confessio, spring 2006

Love, undistracted, would add up to:

not undressing You
not the inward smile turned into exemplary sneer
not letting loose one single, wild
Thought
of being the measure of all things
or of wallowing in thick self-loathing.
(but I have, and have offended)

not misnaming Them
not the ill-timed blurting of a verdict too soon reached
not baptizing with an ardent
Word
the kiss that leaves to count its silver,
and dangle in asphyxiating fault.
(but I have, and have offended)

not cutting Her off
not the heedless swipe of plastic, the guzzling of gas
not parading for notice the
Deed
which for Love should go untrumpeted...
but I have, and have offended
by what I have
Done
and left
(the devotion of dishwashing and rinsing the sink
the letter to the editor
the yellow post-it thanks for sharing this room
the silent praise for a gold-grey sunrise
the willing suspension of huff and hearing Him out
the question that sues for research)
Undone.

highway, spring 2006

I have seen the highway
drawn up short
near the sidewalk
to plod
past horses with iron-ringed mouths
the grey courthouse in the shade,
the creak of front porch swings, peeling white
and the buzz of the barber shop.
Then, with a snort,
and a head-toss toward the last red light
it takes to the turf,
a full gallop--
where the green overgrows its fences,
driving in waves
toward unbolted blue and gold.

verge, spring 2003

a drop of water
stares out
from shower wall:
translucent iris
penetrating,
fixed fast on me
while others slip down,
drop their gaze.

say profundity
is a single
droplet, stretched
full to the brim
with light pictures
compressed
and hanging
from the faucet,
ready for release.

say tragedy
is a water balloon
ripe for contact
with skin and sunny
afternoon,
warily kept
from mirth's
twinkling eyes
and spraying laughter.

say the eye
itching to well up,
spill its guts
is the greatest
intensity -
passion's red,
undeclared presence
possible in torrents
still pent up.

then in a fixing stare,
anticipation
has me
wet-eyed, willing,
anchored
to wall or faucet -
water balloon
that never breaks
or flies.

untitled, fall 2002

These linear days
tread on cracking sidewalks.
Routed through fraying circuit wires,
they plot the hours on fading axes.
Columns of pixels, rows
chronicle the hours, until system failure
shuts down the status quo
and chaos pushes
off
     the
            last
                    abacus
                                 bead.

Then there is
the disappearance of whole species -
erosion layer by layer
of nonrenewable fossil fuels.
Forged only for Time's use,
the great Chain of existence
begins to snap,
the links traveling one-way
to
    disjoint
             nodes
                     of not
                               being.

This succession
of inevitable will-be's
teases thought away from comprehension -
in full, present, circles.
The disjoint not-being
curls up and finds a corner to nap in.
Content to trace the creases in my palm,
I walk along the unraveling road,
pulling
        on a
              loose
                    sweater
                            thread.

Stiff leaf veins
are still giving themselves
to impermanent death.
Resonant strings play a canon
not yet broken from song's exhaustion.
Out on the ocean, where it meets
the sky, the vagrant horizon waits.
My laugh-lines deepen
as I
    navigate,
           make
                 for its
                          eternity.

