Approaching sixty

I should be slowing down a bit,
Not chewing up the miles;
But my knee feels great out here
Climbing hills;
Eyes focused on the road ahead
Body weighted evenly above the pedals
A fluid, economic motion.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a bicycle.
Why so painful climbing stairs?
No body’s perfect,
My yogi says,
You do what you can.
Each day I learn to stand on one leg,
Eyes pinned to my right mirror’s eye
Toes cannot grip the flattened matt
But strain, relax, search, find, and lose
The centered gravity in the gut
Above my foot.
A body in motion
Adjusts with each breath,
Parturient in part
And poised in process.

A Letter to Emily Gould

What a briny prickle you’ve created of yourself!
It’s a sorry tale I’ve read from you, your life upon a shelf
Of public scrutiny. Where will you go from here?

Might you remember Rostov’s charging the French Army,
His sudden realization that I mean no harm,
My friends love me;
My family would be sorely grieved
I am a really nice person;
So why are they shooting blazing guns at me?
My God I’m like to die!
Retreat! Retreat!
And yet they called him a hero, fool that he was,
And he was never quite the same,
A wiser man, and somewhat more sedate.

It’s time to quit Emily.
Quit being Emily.
Perhaps you think I’ve not been you
And should say nothing.
Yes, I should say nothing.
I’ve said nothing to you
Because you don’t exist, Emily,
You’ve lost it.
You wanted fearless adventure,
Free love and
Faceless friendship;
Virtual reality and no real virtue.
They’re oxymora, Emily.
Like you they don’t exist.

Go away now,
Retreat to no place
Where no one sees
And no one cares.
It’s a nice place actually,
Restful to a point,
Healing.
Give it up Emily.
Quit trying,
Quit trying not to try,
Quit quitting.
hush

Now just breathe
for a while.
breathe.

Notice if you will
The emptiness within
A chest of emptiness.
A space, a place
Where nothing is
Within your chest
Beneath, behind
Unnoticed breasts
Close by an anxious heart,
That fills with nothing
More than life
And just as quickly
Empties of itself.
It’s yours, it’s you,
That space where nothing is.
Do not notice now
The fullness of all living things,
Their panting, gasping, respirating
Breath;
The flow of waters over gills
The leaves of porous trees
The crawling worms
And creeping bugs
And microscopic things
Within this microscopic sphere
Of life on earth.
Do not notice your
Communion with silent earthlings
In an envelope of air.
but hush
you don’t exist
you are not here.
When you arrive
You’re welcome.

Horror and Humor

Horror and Humor
In the world of entertainment
Are sisters.
It’s all they can do,
The implausible monsters,
To keep a straight face.
Damsels in distress
Screaming their tonsils out,
Laugh hysterically between shots.

Elsewhere Horror and Humor
Never speak to one another;
They live on separate planets.
There’s really nothing funny
About hunger, rape, or ravaging armies.

Sexuality often joins her sister Humor,
They live and work together,
Share picnics and family fun,
Office parties and vacations;
But they never pray.
Nor do they meet in church
With Sister Faith.
She goes alone.
Men and women may laugh
With delight at their nakedness,
Its touch and sight and smell,
But there’s no kiss and tell in church.
If Adam finds no suitable partner
In his menagerie
his straight man –
God –
Doesn’t laugh knowingly.
Nor does the congregation.

But Sex and Horror tryst
And not only in slasher films.
Children defiled try to sort out
The sordid, tangled strands
Of love, anger, hate, affection, loathing, fear.
Adults too renounce affection
When they find it in bed
With Force
Coiled like a snake around its waist.
We wait for peace to no avail;
For a time of healing, but terror comes instead.

Speaking of which:
I notice Faith is often unwelcome.
Mine is pretty silly --
All that praising and thanking --
And the groveling.
I wish I didn’t grovel.
It lacks dignity.

Thanks for bearing with my religion;
I’ll try not to pray too long.
I know it’s tiresome.
It’s just the attempt
To speak the unspeakable
Explain the inexplicable
Unscrew the inscrutable
Unleashes a barrage
Of words and they keep coming.
“INCOMING!”
Perhaps it’s more like a deluge.
“MAN THE BILGE PUMPS!
HERE IT COMES AGAIN!”
Sometimes ideas flow too,
Incoherently.
I see connections everywhere.

