together and break bread,
Pulling apart at the oneness, stretching out
Empty hands, and filling hungry spirit bellies
For a taste of salvation, a taste of new life again.

Honest Woman

You cannot make it of me,
Nor I of myself, contort and strain
Against my true nature, my brand.
An honest woman cannot be made,

Only broken, confronted, surrendered,
Only by way of bowing down whole self
Reserving nothing, hiding nothing,
That I might find refuge in the cleft.

Refuge from? Self-destruction,
The dishonesty lurking there
Behind seductive corners, beckoning
To taste and glut and evolve

Into a would-be goddess
Whose distempered appetite
Makes her demands for more, ever more,
Forever dissatisfied, forever dishonest.

My heart unkempt, and perhaps hair, too,
I come not strutting but prostrate,
Heart bowed, soul desperate, hands outstretched
To a king, a savior, the only true Maker of honest things.

Plus Lent*

Lent-time hunger
is stirred and swells up
from spirit famine;
leaves chocolate decadence
on thirsting tongue.

“Slow, slower!” cries the soul,
yearning to feast
on eternity’s cadences
of mystery birthed in cosmic
knowledge, known colloquially as, faith.

*pronounced "ploo lahn”, means “slower” in French.

Orient

They say
that there is no need to orient,
to posture, to approach,
to follow or obey;
to prepare a soul

for that homestretch movement
into light and majesty’s domain.

The sacredness of things, they say,
is outdated and overrated,
thumbed down and ignored.

To truly be is to not try;
to become is to bend
self-will, our greatest demigod
into a posture of ignorance,
an irredeemable sin
in a sinless realm.

But I? I am a seeker,
humble sojourner,
knocker, pleader, bent-knee
crawler, prostrate thinker,
prayer-practitioner, reasoning-user;

faith-sword wielding, a counter-rebel
in a rebel’s world; living on the breath
of One from another realm,
following a sacred, incandescent star
in a starless philosopher’s gloaming darkness;

depth-plunging, truth excavator,
a slum-treading soldier sent
to counteract the ugliness
of popularity’s deceptions;

a righteousness slave
to pound the drums of freedom,
to walk in time, preparing a way
to the hallelujah chorus;

no lone crusader,
but one of many, marshaling
one another, our reverent rhythm warring

to push back the heavy veil,
to bring dawn breaking in
a wartime crescendo,
a battle cry of life and sanctification,
then-

Victory will emerge
in a global resurrection
and a universal song.

Selah.