It is rare that any of us are exactly who we think we are. We all project some complex combination of who we are, who we hope are, and who others say we are. Since self-knowledge is among the greatest of all gifts given by God, the lack thereof is perhaps the most dangerous weapon we wield. He hurts most who thinks himself one thing but in fact is something quite different altogether. This poem seeks to explore such an idea.

* * * 

A time there was when all were free

to breathe in your simplicity.

And everyone your name would call,

your words could all their fears forestall.

 

You lived behind the gaze of eyes,

and hoped no one would you despise,

but feared if no one knew your face,

then none would come to share your place.

 

You lived behind your polished days

where no one hurt, if all had paid.

It was no way to live a life,

but more a way to welcome strife.

 

You stood aloof enough to say,

“How lovely are all things today,

my heart is glad, my stomach fed,

all sadness is most surely dead.”

 

“Perhaps if I can sit and stare

just long enough to fool despair,

there’ll be a chance to run and hide,

should love become what I decide.”

 

You sat alone, a king or queen,

and hoped to God you stayed unseen,

unless of course you felt a need,

and then, by God, your soul must feed.

 

As time progressed, you callous grew,

to all but what bedazzled you,

or made you safe from pain or harm,

no lost control, surprise, alarm.

 

A choice you made: all friends ignore,

if souls are threats, keep hate in store.

You barricaded all but doubt

to stop your heart from getting out.

 

Though gently spoken and demure,

you fooled us all with charm for sure.

For underneath the face of smiles

was stealth, suspicion, schemes, and wiles.

 

Your words of warm felicity,

instead hid hate’s capacity:

“Prepare the stake and bone-dry switch

and burn to hell this devil’s witch!”

 

We dared to think you gave a damn

’bout more than life as telegram.

When really all you wanted then

was life unburdened with a “friend.”

 

What started right and true enough

was all untrue, a ruse, a bluff.

You hid behind such glowing eyes

in apathetic trickster guise.

 

Perhaps one came to help unloose

the tightness of your sorry noose;

some love and conversation brought,

to teach you songs your heart would not.

 

But, stay awake my sleeping friend

for pain shall be your sorry end,

your heart’s entrails upon the ground

where once a wholeness there was found.

 

For you’ve been found by one whose needs,

includes a narcissistic greed,

that scorns and mocks, ‘twill crush and bleed

till nothing’s left but pain and weeds.

 

‘Tis said, “to thine own self be true,”

but this supposes one who knew

what gifts are others, time and chance

for one to share life’s solemn dance.

 

So, this is how a bully came

to be set free to taunt and maim,

but to the eyes a gentle lamb,

who practiced how to give a damn.

 

If only time would e’er stand still

‘twould teach us that we mostly kill

whenever we refuse the time

to turn and speak in honest rhyme.

 

The greatest damage always comes

through danger in the tedium,

reminding all, who truth would seek,

that truth is found on lips that speak.

 

The constancy of time’s parade,

is proof enough that days are made

in moments pregnant with the ways

that pause we must, on others, gaze.

 

We hope to know love’s alchemy,

frustrated not by parody;

sometimes are those who will not see

the pain of silent apathy.

 

But still through Christ, the living Lord,

like falling on a sharpened sword,

our lives are made to bear such pain,

our loss is oft another’s gain.

 

And now I’ve stooped to tell this tale

that blessing come to those who fail,

for all will sing and all will rise

whose hope abides in paradise.

Sometimes the drops of air laugh at our impudent chuckle

and gather themselves into a breath. Sometimes

 

when the robin stares too long at the kitchen window,

we become her careless dream. Sometimes

 

the patches of nothing between the rain

know something, too, of waiting. Sometimes

 

I pinch myself asleep long enough to awaken again

to the resurrection of your scent. Sometimes

 

the sucking sound when pulling boots up from the mud 
is how I hear your leaving. Sometimes

the one goose not in formation with the others, 
heading where life goes are my thoughts without you. Sometimes

like old leaves pasted back on the living tree 
is the sound of my cracked voice next to your song. Sometimes

 
like a shower in the lobby with the door open 
is our talk. Sometimes

 

in the wordless poetry, alone,

is our silence.