The crucifixion, for instance,
Horror or humor?
Wasn’t his rout of the demons pretty damned funny?
Didn’t you laugh at their bare
Butts disappearing in the distance?
Weren’t you glad at your relief?
You find no humor at all
When you recall your fears and doubt?

How many times did he tell you
Be not afraid?
But you feared and now
You realize how groundless
Were your fears.
God was always in charge,
If only you had believed.

But it was horrible too.

A man’s dying on the cross –
What is beautiful about that?
How can you say,
“What a beautiful crucifix over the altar?”
It’s horrible.
But not half so grisly as
The man’s body stretched
By uplifting nails
And the downward dead-weight
Yank of gravity;
His flayed flesh;
Yellow, brown, red filth
Streaming from every orifice,
Shoulders, elbows, arms unjointed,
Head upside-down
Hanging helpless heavy.
The stench alone was unbearable.
The crowds jeered, of course.
What else could they do?
The sight of his bestial nature
Stripped them of human decency.

There is no comedy there.
Is it decent to remember
Or imagine
Or describe?
Is it better left unsaid?
If you dare you will find
Even sexual abuse in this
Passion Narrative –
His nakedness, the taunts and jeers,
The leering eyes of strangers,
And his helplessness.
What did they feel in their loins,
What stimulant,
As they stripped, tortured, nailed
And raised him up?

But we will laugh on Sunday
Tears streaming from our eyes
As we hear the good news.
Free at last, free at last,
Thank God Almighty I am free at last.

There is healing in his wings
Even for children.
Love and truth will meet;
Justice and peace will kiss.
The wolf shall be guest of the lamb,
And the leopard lie down with the kid;
Horror and Humor will sport together
As Faith and Sex slap hands. 

Pentecost

Like a bell it rings,
The hour has come.
We heard it first in Cana,
It might have been a distant knolling
But it sounded only once.
We hardly noticed its toll
Over the merriment of his prank.
“You numbskull!” the maitre d’ whispered,
“You served the rot gut first,
and saved the best for last!”
We might have laughed
But no one titters when the Gospels are read.
And was that a bell knelling in the distance,
As he said, “My hour has not yet come?”

No one laid a hand on him when
the soldiers came.
His hour had not yet come,
But the hour would come to pass
from this world to the Father
For he loved his own in the world
And he loved them to the end.

The hour sounds closer now,
Ominous, inexorable,
Ordained from olden time.
We know that sound
As if we’ve always known
The hour must come.
The hour has come
Give glory to your son.
Who would ask a friend
To greet such an hour?
Who would trust
A Deity who leads by tolling bells?

How sad its sounding in their ears –
To the Witness and the Mother --
As he takes her to his home.

But now the bells ring
As the hours sing
And we’re scandalously drunk.
He has made our bitter sweet,
Our joy complete;
And our tears are lovely drink.

Holy Week, 1993

I holy weeked in a hospital bed
And saw the services
From below the surface of my suffering
On a TV screen.
I wondered at those men
Who walked on the dry land of comfort,
Who sang songs
And read readings
And kissed crosses,
But could not speak to me
Beneath the surface of my suffering.
They seemed like men
On an island
-- or a continent –
in the middle of a continent --
far from the vast waters of pain
that gird our world – that washed over me.

Our Earth, they say, should be called Water
And our lives should be called Pain.
But we spend most of our lives
On the dry land of comfort
Hardly aware of those who
Lie beneath the surface of their suffering
And gaze on us with glassy eyes.

A Christmas Letter to an Irish Friend

Dear Maisie,
Your postcard came in May.
I knew the site at once --
the entrance stone, the roof-box, and gypsum face --
the passage-grave at Newgrange.
Without masonry, wheels, or shovels
your ancestors piled stone on stone
to welcome the frozen dawn of a new day,
the shortest day of the year.
They welcomed the sun of God
from a holy place.

In December
at sunrise,
I think of that marvelous hill.
I wonder at its antiquity -- some five thousand years!
With straw baskets and wooden sleds
they moved rocks into place.
They poured such energy into earth at the solstice --
how much more did they surely give to
eating, singing, dancing, dressing,
love-making, gift-giving, and worship
during that early Yuletide?
The angular, swirling lines of the entrance stone
describe a storm of festivity.
Even yet, those strands of memory
swirl around your churches and bind you to your past.

