Monday, February 27, 2012

Orvieto I


In Your Passion You embraced us:
What pain to know
That I cannot be crucified
With arms folded.


I.

We do not exist until we give. And so,
I knew I
was
when
I played the old tunes
of my bedroom and the woods,
in the stirring air of the
Terrazza.

Your love blew me into corners, billowing my clothes and making a
fantastic fool of me.

Still too stunned for weeping, a single drop chilled on
my cheek.
Trembling at the knees. Hardly knowing the blaze of my own smile.
Am I like this?

Can the world be really so
beautiful…
Can I know what I do not own?

Only when,
Then.


II.

If I could only wind myself around one spiral of Your house, fold myself in one cleft of Your walls. I would stay there content for the rest of my life. To trust Your love is gentle as the February sun, no less true because unusually kind. God does no thing in halves. And I must choose. And I will choose – to let You in, with dripping hands, a wildly beating heart, an urge to dance.
And I said, undivided love is true romance.


III.

Know only “grazie” and say it a thousand times. If I could know but one word,
let me know Your Name. So strange
to find the word that sustains the weary in a different same: Gesu.
Gesu, mio amore e speranza.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Wings

I heard the swift call as I watched
The ease with which it flew:
You dream of wings, while I would wish
To be a maiden true.

Friday, February 10, 2012

I Am Here

I am nestled in my blankets with the fresh and heavy dampness of my hair
around me,
Hearing the refrigerator hum, and the ticking of the pink-rimmed clock that I've had almost for as long as I can remember.
So those old memories pulse like the colors in my closed eyes,
And tingle faintly, like the numbing roughness of my singed tongue --
How I used to scribble in my notebooks,
                                                  I am here
And longed to be remembered for each moment as I lived it. God, put this in Your photo album, tuck it in Your pocket. Let me just say I recognize I am. Right now.
And tell me how You savor days like candy in the corner of Your mouth, for the long ride home.

Maybe I desire because I can't understand, or maybe very transience is beauty.
Maybe I just want to know that I can be delighted in, as I delight in You, this wonder.
One thing is clear: time is only lengthened by points of meaning.

Even in Laughter...

Where Jupiter and Janus embrace: in a two-faced jollity.