Charlotte, Jumping from the Rock

She must have stood for ten minutes on that high step of stone, alone 
While all the trees were so patient, as if to put her at her ease
And nothing stirred, not the sky the rock the breeze 
As she stood, trying to breathe, her body close to shivering in fear, which she pressed down 

The rock she stood on, asleep for ages and eons, slept on still
And though rockets launched within us, we mimicked that rock with our own bodies, still as the water
So as not to startle our little girl
Our beautiful one who, her body tensed, 
Balanced between two worlds: who I am and who I could be 
She struggled with all creation to let go of that fixed rock, that high place, that sure standing ground
Looking down, wondering what would hold her, should she let go 

Always, this is the pattern:
We stand on rocks in the wilderness wondering about the journey, should we let go

If you are blessed, there are loved ones close, to love you
But there are times when even they can't touch or hold you
And you know, somehow within yourself, it's for your good
We come in company, but there are times we must make the pass alone
Into that gap which, this time, is simply the wide swath of air just in front, and below 
The water which will thrill our bodies, freezing us with all the cold we will not even feel or know

Because we did it
We leapt
We let go

So our daughter soared through the air—more beautiful than a heron 
And rose from those waters like a fiery Phoenix, full of grace
A smile, so well-earned, upon her lovely face 

A Liturgy

Once a year, after mannequin season,
I read Shakespeare and then go down to Morgan's and buy bourbon, distilled in France
And I spend a week's wages for women
Then I cry by the river

It's a simple rhythm 
I can't complain;
It keeps me sane

Every month I take a walk by the docks and smell the fish
My God, it's putrid, of course 
And I think, “People eat this!”

It helps 'mind me that life is a great ocean, unknowable, beautiful
And full of soon-to-be spoiling carcasses
They go together, like dark reality
A theater's marquee and
A murder in the alley

Once a week I go to church
I don't listen much, but I do like to see the latest fashions, the women's skirts
And there are times when the old preacher says something that sends lightning to the ground
(There's not much grass around to burn, though, truth be told)

Each day, at night, if the sky is right
I go stand beneath it 
I stand beneath it and hope it's emptying into my belly
Sometimes I spread my arms out
But I never shout

One must, after all, train one's self to hold one's swaying
That's the world way—the hardest things happen alone
And we are like trains barreling through a long, cold tunnel 
Trusting the unseen bend
Barreling and hoping beyond the end 

Give Thanks for the Ones You Get

There was a tree, pure and perfect
Yellow in its autumn leaves
On our way to Capital Reef
Beneath a black butte, in southern Utah
But I could not stop the car 
Because there are time when the clock will not allow it
Or the following truck disavows it
Or my children in the back cannot be asked to stop again
So, we pass the bend, as my mind spins, lungs sighing
A sort of loss like dying 
The tree so quickly passing, becoming
Yet another point of mourning
On that perfect morning, bathed as it was in blue 

So, too, there was light shining through the woods outside Yosemite
But my baby was crying and, as first things are always first, I kept on driving
Just as the mountain preened in the morning light, like a kingfisher catching flight
As everything sang to life around us

The ridge became another photo never taken
Like the spray of heather by the river, in the sunset
Or the geese overhead
Because the road, my bladder, the watch, 
Keeping pace in a procession
Said, “No…it’s time to go"

You must simply give thanks: 
Give thanks for the ones you get, and the others, let go, with gratitude

Say "thank you," and try to stamp them on your soul, 
Those miracles 
Let your eyes linger and engender hope
Pretend you might return (knowing you won’t) 
But even so, know that it's right to go
With a smile, because you got to see it
You saw it, now let it go 

And above all,
Give thanks that autumn unyielding, in unending pictures
Will always bend more photos towards you than you could hold
Blowing down like a house of cards
Any thought that we can carry the weight of gold 

After all
The mountain will still be there
And God's gifts are older than the mountains
Made new each morning
For eyes made hopeful 
For hands held open
For any open, trusting soul 

Lost Bird

I.

