The Cistercians

Walking, they are a clamor
of white
waves and seabirds.
In prayer,
marble guardians,
moonlight pouring
over shoulders and knees.

A mountain cowled and caped
with snow
reveres them in the hollow
of her breast,
sighing down the secret
she discovered long ago
of how to burn, burn,
and boil
within.

Darkness Dance

I do a darkness dance today
into the hollow of alone
I do a darkness dance, and still
I know my life is not my own

I whirl into the cold of night
no light I see, no comfort find
You leave me to the vast unknown
and to the tortures of my mind

I do a darkness dance today
and howl for You to rescue me
I do a darkness dance with you
I dance my way to Calvary

I stomp and spin upon the coals
and partner shadows of the trees
in tarantellas, waltzes, steps
performed in blindness, on my knees

I do a darkness dance today
into the black, into the rain
I do a darkness dance, and then
I praise Your holy name again

Husking: A Prayer

Beloved, you sat in your throne,
humming
like a mother in a rocking chair,
in a candle-dim corner of the house.
I curled up
at your feet, nestled my head on your knees,
while you hummed and peeled away
at my heart
as though you were husking corn.

I Wrestle Daily With Humility

There's a knack to it, I think,
a knack
to moving silently about the world, all
blood and bone and air.
There's a knack to being nowhere, nonexistent,
still then touching on a shoulder,
rubbing spittle in their eyes.
There's a knack to being no-one
and expecting, still, your hands to heal
and words to burn long after
you are gone.
“Dying is an art,” said Sylvia,
and she was right.
There's a knack to letting God
be God, and letting God be
you, and letting you be gone.
You learn to be
still.

Chalkboard

There is no poetry for you,
my friend.
There are no pulsing crimson
apples or silk sheets
billowing like snowdrifts
on the clothesline.
No crooked smiles
nor bruised cheekbones flesh
out my memories of you.
Behind closed eyes I see
no diamond
kite against a white sky rolling;
In the dark, my ears revive
no echo of a laden “see me”
whimpered in your sleep.
We had no time
to build impressions, images, or words
in which to bathe the weeping
sores away before this blunder ended.
There is no poetry
for you, my friend.

My soul is blank and dusty
as a chalkboard in the basement
where you were
meant to scrawl your name.

Dear Homeless

I held a smile for you today
at the corner of Park and Araphahoe,
but you hung your head
and couldn't receive it.

I held your hand last night
while your ten-year-old clutched
at the other hand and stared
and muttered while you sobbed
to the brown-robed chaplain,
begging for the mercy of God
from an absent, faceless company chief.

I held you down last week,
with the crunch of tissue paper and squeak of vinyl,
on an exam-room table.
You screamed,
kicking out with your tiny feet,
as a vaccination needle punched
into your vastus lateralis,
first of six syringes.
Twenty minutes later, I awarded you
a sticker.

I held my breath last month
as the rancid stench of you seeped
through my office, your food-stained shirt
and greasy hair all rumpled, and you sighed,
spent, because the teenage son
of your common-law wife
had once again blackened and blued the face
of a crack-dealing
child outside his fifth rehab center.

I held my tears last fall,
while you snarled and called
the family next door "fucking Mexicans"
with your curly-haired toddler looking on.
Did you think his big blue eyes could save you
from our punishment?
I held
you accountable two hours later. You shoved
your stuff into garbage bags,
then yanked him up by his shoulder
and crooned,
"Guess we're sleeping on a park bench tonight,
baby."

I wonder,
My Lord and my love,
Are you holding me?

Four Prayers with the Lion's Paw

I stretch my arms to my Beloved
as a child barefoot in the snow,
and beg to be swung into the air.
He
honeymoon-holds me,
swinging me, singing me into
Delight.

You light my eyes, Beloved,
with the butter-yellow breath
of Easter
and I hope you crack me open
like a painted Easter egg,
spilling gold
on starving land.

Beloved,
You make me like a hefty stone
loged into a riverbed,
wailing silently
in anguish
as the slow persistent tugging
of your love erodes me
grain by grain,
washing me
at last into the sea.

You are holding up a mirror, God,
and showing me two "me"s I might yet be.
I should ask you for the courage
to choose the one who dances to the sun,
release the one who's dragging all the shackles.
But really, God, what I want
is to slap the mirror from your hands
and go running over the jagged broken pieces into your arms.