marian thoughts

Several years ago, while visiting Washington state family and friends, I went with a close friend from high school to see the "Bodies" exhibit in Seattle. A controversial German gentleman who developed a process known as polymer relacement for preserving organic tissue had prepared all the bodies the exhibit.  I had been reading about the Desert Fathers, whose movement Henri Nouwen sums up in three disciplines: solitude, silence, and prayer.  Being at this "Bodies" exhibit invited us into just such a desert space, and caused us to gaze in wonder and quiet at the mystery that is the human creature.  Each person shuffling about in that gallery was forced  to be alone in a way--to confront his or her own fragility in pleasant, quiet bewilderment ("how fearfully and wonderfully we are made!").  There were two exhibits I found so beautiful that they were painful: a tiny progression of fetuses that had died of natural causes in utero. It seemed to me that each woman caught her breath a little when she came to them. The other was the of the vascular systems surrounding the heart.  Its funny, because when you see these things a tiny part of you wants to deny that this is how you are inside--that you are not made of any stronger stuff.  You almost want to walk away in protest, as if burying these bodies out of sight would erase the fact of decay that no one (except these preserved ones) will escape.  But your curiosity gets the better of you, and you find yourself being careful that no aspect of the human spinal cord go missed or wasted by you.  It is humbling, but you almost have to stare and stare. You remind yourself that down on the street, as you wait in your warm coat for the crosswalk and charmed by the lovely New Year's displays in store windows, these things that you can now see so clearly will be no less true about you--your brief, temporary tendons and muscles are still knit together quite literally by a Someone you have never seen.  Something visceral and in the bones wants to resist this knowledge, this awful fragility, but in the end it must always resolve in an "amen": "May it be to me as you have said." My thoughts returned to Mary again, several weeks after Christmas.  Most of us will never be faced with an angel bringing weighty news like that she received, but every day there are these moments where we can either choose denial or a full affirmation of what has been revealed to us as our true situation: "I am the Lord's servant.  May it be to me as you have said."

I wrote this after seeing the exhibit, and wanted to archive it here.

"Bodies," Seattle, January 2007

I will not speak for hours
but hear deep, gurgled things
between my pelvis and my throat.
I saw a woman springing forward,
fertile, dance high-heeled
with a rubber-coated man whose small,
flaccid member made her giggle.
She could not tear her eyes from him,
admiring his peeled-back buttocks,
the prowess of his perpetual lunge.
A longer man recoiled
from two, white, fatty half-orbs:
a convex invitation punctuated by a nipple.
He grimaced unawares, shuffled over
to another woman and lost himself
in her fallopian links and smiled,
coming to the brief fairway of a uterus.
I saw one child behold another
smaller than a silver dollar,
curled upon itself like a jelly bean.
A narrow void above my groin
and through my abdomen stirred.
I followed yards of empty, looped intestine
whose latex sheen like a used glove
alarmed me.
I saw a fragile forest
of red and blue stemming downward
from a pulsing firmament;
I climbed their lichened branches
into all the hollow chambers of the heart.
Myriad pipes and conduits moved me up
from visceral heaviness
to where grey and lofty matters sit
rippling, electric clouds.
Sometimes from there the eyes flash,
heat and sound let loose upon the world--
some say it is the seat of God.
I saw it there in glass and light,
and I will not speak for hours.

take up your cross

What did Christ mean when he told his disciples that anyone following him must "take up his cross and follow me"? I cannot follow in sandaled feet down dusty Palestinian roads with nothing but the clothes on my back: too many things call me back to my own continent, my livelihood, my books and belongings, my family. For those that could, and did, leave everything to take up the burden of discipleship during those uncertain times, what did it do to their families? Did they ever go back to fishing for a living? This is not the first time I've wondered about this, of course, but the first time that the real weight of adulthood, sitting squarely on my shoulders, has made me wonder what other burdens might take its place, what lighter or heavier loads might eventually rest there. What cross is mine to take up now, and where must I go with it?

I didn't think of anything in my life as much of a cross to bear while growing up, even as I heard sermons and lessons about it. By the end of college, I had come to identify the pervasive loneliness that had crept over me and settled for four years--a loneliness I knew would only leave with the arrival of romance--as my cross to bear. All else was really right in my life, and this one thing the source of pain, fatigue, and emotional splinters in my side. To call it a cross was my way of acknowledging its very real presence, while propelling myself forward out of self-pity and debilitating self-awareness. When romance did come, and stayed, life was suddenly more bearable, and I more resilient. We might say that carrying a burden strengthens a person in specific ways, but most of us are (and ought to be) relieved to find our tasks simpler and more fluid when we are free to perform them without the extra weight.

If I had to guess, I would say that my cross now is my work: a constant source of dissatisfaction, it daily steals my joy and makes me feel...so...old and uninspired. Short of that, all else is basically well. So how should I bear that cross? I put it down, kick it around, complain of splinters, and then pick it up again for a few more hours. I "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," and grudgingly, but what in my work is God's and ought to be rendered more cheerfully?