This postcard is an icon for me,
an entrance into earth.
The ghost of Christmas past
beckons from this tomb.
We will not comprehend the feast
nor save the world
until we follow her through that corridor
to those ancient times
to visit those who pray so earnestly.
She sings from that enchanted stone
as the sun mounts Earth’s eastern edge on Solstice Day.
Prostrate before his feeble strength,
Charming, seductive, passionate, and pious,
She lifts herself with intense human effort.
She welcomes his embrace with festive, religious effort.
His moist wanton eyes must worship her.
She pulls him down to her and into her,
Lest he forget her and her children.
He falls on that tumescent hill,
Covers, penetrates, and warms it now
with swelling strength.
Her people revel in their fond embrace
And in their bondage to sun and earth and seasons.
In spring she is pregnant
Thank God! – as you Irish would say --
And the sun is hot and whole and healed.

Our Santa Claus makes a sorry spook
of Christmas present.
Fixed on pleasure, besotted by greed,
Afflicted with futility,
With neither fear nor faith,
fertility nor fervor,
He has lost his memory -- poor soul --
and will pass by Easter.

I found the Ghost of Christmas Future
within the womb of Newgrange --
and I leapt for joy.
She said, “This is the only world
that you will ever see!”
Could we Christmas out there
without earth, without Solstice?
The future showed us Earth from outer space
whirling round her sun.
We saw his frank, admiring eye
inspiring her virginity,
filling her fecundity.
A child can spin a classroom globe
a thousand times a minute.
A thousand years are but a moment in his sight.
The future showed us that.

Christmas is as old as earth
And will last as long.
Before the first farmer
cried in panic at the cold distance of the sun,
before Africa ventured into northern lands,
before the first green slime of life appeared
she was whirling, twirling, dancing, swirling
around her lover-star.

Only moments ago,
as the ardent Earth embraced the sun at Newgrange,
Christmas welcomed her Lord --
“Fulfillment of the Feast!” --
she called him.
We were born neither to escape the earth,
nor to destroy her,
But to sing her songs, celebrate her seasons,
declare her thanks, and welcome her Savior.
When you and I, Maisie,
are nothing more than moldy dust,
waiting silent in some unremembered tomb
for a stirring breath of wind,
and the sounding of our names
in a dear familiar voice
she will yet be whirling, twirling, dancing, swirling around her lover-star.

Lavabo me -- A Chaplain's Prayer

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
First check the counter-top for that clear film of water
That stains your pants and makes you look silly,
then lean forward, right foot on the pedal,
hands under the flood and begin with a preliminary rinse.
It used to be fun to play in water.
Lord wash away my iniquity,
and cleanse me of my sins.
Then push the lever that squirts soap somewhere,
on the wall, on the counter,
on your outstretched hand
-- and scrub --
for no less than fifteen seconds.
Palms smack broken suctions;
fingers knock joints,
slippery skin slides over
dry knuckles that enjoy for a moment
the oil of ease.
The right hand squeezes left
palm, thumb, and fingers;
left caressing in return.
Lord wash away my iniquity....
Don’t forget your wrists,
Then repeat several times
in oily soap kneading the fleshy palms
and bony fingers
And cleanse me of my sins.
Now rinse again;
(this is the fun part)
forming your hands
into a toilet bowl to catch the water
and flush several times,
over the fingers, palm, back-palm, and wrists.
Throw the excess into the sink,
try not to make a mess.
Lord wash away my iniquity....
Pull the first towel
which disintegrates leaving
but a scrap of paper;
then take one, two, three sheets,
spread each one out,
and wipe your hands,
the palms, the fingers, the sides of your hands.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Look up for a moment,
and notice the passing scene.
A bed trundles down the hall,
-- stand aside --
with its retinue of nurses and assistants.
And cleanse me of my sins.
Offer a silent thought for the miserable.
Listen to the doctors;
You might learn something.
Admire the young professionals.
Lord, wash away my iniquity,
They are so beautiful.
And cleanse me of my sins.
Nod to anyone who looks your way.
The paper shreds,
and rolls into a ball.
Wipe down the counter,
Mashing it flat again,
And drop it in the trash,
Not the floor,
(with any luck at all.)
At last, the gloves.
Find a pair that fits,
extra-large.
Pull them on
and push the latex skin
down between each finger.
And don’t touch anything
-- unless its clean--
until you bless your patient.
From the side of Christ,
water,
my iniquity, wash away;
and cleanse me of my sins,
O Lord.