Alll goood thiiings cooome frooom You (September 6)

Only friend. It's You. I can never,
never find solace or comfort or strength
or real confidence anywhere else. Counterfeits,
yes, but not the reality. Yours is so
real I am afraid of it. Could it really be
that You are all I need? And that I can always fling
myself on You and it is enough, and sometimes
I don't even need to try?

It is so, so easy to be lured off track. Or drag my feet. Oh Jesus,
how willing and meek You were. You did not grasp at power,
at praise, at wealth - did not coerce love. Teach me Your ways.
Please help me to trust You with my mind - to remind me
of the important things, to make me a good loveress,
a good lioness.
Awake, awake, awaken me. 

September

Birds blew in today
      from the north somewhere,
           beating the air, looking newborn in our wet backyard.

Summer falls back, hushing,
hissing from the barefoot rain of September

and the chanting of crickets, yellowing leaves of squash.
Damp grass, thickets of clover, Queen Anne's lace are browning slowly,

sugared at the veins.

I'm sick with love, with sin, with cynicism -
too quick, made rash from waiting. Longing.
Blessing with the passion of a curse,
through gritted teeth.

Katie, later this will all make sense.
I called you, fattened you like a pig and plugged your ears,
closed your eyes. I sucked you dry. I took back but I gave back,
I carried you, sent you songs in the night. Peeled back the blinds.
Do not be frightened:
pummel Me, swear, claim no pride in all your "I have never"s - you have.
You have nothing,  you are also being stripped. This, the greater gift.
I consign you to disobedience, and mercy. I have you.
Listen to Me: I love you.

            Cowbird, bluebird, nuthatch,
         northern flicker,
     chickadee,
sparrow,

fall.

---

Bad Hair Day

Today:
another day that
clothes don't feel right.

I'm
Human, unrefined
daughter of Eve,

itching for Eden. 

Eating a fried egg from the hot

skillet, bending over the stove. 

Food dives down my throat
unthanked, untasted.

This is what we call
a "bad hair day"; another way of making
excuses for our gap teeth, muffin top,
athlete's foot
and halitosis.
Our
sluggish hands and reedy voices,
post nasal drip.

Did You feel like this? So painfully
un-suffering, unready, pasted on?

With all I am, I need You.
Work with this.

Prayer, August 17

Help me really come before You, Son of God.
Me with my dirty fingers, scattered mind, polluted intentions.
Sift through all this with me. I can't do everything. I certainly can't
do everything right now. But I know You want me to come to You
with everything. To submit to Your will.

I was reminded this week that harmony with You is the only beauty.
It is not some oddball, screech-to-a-stop-at-life, stunted attempt.
It is tapping into the sap, the lifeblood of the universe. It is drinking deep
each moment with a prayer of praise,
whether dressed in heavy skirts or naked in water.
It is allowing emotion, obeying honor, choosing love.


---

Letter, August 1

I wonder what you are doing today. Isn't each day rather miraculous?
Does it ever make you weak in the knees?
I'm not really sure what all this means, gym class and magazines and marriage...
what can be let go, and what is irreducible?
What is love when you don't feel it, and you just chug obediently
along the track because it's there?
Maybe you are tired of me asking questions. I'm not sure of myself sometimes...
am I actually steady? I seem pretty flighty, to me. I hop up in the middle
of writing you to answer my phone, take pressed flowers out
from between books.
They are delphiniums. I quite like them. It's relieving to find flowers I like;
lately I've been wondering if I like flowers very much at all.
They seem rather illusory and taunting, like the smell of a neighbor's BBQ.

We can't do justice to any of this.
Sometimes I forget to try anyway.
Will you really find me extraordinary and delicious? Will I find you so?
Or will we spend years resolving to make peace with a fluctuating image,
misaligned printing - the cyan, magenta, and yellow bleeding off the edges
where they shouldn't?
Will I be as boorish and perverse with you as I am with myself?
Will you teach me gentleness and manners?
Lord God, help me to be honest. To laugh and mean it.
I'm tired. I've been well fed, and I'm hungry for hunger. Want a little more of the unavoidable acquiescence of fasting.
Jesus, we call on You under our breath, and with our eyes open,
and with fingers on skin. Come, bridegroom.

---

Iraq (every pair of eyes is overwhelming)

Nazarene

you're calling me

until you can 

see my cheekbones

you can see, you can see my

neck bones

none of this oh, oh,

none of this is OK, 

no

every drop from your mouth, every drop

let me catch it on my tongue

this milk my very marrow, many many times before I tried to chew up

more than I could bite or swallow

kissed the bark until the leaves dropped off 

your face's planes, your plain face something pure 

if not eternal, what? wipe out the bowl, that grin off your face,

that levity around water

are you crisping up by the heater? or grown warm?

you man-of-war,

you're boring holes, I can't hold this, 

I can't hold on, O mother, 

Daddy, lift me down 

I climbed so high 

I couldn't see the ground

and every pair of eyes 

is overwhelming.

Supermoon

Swing low, swing high
whistle, howl, hoot beside
me at the full moon with your chains flying,
brother, laughing helplessly and too loud to be
reasonable. Was creation ever
meant to be taken indifferently,
of habit? A tooth-flossing duty, or a cough
and a gasp like vodka?
Far be it from me
(it is ever so close),
to blink at heaven
scooping down and whipping up
our heels, our hair, our hearts in hallelujah.


---