Penitential Psalm for the Second Sunday in Lent (Genesis 15)

And God said to Abram:

Stick with me, like a good husband 

or a good dog
or a Hollywood agent who has lost his mind 

and doesn't know when to jump off a sinking ship 

because he's actually grown to like or at least not detest his performing client,

and, lo, I will give unto thee an extra syllable in thy name.

ha

And, about all your concern, your shame,
that your slave child not be your heir

ahh . . . OK, it's just going to be too many years until the New Covenant
so I guess I just can't get into that with you right now

(you wouldn't understand that a slave can be a savior too)

no matter how old you are and how patriarchal and all

(and, again, as I've told you, I do appreciate that long journey from Ur town)

so, alright alright, you will have a child and he shall be called--

Isaac, which means something like "the seed of Abram with an extra syllable."
ha

Pay attention: 

you see the stars

up there, look up there,

your descendents will be like that
uncountable and, frankly, unaccountable, given your age
and the strength of your "loins,"

and to prove it to you here is what I'll do--
you cut up some animals (but NOT the birds) and everything will get very dark and gloomy 

and then there will be fire kind of thing in the middle of them
and then ye shall know that the Lord your God passeth through the cut up animals 

(except for the not cut up dead birds) like a fire kind of thing

in the dark gloominess of your desolation and so on. 

Really, did I just say that, Abram?

I don't know. Listen, here's the thing that matters.

Your dark journey into the wilderness, 

your trust in the One who has not yet delivered on his promise,

who "proves" his promise with a fire thing in the middle of cut up animals--

through all this, you have stayed with me,

you have kept up the questions, the argument,

kept moving in this strange direction.

You hang on me like a nursing child,

your nails are deep deep in Yahweh's flesh,
I have seen your tears (have you seen mine?)--

I mean, thank you for your fierce grip.

Holding on is the only righteousness.

I know the past has been a wilderness, isolation, the absurd,

but this story, ours, is not about the past.

Look up at the stars, I said,

find us there.

I need to use your name, with every syllable I will give you,

I need to say to the world
he hung on me like a nursing child

his story was mine, mine his

I know his nails in my flesh

he tastes my tears in his mouth

he drove the birds of prey away from my carcass

he stayed with me.

Your name will mean "one who won't let go." 
And you will be the father of those who hold on. 

Going to sleep (a translation of Herman Hesse's Beim Schlafengehen)

Going to Sleep

And now the long long day has left me tired,

May my wish be granted by the starlit night,

Like the hopeful prayers of every exhausted child. 


So now, hear hands, relax from busy-ness,

Dear head, let go your anxious, fevered thoughts,

All senses now will sink into sweet sleep.


And, oh, my soul, unconscious voyager,

Now float beyond the earth on nimble wings,

Into the magic circle of the night,

Finding a life a thousand times more deep. 

Wedding Epiphany #1: Why Mary was Pissed

Epiphany Sequence

Wedding Epiphany #1: Why Mary was Pissed
 

the third ephiphany of the son of god was by far the

sexiest
involving wine, brides, dancing, bridegrooms, anxiety, uncertainty, loss of virginity,

that is to say, a higher than usual level of tension and

a satisfying climax, we hope, for all involved. 

great joy was already in progress
with or without angels
when the slightly bitter mother of God
more than a little tipsy from too little sleep, inferior wine,

and three days of non-stop dancing with the heartbreakingly beautiful bride--

call her Rachel--

got into it with her rather surly preacher son

who annoyingly sat on watching the proceedings
apparently untouched by the ridiculous messy beauty of our rhythmic human neediness.

bitter, I say, because it had all come back to her then (and there),
mid-whirl, so to speak, for a moment glimpsing old Joseph frowning, liminal,

uncomfortable without his saw and shavings and apron,

all of it--those girlhood dreams of how perfect it would be,
the handsome young rabbi, G*d knows he'd looked at her with longing long enough,

tying the knot and loosening the doors of love with her,

tenderness, passion, laughter, tears,

and the promise of golden days ahead
and children, many children, whose longs lives would be the proof
or proof enough for her

of Yahweh's all-powerful love.