I had a bird in Mexico
I don’t remember how—if he fell from the nest or sky or why I rescued him—
But he couldn’t fly,
And so I put him in a shoebox, to nurse him back to health
And naively fed him rice, thinking he’d be fine 
And then I waited

When he died, his frail body, so light and fine, like fire
Stretched in an arch, as if longing to go on, as if in cry, mid-flight 
His beak just open, as if searching for the sky 

And there was nothing but to feed him to the earth in the small cardboard box 
In the sadness of corruption which seemed, as ever, senseless 
After which I looked up into the great sorrow of the desert
Awash in the pain of too much sun and too much seeing 

II.

The pain of others is always an abstraction, so we observe it, but with distraction
Safely keeping our sanity, like a mind wiping sweat and dirt away 

Our pain, of course, is the most palpable reality, concrete and mute of comfort
Devoid of succoring words 

I confess
The pain of that little loss bereft me
Though it seems absurd, I lost some part of me with that little bird  

And

If a fallen bird is worth such mourning, 
How do hearts like ours go on?
In a world of constant yearning
Where you must hold, with both hands, your hope
Knowing the same hands must let go, of everything and all
How do hearts like ours go on?

The Last Cold Night of Spring

This may be the last cold night of spring, 
Wreathed as the world is now, in green, before the summer heat 
And seasons and years will pass before October 
Crowns again our feet with golden leaves

This street is the same in any season, always, and 
I wonder if the cars can see me sitting on the steps, 
The light of my pipe a beacon on the night
Coming alive as with longing eyes
As I breathe, beneath quiet skies

They pass the same as they ever have, the teenagers and adults, 
They drive at different speeds, though
And I'm old enough now to have played both roles
I’m looking more down and back than I ever have 

The lives do not change, just the roles they play,
Just the ages and the players, re-arranged upon the stage
The scene always the same,
In every day and age

Nor has the singular beauty of the night faded from this place:
The rising light of the headlamps as they crest the hill
Fills the forest as with fire, for just a moment, until
Cresting, the light holds still at the top, and then it drops
As they come down, at first without a sound, and then 
The leaves and the branches shake, as if awakened by a wave
As the cars pass on
To lives which must play out the familiar pattern
Day by day 

I sit here in the smoke of dirt and earth, waiting
Letting my soul be in no hurry, so that it, too, awakens

And I see, already, the autumn before me
Here in this last cold snap before the summer
As school lets out
As young children shout with joy
As the world crests over us, whatever our moment’s wisdom
Whatever knowing our age can hold

While this street stays the same
And the world crests like light 
Like all the sun's light, rising and falling on the night  

Now All the Words About God Become Smaller

Now all the words about God become smaller

They shrink away like the edge of day 
To a point on the horizon, 
They fade away

I want to hide them, like treasures in a cupboard, that no eye despise them,
Trusting the right time again to find them
I want to secret them away
Until that day

I want to hide them like my own nakedness, truth be told,
But not for shame 
Because, rather: preciousness is made profane
In the plethora of many voices, all around,
Proclaiming the way of God with endless sound
As if we should put up a sign and charge $29.99 
To sneak a peak at the Divine

And all these “prophets” speak with such rabid certainty,
As if their faith is doubtless
When we know
That great souls reveal the hidden path, covered in dust,
Only through great doubt, 
And the great cloud of unknowing 
Through which all saints must pass

Only in unknowing can you walk a path of trust, 
Faith demands not knowing, and the courage that says, 
"Still, I'll go"

Faith speaks with a still and quiet voice
Faith seldom roars 
Faith often smiles with subtle mirth,
Like Mona Lisa,
While speaking not a word

Every Bush is Burning

In the back of the church, in a storage room just beneath the holy father’s feet
Sat a pile of icons, dusty but stacked up neat
Each meant, in some future life, long delayed
To be a holy moment of grace, like a spotlight on a stage 
On which the mind can step, remembering that every hour is blessed 

On the stone floor, instead, they became a metaphor
For something I had not time to put words toward, 
My body lurching forward, my eyes only just catching sight of them

As we walked through the nave and into a blue sky morning
The world was already focused and on its way, with no time for saints
Everything too busy to be delayed

But the icons, as if with hands raised, kept saying
“Every bush is burning 
Every plant awake 
Leave us here in dust; let us go to rust
But if you see
I mean: truly look and see
That will be enough”

Suburbs, 1994

It was a grown thing to be well-versed in dark nights, seeking streets flushed with neon lights
We didn’t know what such wandering meant, but we wanted it
As childhood fell away from us, like a slipping knife 

