These Drownings Feel Like Baptism

"This far you may come, and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt."

Maybe You have been a little lax with us, forgot to turn the water off.
But everything knows You mean well;
the garden grows regardless of my droughts,
and even the basement flooded apologetically
like a shame-faced child
with wet pants.

Could You be
more gentle? Any more
cruel?

Everything I love, I am afraid of.

How long did my voice go on, and all they were 

were words, were whimpering, were fumbling 

trying to touch You (trying to see through, feeling shapes in the dark,

the door handle, the bedpost, the light switch

    is broken, it must be, You have never been 

cruel to me), 

Or have You? 

Have You.
How can I? I'm sitting at Your table, playing hostess.
"Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?"
Will You take more salad? I made this stew myself.

River deep, can I know You as well as You know me?

I want him to be well. 

This is more than a lot of analogies about pearls and tapestries, 

thorns-in-the-flesh and stigmata. Shake down the stars on us. 

"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?"

Sing in tongues. We sang to her as she lay in a coma, on the bedsheets 

with Hawaiian flowers that my roommate gave to me. 

And there she died today. You can't say You didn't know. 

"Can you loose the cords of Orion?"

I'll tell You everything I want, and before You say no, 

show me that I don't want any of it. 

I want You and more You     and 

                                                            whatever

      You are

the liminal pleasure of not touching.

Eyes closed at the piano, feeling notes, finding chords, that-one-sweet

stirred me -

sustain. . . sustain. . . last just a little longer before

my fingers slip into dissonance and lift quickly 

in pain.

Carry me, Your love is wider than my need could ever be.

These drownings feel like baptism.

---

"'This far you may come, and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt.'" (Job 38:11 NIV)

"Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?" (Job 39:1 NIV)

"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?Can you loose the cords of Orion?" (Job 38:31 NIV)

"River deep, can I know You as well as You know me?" (Jars of Clay, "River Constantine")

"Carry me, Your love is wider than my need could ever be." (ibid.)

Ref. Sufjan Stevens: "I Want To Be Well"