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.

XXVI

Perfect as lentils soaking, each round pebble
Bathed where the water laps, drifts against the current gently.

There juniper exudes a pungent meady scent, and the wood birds are wiser
Than their cultivated brothers. Warbler and thrush have darkly glinting eyes,
And are never startled.
They know these trees, this stream, like their own voices.

And in this heavy bearded wood there are more loamy secrets,
Where spiky pine blankets the condescending lumps of fallen trees.
There a blunderer may find himself in dreams of a peculiar kind,
When light and desire conspire to draw him deeper
Into the forest's pleroma,
And except he is a fool, he will not know it.

There moves the forest's guardian, all draped.
He is the earthy and the intoxicating spirit of this place.
In shape he frustrates any illustration, complete is he,
And any portrait makes his parts absurdity, for he is beauty.

Any eye that sees him finds its deepest fear and dearest joy,
The wanderer is rested in his soul, the hunter rankled,
The lover spoiled of any cheapening love.
Here, in this fecund stillness
Is the utter soul of worlds.

Dido's Lament

When I am laid, am laid in earth...

Visions throng the morning's birth,
Dreams clasp my hand before I rise from rest


...No trouble, no trouble in thy breast.

Consoled me Love, and then caressed
Me Truth, more gentle than the truth is wont to be


Remember me, remember me...

I loved his shadow, verily -
There is no bitterness


...But, ah!

I loved a shadow, verily.




Credits: Italics, "Dido and Aeneas" by Henry Purcell.
J.R.R. Tolkien.
Jesus.

A Debilitating Strength

I tend to take small directives seriously, moving obstacles out of pathways. Perhaps someone blind or absent-minded will come by. I never know, and so a stone sticks in my conscience like shrapnel until I turn back and kick it into the brush by the road.


I wrap a bit of glass in a lamb's ear; carry it in my coat pocket. Those who protect others will be protected.


I can't stand to smell the doubts of others. I must swallow them, and be sickened when my love is not enough. Feeding a child with dysentery. 


But there are some words I forget, so familiar etched in the backs of my hands. My few scars are faint, but clear enough to show that I've known pain. And perhaps I've made an idol of my buckled, rustling pages, but they melt heavy on my tongue, earthy and leaden like rain. 


So maybe your brother died. And you feel to blame for silence. So maybe you wake each morning guilty for your daughter, keeping her in sagging dim hotels. If I can't make it whole, let me help you make it evenly broken. 


No one believes you. And I want to. I know that I've felt more than breezes on my spine. Those white things you see are begging you silently for peace...and your eyes, selfless and helplessly seeing, crumble soft like glowing embers. A sound like breath on powder, in the burning orange.


Maybe I can comfort when... 
And try to extend some solace... 


It is getting cold. But I am still barefoot.

In Trutina

Lucy and Schröder in a cardboard box,
Herman and his dogs,
Neanderthals.

Andy Warhol offers me saltwater taffy under the barn door.
Will the absurdity of this moment induce me to succumb?
Yellow hay is strewn around his shoes.

Quivering in balance,
Between pungent printed pages and a bundle of letters, wrapped in diaphanous white, from four and a quarter years of patience.

Wrapped in blinding white,
I will carry a rock in each hand,
And climb this fragrant summit,
Damp in the scents of myrrh, cinnamon, cane, and cassia.


"In Trutina": Carl Orff

Dancer in the Dark

It was a blessed film over my eyes, enough to make me crumble,
Or make me cry.
I had to pause last night before I broke what was thinning inside.
But I danced in the dark and prepared my heart for today. For what always makes me girlishly tired and afraid, meek and white and smiling.

Lying still and trying to forget the only thing I feel while all the rest of me is calm:
A pinch, a chill,
Spreading from the top of my taped right hand toward my elbow. Dripping,
a tube. I close my eyes and image myself tearing at the cords that feel so foreign,
Attached to what should be whole flesh.
But I breathe deeply again. How like a child I feel.
Mother, gazing out the kitchen window, washing dishes,
Papa, sealing envelopes downstairs.
There could be soup and cornbread on the table in an hour. I'm only resting
In bed.


This gown is a humbler of humanity.
I am glad though, that it's flannel, and long, and large enough to fold around.
Powder-blue dancing triangles on a white background.
I feel more like a princess somehow. No show, I'm just myself.
I'm in a space made by cream curtains. The woman to my right is giving answers to a nurse. She takes a pill once a year for her skin condition. She considers vitamins solid food. She isn't anorexic anymore.
Humanity. The man who laughed when asked if he had piercings or tattoos (saying, What, at my age?!) is trundled by, grinning, with a weathered patchy face.
Quiet.


It takes a while before they are ready. I am wheeled along with all my attachments, but hardly remember.
Drowsy even before I was drugged, I smiled over my chin
At my doctor in the hallway.
Cheryl (or Cynthia, perhaps?) wore purple. Diane wore pink.
Cynthia. Diane. Did I laugh inside to think of those romantic names?
Hyacinth Claire. Cordelia Fitzgerald...
We played the game of making conversation before I went under. But I started with thin shoots of oxygen that smelled like a new shower curtain. I turned on my side, a white towel under my left cheek.
Rembrandt and the Dutch Masters...
(Vermeer)...
We have a print downstairs. He looks older, and broken, but really a man..
Are you feeling it yet?
Yes.
And I made sure to murmur his name as the last on my lips
Before sleeping.
Jesus.