We couldn't quiet pierce the stillness of the suburbs without being bad
And though we had walked out those doors a thousand times,
We hoped each time to find a different knowing, to quench our growing sorrow;
We wanted to become wise, with open eyes,
As the stars spilled light like water from a colander,
And we were tired of being dry

The streetlamp on the corner was unconstrained by any cover, free to send its light skyward and onto one another,
Those beams may in fact still be going on, in endless space, unrestrained
They felt like us with our growing lusts 

But on the asphalt, the light only glared with suspicion, as if we could not trust any darkness,
As if wolves or dark creatures hid within the shadows of the woods behind your house  

We were still children, after all
And afraid
And still, like Ophelia, we longed some dark swamp to find,
Some bit of secrecy to embrace, enough to sate the sorrow of empty bellies and hands which shook with their longing and their demand
To be full
To silence the voices that said, "be good"
And to find some truer selves, rising like the moon 

All this we sensed, though there were no words for it
Longing is nothing but a pulsing in the brain until it finds some sound to frame its name
And whatever we sensed was interrupted, anyway, as two streets down, 
A car careened in unrestrained rebellion, bucking loose,
A teenager, no doubt, cutting tooth 

We did not even have the age yet to be ironic: 
The screaming of the tires did not seem pathetic,
It seemed wild
A big black dog tearing at its chain
A dog howling out its name

All while
The trees swung likes books of revelation,
The evening swooned
The leaves just budding on the branches
The night just awake beneath the waxing moon

One Wild Night

I guess it wasn’t too wild;
There were no drugs or amphetamines, nor even wine or beer, that I remember
Though we did break into someone’s house

"Don’t worry," my sister’s friend had said, "I’m his best friend, it’s no big deal"
He shimmied a lock and we stood on the hardwood of a dirty bedroom which held a keyboard and drums, 
Which was just about the greatest sign of wealth and freedom I could dream of
All this because I was too young to go out, like each of my siblings, 
And had cried about it

My sister, having great compassion or pity, said, “Come with us, tonight”
And, somehow, my parents agreed
So I rode in the middle of the backseat, saying nothing, eyes full of wonder,
As teenagers plied the town with hungry hearts
To howl the moon and give enough vent to keep their hearts from melting down
In the insatiable lust of life  

My God, they were babies, just cutting teeth 
But they were gods, as I watched them, their great minds set on edge 
Staring through the windshield as if staring off a ledge
Knowing destiny would meet them, just ahead
Then looking at me kindly, as if I reminded them of something—
Adam before he had tasted fruit
A reminder of some lost truth 

They were in the thrall that is the endless, long horizon
And the lust of longing 
And how could they know that life is a long road
A highway running from a great city into desert, to which it must go, always heading west 
With fewer off ramps and stops for rest, and only the occasional Last Stop Gas

Fewer possibilities, because we must choose
And every yes is a no 
Every choice a letting go 
So that, in the end,
You will sit not on endless roads, but only one, remembering all the untaken paths
And lamenting, perhaps, that you did not stake your claim more boldly 
Before growing old and sitting in the shade of sunset 

This was all unknown lore, with no purchase on that summer night
Not then, by God
Not then 
Unfettered as they were and full of life
And as we drove, I could feel the lust, the longing to touch and hold all things
Their hands still gripped to eternity like fingers on a steering wheel
The possibilities still setting them free
As the ageless sky turned endlessly 

The New Earth, Again

I will miss the sound of striking matches and the crackle and cackle of wood 
As fire blots out dark skies
Death, in miniature, as night is, once again 
Defeated by light 

I will miss, too, stepping into pink morning as the bright infuses, like mischievous ink, the night
A promise and a prophecy that, whatever pain lies below, God knows 
Our grief and sorrow, 
And cares for our relief
And knows our grief, and how it grows 
He does not retreat, though we are waiting
And faint beyond belief 

By then, though, having almost fallen
I hope to be rising like a hawk on wings of wind, into colors that never end
Adjusting to those hues, not looking away, never more ashamed

The flames of heaven, they say, are hotter than any fiery flame or fiend of hell
And truth to tell, they’re just the same, seen in different ways, in the same place or places 

