So much my son, I think on in the night.
You are beloved. I’ve hidden fearful words
In my heart. Some, double-edged as swords
Inscribing silver arcs through morning light,
Can pierce the midday dark. I knew delight
At the angel’s voice, but when the Spirit stirred,
I was as water tossed by wind. That Word
In me became our risen Son of Light.
—March 25, 2016
Annunciation Day and Good Friday,
a rare convergence, not to happen again
for over a century. “This doubtful day
of feast or fast,” wrote Donne.
“Christ came and went away.”
Dawn opened like the rose in Mary’s hand,
ignited the surf for one brief hour
before the cloud bank fell, heavy and gray.
Crash and sigh, thrust and withdrawal
over and over. The cries of gulls,
The Dalai Lama
shaves I imagine
as other men do
each morning.
Standing before
his mirror, he
sees the line of
lamas going back
to before mirrors.
When he shaves
he’s present only
to the blade as
it pulls or skates
across his skin—
cheek, upper lip,
chin—and to each
hair as it accepts
the fact. Shaving,
he only shaves,
unlike me reclining
in this tub, absent
to the razor in
my hand and to
the shin, lost in
thoughts of how
wise men live.
Four days a week the newspaper guy drives by at dawn or dawnish
And flips the paper toward our house from the window of his Olds.
It lands in a different spot every single time. This fascinates me no
End. I mean, he’s flipped it hundreds of times and not once that we
Remember did it ever land in the same place twice. My lovely wife
Is fascinated by how wide the range of landing sites is—the garden,
The path, the rosemary bushes, the annual booming dandelion farm,
“a warning; an omen . . .”
(American Heritage Dictionary)
When God is silent late at night,
and I’m watching the shadows
the moon makes against the walls,
I wish sometimes for certainty,
to know God like the fetal pig
I dissected in high school,
its legs tied back with twine
on an aluminum tray, flesh
obedient to the scalpel as I separated
skin from meat, meat from bone,
living silence from the silence of death.
But I lie awake and listen instead
to the wind-rustled leaves of the poplar,
to the quiet breaths my wife makes
A hundred years from now we’ll all be dead.
Meanwhile, let’s be this mayfly in my room whose
whole life span contracts into today.
What will we make from our hours before midnight?
There. I’ve spread the wings we kept concealed.
We’re out the window, our past one second passed!
We’ve never seen a backyard in such light—all the
shrubs saints, and each one in nimbus,
chancels of clouds stained glass, each tree a spire.
While our breath lifts us, wind inside our wings, what
will our landing be, canyon, iceberg’s peak?
Once again this morning I was early to my town’s library
And again there was a constellation of other bookies of all
Ages, the little kids eagerest and pressing against the door,
But this morning I noticed how many men were a bit worn
At the edges. It’s a capital mistake to make judgments by
What people wear or carry, or how neat or not so their hair,
Or awry their spectacles, or battered their footwear. Yet we
Do see each other, and get a sense of each other from some
Deep mammalian thing; and what I felt was that we all felt,
We check the empty rooms, close the door.
Music vanishes. Finches flash by
and disappear.
Everything we long for,
we make ours through longing. Apples sigh
more crimson when they’re conjured
than if they’re on my tongue. May someone find
here what heals her. May absence cure
our craving. May long silence not confound
us. Goodbye, good path, good rooms, good shoes,
good walking.