 

For my wife on Valentine’s Day (insert goofy emoticon here_______).

 

 

 

 

 

Something indefinite defines you whenever the sun shivers. 

It speaks in whispers, whittling down uptown talk to you and me.

Leave the world alone I say, with its backdraft of naysayers,

too pale to know they are shadows.

Sometimes it’s okay to let the clock shrug off its own anxieties –

it disarms the passing minutes while the sky changes.

 The breeze pins hair to cheek and, with collars turned up,

we become convinced of our own slow presence.

Let’s just lisp whatever poetry stumbles out of our footsteps,

finding their rhythm on this uneven road.

Like a head, severed and featureless,

are those times too far from your scent.

 

Like limbs reattached, sutured to the blood,

is your silhouette in the doorway.

 

Like the dream after the waking,

is the smile of your skin.

 

Like the hours of insistence, drenched in purple,

is the declaration of your place.

 

Like a fish, drowning and drunk on its own world,

is the yes at the end of your fingers.

 

Like a poor man’s breakfast, waiting and ravished

is the moistness of your remembrance.

 

Like secrets in a barrel, floating high up to grasp,

is the welcome in your eyes.

 

Like turns in the park, the yielded path unknowing,

is the sound of our falling steps, together, sighing. 

For Rae, my wife of nearly 27 years.

In those moments most resigned

to their own solemnity, another’s lips

sip the freeing drafts of good, and are

once again wetted with a taste of new days.

I won’t just topple from this

tower of precarious teetering

when someone else is waiting

to drink what remains of

cold and distant promises.

Instead, you scope out my limits

and find them insufficient

to hold all that has yet to come. Trickle

becomes flow

becomes gush.

And I become.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O dear page, waiting and empty,

could there be a day better suited

to the recollections of a soul, overripe and

forgetting its light? Those things that once were

a willing fountain of refreshment have become

the sublimations of tired whimsy.

Sparrows only frolic where there is the bidding

of happy water, the promise of baptismal song;

the welcome of Maundy-feet in shared coolness.

When pools freeze over they are

fit for nothing more than a crystalline table

for airborne detritus, the gleanings of

the woeful. It mirrors itself, parody of warmer times,

more reflective but less refreshing.

Let no more the satisfactions otherwise suitable

to the salubrious spirit be hidden among

mournful weeds of forgotten bounty.

Rich the soil into which dreams are buried.

Light the step of the grace begotten.

Still are the waves of the undying.

Yet we call this to mind and

therefore have we hope…

Photo by Stephen Elliott

 

It was a moment, pulled taut

against an aching clock.

 

Oh, the smoothness of dairy speech

thrown long upon its patience, losing.

 

Forever in a cup, glances placed

softly on fingerprinted skin.

 

Eyes, twinned and pinned like

fridge magnet promises, align.

 

Whatever passed as ancient minutes

lumbered through their cast-iron fog

 

until they gave up waiting –

and removed their shoes.

 

Picture found here

Sometimes when the wind shifts

and the denouement of the drive

awakens us to other roads left

unexplored, a kind of sadness 

descends on the journey. This one

road upon which the gravitas of

grace spreads out long and lavish,

leads to lost places;

corridors of corruption,

alleyways of dreams,

aborted or forgotten, lanes of

loneliness, streams of sadness.

In their ditches of dread we find them,

hiding from the obvious, oblivious

to all that lay before them. Some

roads only appeared once they were

needed but quickly disappeared once

taken. It is then we kick

open the passenger door, deeply

dented and dusty from the drive, and

offer sojourn-solace on

the back roads of heaven.

Photo taken by me on a back roads trip in Washington State, October 2014