Still, there must be the mundane, unburning 
As we come back to here, knowing it well for the first time, the earth renewed
Holy things will reappear that we will, once again, grow accustomed to
Just as we did as children, the wonder of new eyes growing calm as days go on and on 

And yet, all will somehow remain beyond 
Beyond common, never growing old 
The smell of love walking boldly into a room
The scent of tobacco, wafting from a beloved box
The noise of a cello, 
The honking of a flock of geese 
Stirring hearts to pain with sudden beauty
And sudden relief 
Which we will remember—both the beauty and the pain 
Because
The promise is not the end of tears but their merciful wiping away,
And with it, fear

After all, how will we know love without pain?
How can we be comforted but in loneliness
As when someone, into our darkness,
Speaks our name 

Tragedy (Patrick Angus III)

This queer man died of AIDS
My God, it’s strange when tragedy becomes cliché, but 
This queer man, so talented, died of AIDS

And though he was by all means gay, 
He was not very happy 
(You see how words change, 
And we with them, as we try to fit them 
Like lightbulbs into the sockets of our own selves
Lest we become bereft, and wordless)

He used paint, not poetry 
But while I’m on the topic of putting outside of us all our desire, through art, like fire
And like despair, burning the air
I’ll speak of prayer:

I do pray now and then, since prayer goes both ways, 
Both forward and back in time
And I pray for him

I hope and pray he had time to find
The ecstasy of all his longing, bright as day, 
Like chasing butterflies or 
Flying in the skies and not falling into our lovesick, human ways, 
As we grow tired of the trying

I hope he saw it take wings—his longing, 
The little bird inside him joining a great murmuration of starlings

While everything looked on and applauded:
The whisper, the breeze, 
And above all,
The hard bit of tree within us, that somehow never ends
That rises and spins
Like a bird on the wind

The part that hopes to God 
Death does not win 

Everything a Type of Protest

I.

Everything forms a type of protest against the great lying down which is our lot 
Our destiny—the big sleep that hangs above us like a city sheet, waiting to fall down 
The gritty darkness of night, of fog 
As we bleat about like sheep

So, too, the professor asking for a whiskey, neat
While the bartender beats a sad retreat
Is its own ritual of resistance
And the drink a protest
A litany cursing defeat
A ceremony of prolonging and resisting sleep
As he stares into the darkness, unblinking
Rage swelling beneath his feet
Anger pointing him back to courage, swift and fleet 

I like to think he left that bar and went to get the girl
And began the good hard work of letting go and letting the wind inside his heart, like God
A spark to start an arc of fire
I like to think his protest became a life of love

II.

It is possible, after all:
I have felt the invitation of the Holy Spirit on my fingers and how, burning in the discomfort of welcome, the day rises to teach you even while it greets you
I felt that same presence one green summer, all summer long, 
Mistaken, called by some other name—youth or lust
When it was God’s own presence
A burning bush, except the whole world was on fire 

That summer, we rose on adolescence and thrived on indolence 
Broken only by the strain of good, hard, and sweaty work 
And we learned 
That even work is protest
And that every good deed laid down in love
Is to be resurrected in a great throng 
As crowds sing songs on the streets of some skyward Jerusalem, here on earth
With signs and banners flung 
And rainstorms come to wash away the wounds and endless words
Leaving us only knowing, which needs no speech

As the water drains down in gutters, looking for the sea
The streams can find no ocean (for the sea has been made no more)
And no more signs or banners of protest are needed
As there’s no more death 
For death has been protested by God Himself
As God carries a banner, 
As God is trampled under endless feet who do not see Him
As God rises skyward like the no-more sea 
As God sits, crowned at last,
Above all things 

On the Death of a Fish I Hardly Knew

When I lost my goldfish, the shame and sorrow
Of not knowing how to keep a life alive was the worst surprise;
I cried all afternoon, as if I’d died
The grief an anvil in my gut

There are all sorts of ways we eat the fruit, our eyes opened
There are many ways we stoop from lost hope, at the splintered roots of our mortality, which crests over us like a cold sea, unforgiving  

I learned, without words for it, as I sat on the stairs, alone, hoping someone would come to console me
I also hid, as in a garden, behind the trees
The state of my humanity
Please see me, please let me be
We want love, from love we flee

As the sun slanted its long goodbye
The stars were just close enough to touch
And silent
Quiet, as if they could not touch me
With mournful eyes, burning with grief
For a fish 
And, little did I know,
For every living thing 