Chain of Lakes when it's this cold

chain of lakes when it's this cold

so, silver

that's what color is in its pure state

two perfect bare silver trees

a silver lake, glassier though than the trees, gleaming,

a line of oh a thousand such naked trees on the bank yonder

(my friend in sixth grade used to say "yonder" because he wasn't from Texas 

and I thought he might as well have been from the moon)

a full line of slate cloud above

soft blue beyond that, like her eyes

warm gold and glow from the lowering star

yet not the warmer gold of spring or summer or fall
more alchemical

all that's required is to be pale and bleached and empty
and to the east of the fading
source

cold cuts through
thought emerges--it is really this cold,
this is what cold is when it's this cold
a heart can stop
it's done it before
your blood can freeze
it might be even now

there is no one,
I mean, NO ONE, here
but this empty space is echoing with
one perfect cracking or howling sound after another
someone, somewhere, is safe and warm
and listening to a soundfile of winter nature sounds
and thinking he's a very fine fellow for doing so

but I can step out on the ice
above those lovely noises,
as the elements move and change and realign
as all things always do
and abandon my abstractions
flinging a stick and then another and then, admittedly, too many
skipping them out and watching them slide across
the frozen lake

you figure out what to do in this kind of cold
you walk in that little strip of sun
and keep the forty mile wind at your back
not letting yourself think about the moment
when you'll need to turn, and, turtle-like, withdraw within yourself
and return, a wise buddha, through that same fierce cold loveliness

and you realize, you idiot
that this is just another of all the miracles
that cannot be captured in words
or photo or on canvass or anything but itself
for no frame would ever be fair to this,
even a 360 panorama would need to  tilt up and down
and if it did
it couldn't express the shudder I just heard from the lake
or the sadness and strangeness of all the memories
of swimming just here with a house full of children now gone
or canooing with Nathan through the chains into six of the seven lakes
and the blue heron that flew just over our heads when we startled him that day

there is no way to say this place,
which is why we need special flannel lined pants like mine
and hiking boots if possible
and warmer headgear than I'm wearing now
to see and taste and feel and hear and meditate this cold

the only way to say anything worth saying is like Zeno

you go as far as you can and know

that there's still infinity to go,

you touch her skin softly
then again, then again,
each time more softly
until the difference 
between touching 
and not touching 
disappears or 
at the least
is not now
subject to 
senses--

"this is what I mean by loveliness

this is what I mean
this is
this

's"

then, such a quick, big fade.

the only truth of every thing we know,

yet still surprising when where you've been is silver

so be it, 
the lake is gray, in fact,
the trees dull brown

or facts are not that helpful here

when it's so absurdly cold

you only, you and the people where the sun has still not set

who, perhaps, are you but haven't told you yet,

know this truth, the hard cold truth of today,

a meaning not propositional

or open to debate--

her eyes

the bite of the February wind

that sky

the scrubbed skin of earth

all this sharp silver and faded gold
in the dying light
a million leafless empty branches

dancing violently above these

steady trunks

then,
the darkness.

A Penitential Psalm

Penitential Psalm (a psalm of Tom Bodett)

The First Sunday of Lent, you spend in a Motel 6 (not Six) in Atlanta.

That speaks itself, 

so maybe I should stop.

Or, as they said in 2009, "Word."

Anyway, I slept better last summer in Spain in a room full of fifty pilgrims--
ten of them stinking,

seven of them snoring (eight if I could have slept),

one of them, of the opposite . . . you know

curled up two bunks away as if to say

how dare you sleep and not appreciate the human form divine
made by G*d, etched by Blake, embodied here and now

in this hot, noisy, purgatorial space.

Slept better there, I mean, than here--

this smelly smoke-stained non-smoking room

with the TV blaring against my wall from the room next door,

various children screaming,
sometimes drowned out by adults screaming,
sometimes drowned out by the banging on the wall,
on the doors--their door and my door and what sounds like most of
the doors up and down the hall 

(if we can agree to call that concrete slab a hall).

Of course, maybe I'm jumpy,
this being my fifth day without coffee,
thank you Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Benedict

(although as several thousand evangelical-ish bloggers
have already pointed out, in their blessed ignorance,

Lent isn't really about giving things up).

It might be, though. It just might be. 

And, if so, If, I posit, the saints and Sister Philomena (second grade, Our Lady of Mercy)--

who never said "Word" unless they meant Logos--

knew more than ***** **** *****,

Lent might just leave you a little jumpy.

Or even with scars and blisters and bones showing through.

On the other appendage, things occur on this planet and in one's "life" 

(I'm just using ironic marks to frustrate my editor friends)

not quite so hellish or purgatorial.

For example, my daughter looked absolutely lovely and confident and,

best of all,
happy

today for her scholarship interview and her seminars and such
with a hundred or so other bright, lovely, and, I hope, happy
young woman here for the same reason.

