Knowing

Seldom have I felt this low,

my voice, still stuck inside.

A soul, left alone,

reveals its need

to suffer,

rejoice;

be.

Old for New

Let’s trade our foreign cargo:

our death, oblique and strange,

tagged for redemption,

but stirred to know

the story,

re-lived,

new.

Gift

Satisfaction guaranteed

to broken hearts that need

all that sorrow brings;

a song to sing,

promising

death to

death.

Presence

Let’s walk on distant shorelines,

ragged, rough and romping;

nuanced as the night

for we should not

assume that

we’re not

there.

Breakfast

I ask you, “do you love me?”

You tell me that you do.

I ask you twice more.

You answer me.

My answer?

Broiling

fish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swollen palettes, satiated on mystery meat, bread and corn

husked beside the red swing-set after splish ‘n splash at noon.

Summer’s silly sprinkler dance anoints the day

with laughter fit for kings’ tables finely festoon’d.

 

Checkers played with pennies and monopoly pieces,

and, later, fake dollar bills found buried in the car seats.

Dinner table taunts from Mom and Auntie June

to remove from there our sad and smelly feet.

 

Now when moon and sun compete for sky,

I chuckle one last sigh before I hit the hay.

My buddy’s fresh, new farts remind me

how soon, in restful sleep, he’ll pay.

 

Sometimes, when pompous stars have fin’lly come and gone,

and, creeping on the ledge beside my window, at this height,

I wonder when, once more we might revel in  

this feast of quotidian delights.

The home of a neighbor of a close friend of ours recently burned to the ground. This is a tragedy of the worst kind for anyone. Moreover, it was a place that housed troubled adults. Although no lives were lost, a home and a hope, at least for a time, were.

Sing, little ones. Sing, for the music still plays on…

Strike up the chord from rubbled keys,

fill up your ears on scrawny knees,

push through your threadbare notes with ease,

let the music play on.

 

For good or ill the band still played,

Titanic-deck’d no songs fore-stayed,

reduced to ash and dust parade,

yet the music played on.

 

When all has shuttered up within,

let  lonely hearts bestirred begin,

to harp, to trump, to violin,

for the music plays on.

 

And you, with your most treasured fears,

ensconced in burnt and golden tears,

a lilting note from God full cheers,

and the music played on.

 

“…and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God.” Isaiah 43:2-3

Uprooted

Hands unseen reach from elsewhere

to dig and pull and strip

what little else remains

to be troubling

the places

where life

is.

 

 

Replanted

Hands unseen reach from elsewhere

to dig and hold and place

newness green and fit

 into rows of

strong and new,

wondrous

 life.

 

 

Piercèd Wonder

Breached against a sullen sky

one wicked afternoon,

sad eyes behold the

piercèd wonder.

He saw them

and he

wept.

 

Resignation

First it was impossible,

then it was just painful.

Now it’s both painful

impossible

and troubling,

but it’s

done.

 

 

Peace

A most illusory thing,

is this thing we call “peace.”

Too tightly grasp and

it leaves faster.

Let it go,

and it’s

yours.

 

So it is now to be, Lord,

that penance brings with it her own harder penance;

riddled throughout with pain, sweetly nuanced

with character like wine, red and melancholy and ripe?

Forsworn am I from joy so privily gotten

that, nestled deep in shallow places,

this hollowed out heart hallway, designed for

good and light and sweet,

lies overwrought, undone.

Paint has pealed from walls of these plastered eyes

inured to seeing what not to see.

I wish eyes and heart were unconnected.

For then, might I see.

 

Lord, tear out seeing eyes and replace them with blind

if only to remind me of what it was to see;

 

and then, blindly, to rejoice.

 

It was 4:00 am and, at the tail end of a recording project, I was desperate for a title track. I had already named the CD, “be that as it may.” Whimsical? Yes. Obtuse? Perhaps. But it was exactly the title that had reverberated in my head for months. That was what it was to be. However, I only had one more day of recording left both on the clock and on the dollar. I was frantic.

Then, a “chance” look across the table of my producer’s kitchen helicoptered my eyes to a picture. It was an image that would provide the muse from which the title song was about to come…in the space of 20 minutes. A solitary figure of a girl, not quite a woman. A girl longing for womanhood. She looks pensively, a little fearfully, into an attic mirror  afraid of what she might see; of what she might not see. She is a girl yearning for something else, something yet to come, just like she whose mirror it was in front of which she now sat might have thought years before.

The print spoke more than I could possibly write. It haunts me to this day. The following is the lyric from the song she inspired (and is downloadable on iTunes, by way of shameless plug).

be that as it may

Words & Music by Robert Rife

©10/16/98

Like roses hung from cellar walls,

Hints of words unspoken fall –

Suggestions of the fragrant fall,

Be that as it may.

When she’s sure there’s no one there

A young girl in a mirror stares

Welcomed in the arms of grandma’s rocking chair –

Be that as it may.

 

Be that as it may

Don’t let it be that we would stay

In waters of a winter’s day,

In the warmth of heaven’s glow we’ll say –

Be that as it may.

 

Hand to face, the touch of love

In bashful eyes, the look of love;

Gives to aching hearts a gentle shove,

Be that as it may.

 

Hiding in their living room

The fire’s warm but ends too soon;

At least it leaves two hearts in a swoon,

Be that as it may.

 

Be that as it may

Don’t let it be that we would stay

In waters of a winter’s day,

In the warmth of heaven’s glow we’ll say –

Be that as it may.

 

Life is like a cul-de-sac

We think we’ve grown, we’ve just come back

To where we were but with a few more facts,

Be that as it may.

 

Be that as it may

Don’t let it be that we would stay

In waters of a winter’s day,

In the warmth of heaven’s glow we’ll say –

Be that as it may.

Be that as it may.

Be that as it may…