Credits: Names,"Hyacinth Claire": Elizabeth Gaskell, "Cordelia Fitzgerald": L.M. Montgomery. 

Two Coins

My lips aren't close enough,
My mouth, my throat, my ribcage...
-I'm wishing it was safe to sleep outside-
...I cannot swallow this into my
Heart.


1.
You tuck my arm in yours, fondly,
And guide me firmly through a crowd I can almost see -
Stifling in a different way.
I smiled, surprised to realize I might have been afraid.


2.
It was the naturallest thing in the world, the way you slowly recognized me, smiled. Our talk was smooth as the awkward unpolished good can be. But it ended just as naturally, reached its fresh end, and left me wishing differently.  What I meant to be a gift became a trade, and a gift the other way. You gave me more before I could object. You left, and I could not help feeling cut out from a catalogue, posing softly by the corner until you returned.
Conscious affectation of unselfconsciousness. Relaxation. Shuffle again.


You have your mother's eyes, your father's face,
And a strange way of being brother, ever loving everyone
In a way that I have yet to understand, without mistakes. 


Rejoice with me, I have found my almost-idol under the table
In the dark, groping over a filmy floor and squinting down sideways so a ray might glint on the surface.
It was vouchsafed, and by a gracious grace. The shadow on the stairs went down.
What You grant I will take, only not my will, but Thine.


I am left in the frost with two warm coins.
What do you live for?
All these songs have been heard before. What will make them live?
When there is nothing new to say, say what is.

Draw Me A Picture of This Kind of Fine

With you, it's like being continually in love with the world.
Are these the eyes that you see with?
You love the light of the morning, the deep dark arms of the night,
The steam in your cup of tea, the texture of tree bark.
Are we blind in love? Or is it then that we finally see
The truest true of things?

Let me only walk awhile with you so the sound of wind's fondlings makes up our silence.

You baptize your hands in a bucket of hot soapy rags. You are quiet and alive as morning sunlight.
You speed along streets as a bringer of peace, on your bike.
You write music in lamplit corners while the rest of us sleep.
You come back later to make sure I'm alright.

Let us breathe deep the delicate scents of time,
To remember later when we are grown too old for journeys,
And can only remember life.

The Ends

Sometimes I can trace to the ends of my hair,
To younger years, when I danced with my blanket wrapped around my back,
When I asked for stories from outside bathroom doors.

Today I read aloud from the other side of a shower curtain,
And I danced in the edges of a pond reflecting the moon,
With a shawl around my shoulders, my feet plashing softly.

The shadows of trees tell me I am old,
And the moon tells me more:
I am not wrong to love and be drawn,
Maidenly, to aspire to tender hopes.

A Saturday Without Gravity

When you asked me to be your mother, I didn't know how,
Except by carrying you longer
And letting you down.

To your sister I have been daughter, mother, father, lover;
Chef, and beast, and dressmaker.
Later I'll be wife, after waiting draws more than side-glances
Or startling stares through glass.

I wonder if the stories I tell you are my own,
If I'm waiting to be plunged into water.
It took death to make her love, love to make her live,
Life to make her feet ache on ground.

She's tied to twenty-two silken threads to keep from floating away.
I'm tied to my own apron strings.

Old Poems

Libraries

Jesus met me in the library.

I was afraid to go into the aisle where the bearded man was.

He was wearing a bright green shirt.

I was afraid to listen to my friend

Or to take the time to tell her how I really felt.

The girl with brown hair,

Who wasn’t really there,

Was there in my dream.

I was unafraid, and Jesus’ name broke the silence

As I proclaimed it and praised it in the parking lot -

Who He is: the Holy One, the Savior.

Why can’t I, don’t I, yell it in real life?

Why am I so careful to hide from others, that I hide it from myself?

Why don’t we die from forgetfulness?

Why do we forget that the universe is controlled

By God?

Why am I knotted inside?

Jesus, Jesus, the Holy One, the Savior.

The only name that should be yelled

In libraries.

If This is Learning Love

Keeper of my heart,

I want so much to be loved

By what I love

I want what I love

To love me

I want what I love

To love me.

Keeper of my soul’s keys

You must know what I mean

Isn’t all You’ve known with us

Wanting to be loved

By what You love,

Wanting to be loved

By what You love?

On the Heights

Hold me by my right hand

And take my fear away

Guide me with Your gentle words

And lead me in Your way

For what desire have I on earth?

There is nothing here but Thee

For You have called me your loved one

And set my spirit free.

Hide and Seek

Where are You hiding?

Are You hiding?

I am faint

For want of You.

One moment I am glad,

For Your hem brushes against me as You

Walk by

And I am warmed and

Comforted.

But now I have become

Cold,

And sadness settles on me like dew.

It is as if I see You

Only to lose sight of You again,

And to doubt whether it was really You

At all,

Since the emptiness remains.

You have passed by me

And the breath has left my lungs

To cling to You

So that I will not breathe again

Until I find You.

Branded

Come to us

Brand our backs with your Name

And the pain will draw us out of this complacency

These lies, this inconstancy.

Our hearts will flame and burn for You

All fear will fade

And love be true.

Draw us out of this numbness, this death

The truth is what we long for,

For passion, purpose, and for love

And righteousness…

Oh, for righteousness.

To battle like a warrior

To wash feet like a servant

To give You all we have

And find You gave us more in return.

So come to us

Come to us

Jesus.

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