A Plentid Day

A wren, under a Maxfield Parrish midnight sky,

Breathed on beatifically by the wild sea breeze,

And bathed in the glow of a half-bright, bridal moon,

Very silent, very shy.

Brown birds wear a bold face, smoke gold pipes, dwell in cedar houses.

Imagined inadequacy bleeds into reality.

Autumn and the call of wild geese are far ahead, and may not come with September. 

I have never loved summer until today.

Did I forget to follow the lavender, the rose, the two-day’s four-hundred-sixty-seven stella doras in their full-out happy, happy, love of being alive? Did I lose delight in blue? I want the eighteen sailboats in one patch of cove, the litter of visitors on the rocks, to mean as much to me as stillness and the cleanliness of all that is not human. 

You win me over, you love that I thought I had understood, that I wanted to deserve, that I feared that I could lose by being honest.

An irritatingly bad haircut. Reminds me of my pride, and so I am able to listen. I may be comfortable cold, but I decide.

Charles Wesley, Charles Wallace, the 9^th of 150 copies, thimbled cheeks, a honeyed right ear healing.

Paint, each stroke and line the longing of an unmet desire, a waiting, a patience, a pulling out of stiffened wooden drawers, and so blank paper.

But I have sweat and warm breath that fogs up the window.

I'll let violin complaints explain my spirit to a listening heaven. I still want to dance on the floor. 

The astounding turnip is imprinted with my fingertips.

I'll sweep under the table in the morning.

One

Is this what it means to become one with someone?

I’ve spent the last three hours observing the bridge of your nose, the way it bends and curves like a wave, a cliff, a dune of sand; the tautness of your skin, the color of it, and the faint pulse of blue that shows transparent underneath. I feel I could spend my whole life in this, this learning to know and understand you, to be you in some intangible way that I myself do not even understand. 

How the placement of your ear - just so - and the breaks and dips and angles of your jaw and neck, how it moves me to tears. When you incline your head to the side, I am caught in the poetry of your movement, the intense and sacred power of your humanity, your presence, your beauty. Why did I never see like this before? Does it take loving to see this?

A Real Old Church

Come, eat this bread with me. Take my humble hand and let us pray.
Don't come dressed as a lady; come as you are. My father will turn over in his grave, and you will join the circle of those who love much, because they have been forgiven much.
Smile at the sticky baby. Sing loudly because everyone means it; even the words don't matter.
Remember the sins of your youth, let your tongue slide over them, wipe them on the white paper napkin.
Tell your friends.
"Receive the blood of Christ, shed for you."

If I May Consider

If I may consider this only a long sleep,
Than I may have hope for a waking.

But if this mist will not be blown by wind
Or steamed by sun
Or battered by a pattering of rain,

Then I must fall, nesh as a lamb, into the lap of the earth.
And forget my dreams of climbing
In dreams of burrowing. 

Get Up From Your Bed of Powdered Ice

Get up from your bed of powdered ice

You produce of the island, stretched lean and pruned in Pensacola,

Pressed down, shaken, and released in Pennsylvania.

Get up from your dreams of carrying your Mother

Who first began to carry you in Texas

And listen to your sister whisper “church yourself” in sleep.

Shake off your sore, your lame, your heavy lashes longing for the sea.

Feel the sunrise in your tired bones,

Refuse the flutter, but feel the sap of spring. 

4:42 AM, November 21, 2010

Who is committing suicide tonight?

Or why else was I aroused to stir my bed of four hours

To pace the halls, to the see the children safe asleep, as an “anxious mother full of anxious love”?

Hall lights greeted me like an ill-timed rooster, bright and brazen then as they would be twelve hours later. “If a man loudly blesses his neighbor early in the morning…”

But this is no curse, this wakefulness, this restlessness.

It bespeaks of a thinning skin, a Ghost, and a responsive heart.

Glad to be assured, I glided back. Not to bed, but to be aware beneath a desk lamp, on a leather chair.

A few short days, and I myself will be hovered over, will lay my head on living-room pillows with the properties of peaches, wet cornstarch, and alligator hide.

Then I’ll be inside the arms that taught these arms the embrace they now are known for by my friends.

There I’ll smell fresh bread, the must of a barren chimney, the clean hot steam of the dishwasher as he hums during his morning shower.

There I’ll be at once aware of both my roots and my new limbs, and will marvel how both grow together so that I will not topple.

So here, as a mist-swathed moon glances over her shoulder in reluctant farewell,

I wonder who first owned this stolen hour, and how I may return it with impunity.

Quotes:

"Oliver James," Fleet Foxes

Proverbs 27:14, NIV

Orison

Gut me from navel to neck, 

And fill the cavity with love.

Gouge out my eyes and replace them with orbs

That perceive as well as see.

Slough off the skin of my fingers and face

That I may better feel Your discipline 

And more tenderly administer Your grace.