And, in addition, the President of the college,

full of lovely vision and alchemical fire, is a . . .
PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR! Really.
Her name is Elizabeth and her students and faculty and staff love her,

so, of course, I do too.

And I think, or wonder as I wander,

Does this really happen now? I mean, it's not like it's 2009 or anything.

Is there some damned irony hiding in the wings to kill this lovely fact?

I pray not.

And, of course, the chocolate fountain, obligatory at weddings
and scholarship weekends apparently.

And this gorgeous Day of Heaven
with a sky the exact blue of the Virgin's mantle

like those human eyes I won't forget,

while, obviously, these Georgians keep apologizing--

"too bad you had to come down when it was so damn cold."

(Thus fulfilling the teaching or pious nonsense of Bokonon's 23rd Calypso:

"Even when it's perfect, yes even when it's fine,

People find some problems, 'cuz people love to whine.")

And then, as always, that beauty, like all, falls--

yet unveiling a million brilliant faithful stars
which only seem, now and then and often,
to have disappeared.

Like, in the windy stormy rain all the long way home to Indiana.

Or the moment you re-entered Lenten Cell #248 at Motel 6 (not Six)

because you will someday die and need reminding

that life is more than chocolate fountains, blue skies (and eyes), and

ridiculously dedicated Philosopher Presidents.

For this dark knowledge, they, gracious, keep the light on for you.

And, since they, the monks of Motel 6, care (and not care)

for your soul (which I take to mean your truest self)

and not your ass (which Saint Francis took to mean our pampered flesh)

and for that their desire is not for you to have a frilly evangelical-ish Lent 

with make up masquerading as meditations (saying 

"be pretty much who you already are and know that you are special" and "penance, what's that ha ha ha!"),
they provide you with the screaming television and the screaming children, and the smoke-stained and scented room, and the unpleasant neighbors

bearing, for you, the blessed truth or hope or dream or, possibly, delusion--
all things shall be new.

Or else.

WHEN HE COULD FLY

When He Could Fly

It's not a lie to say that, as a child,
I was dead afraid of heights.
And yet somehow that fear did not extend to sleep,
Where dreams of flight took me to Mars,
The moon, and Neverland by night,
With Pan and Hook and, best of all, my sweet/strict Wendy.

Somehow I flew right into waking day.
Daydreams came first,
But later, only slightly less light than the air,
I'd fly and fly and fly again--
Off the house,
Out of trees,
Off the shed my father built,
Landing on the bending oleanders,
Smashing down the planted boundary between ours and theirs.

The first time I dunked in a game,
My man cheated for the steal and left the lane wide open.
How many times had I done just this in practice and dreams?
How many times had I wished it, daydreamed it,
Worked extra on my vertical leap while heavier teammates hurried out to eat.

Like Julius, the Doctor, you take off from the top,
One bounce then go and throw the damn thing down.

He's on my hip now--
Turn and dribble, bend, explode, then fly.

Brent says he tried to bump me coming back on D,
Keith too and Bobby A.
They said I just ran past,
As if I didn't see them.
Wrong.
I saw the specks far down below
From where I hid up in the rafters,
Resting for a moment before floating off,
Free and fearless,
To Wendy

And to where I wouldn’t fall.

YOUR NEXT TWENTY-SEVEN LINES

Your Next Twenty-seven Lines 
 

the snow melts not yet not yet
but soon
and it's still cold enough that you really should wear your shoes
when walking out to the car, again, having forgotten the script you are memorizing

so anyway you just go in the your feet and track the snow back in
but it feels good in a freezing sort of a way like

yes I can walk barefoot even in winter St. Francis,
so there, stigmata or not, I can do that. 

the glass though fell off the counter when you were trying to make tea
and being barefoot that can lead to the kind of thing that it led to
in fact, some slivers embedded, like diamonds, in the soles of your feet

but the tea was good, after all, red zinger (as it used to be called)

your nightly custom now to take a cup of such herbal brew

perhaps to make it seem like you have something to do before you go to sleep
or even pretending you are sort of making a cup of tea for someone other

than just yourself, as if there were to be communion.
 

climb or rather hop upstairs, bleeding from foot and soul,

get on the machine,
and try to sketch out your next twenty-seven lines,
hoping it might make some difference somehow.

it doesn't.

the sun shines not yet not yet
but soon

or maybe not at all

still, it feels good in a painful sort of way like

yes I can spell my soul even in darkness Wordsworth,

so there, abundant recompense or not, I can do that.