Glamour

My wife's professor asked her class for "the opposite of beauty"
And what came to mind for most (and me, as well) was “ugliness" 
But “No," the sage said
"Ugliness still points to what it’s not— 
The absence of what we long for
Points still to something lovely, even by its absence"

The class rocked back, as she leaned in
"The opposite of beauty," she said (no doubt in that professorial tone
that knows a secret but plays it straight, proud but humble, crowned with grace)
"The opposite of beauty is glamour
Glamour points to itself, but beauty...
Beauty is a signpost to something else”

"That sounds clever," I said as we drove on, sitting in this little story,
And as my wife explained it to me, I remembered the figures which danced before me in Mexico, in a strange show 
All covered in swaths of lipstick, like warriors sick with paint,
Desperately clawing at one another, gripping flesh, the letting in of a wind that could not cool

And I felt again the sad song of how pathetic all that gripping was
Not young men and women standing in the river of desire, breaking the straight-jacket
With the courage to say, “Here I am” 
(Which is the most beautiful, being seen without fear 
Being here 
To truly touch and hold and feel)
But rather a thick crowd saying “Here I am not, 
But it will feel for a moment we are all in this together, and so…close enough”

The promise of good looks and money and flesh 
All enflamed to pass a torch across so many lips
Was glamorous and gaudy and awful, like a bad dream
A journey leading anywhere but home 
A touch so far from being touched
A truth so far away from true

Prayer Like Birdwatching

We waited behind the bush, with no bated breath nor restlessness but the peace of wild things 
The lake 
The rocks 
The trees
The breeze

When suddenly, a kingfisher burst into view  
Red bright chest, blue wings 
A choir singing

Only slowly, after he had flown
Did the world resolve to flesh and bone and shapes
With shades again surrounding me,
My body once again around me, as sound resumed in the chambers of my ears
No fear except awe
No tears except those that are close to longing 

The world, somehow, was unaware and still, 
Nonchalant, as if no great thing had happened
And the water rippled as before
The world restored, as if it had not gone away, but stayed
The mud was not turned to gold nor stone to set our feet upon

I shook my head at the strangeness 
And I breathed in the freshened air, as if aware
Of the sweetness of which to sing, of life, 
Of being here and now

Then I said “Amen” and was done with prayer 
As if one could be done with the rising sun or moon
The call of geese coming home
The need for trees and spring

I opened my door to face the world, 
Knowing that things are not as they seem
And great things await possibility
Springing suddenly into view, amid the most mundane, like newborn mountains 
If we don’t grow faint with too much seeing
If we don’t forget that everything is miracle 
That everything invites believing 

The Birdsong Breaks the Morning

How incongruent the birdsong breaking the morning, as if unaware
A prophet or an imbecile?

My belly—instead—woke in flames of fire, trembling like a wind-blown spire
With fear, a spreading dread, at some hidden thought, 
My body seeming once again to know before me—
Making sense of things unseen—
Believing something wrong  

But that song: 
It dreads no thing
The fringes of its reality marked with no dark edges
Just spring
As I lie in the dark
As I wonder if the lark
Sees things as they are
Or only as they could be

Or as they are, but still
Choosing song and spring 
Sings, 

Singing in the bright, pink morning 

What Makes a Man

When he was called to the Majors, after pitching a blank and scoreless frame,
He sat in the locker room and cried, as they called up his name, 
And all the good men loitering about looked away 
Or pretended the floor was a marvel to survey

They were happy for him and without judgment or jealousy, 
And though, of course, they wondered about their plot, 
They rejoiced at the turn in his fortune’s lot

There is the courage of warriors and of poets (though even warriors know a little verse),
And since we measure men by how fast they can throw a fastball or run the earth,
Or curve leather and cork above the dirt
We should remind ourselves that muscles, in fact, do not make good men 
And any who can stare into the grandstand of longing and still stand and not give in
Is also worth his salt 

In fact, every man who never sees the Big Leagues but tends the bit of land just in front of him, with devotion and a heart that does not get hard or wintered—
He is good and close to God  

Of these we should also sing, even if they make no Hall
Sing their song, no matter how hard they hit the ball  

When I Cannot Find the Start of the Toilet Paper

This morning’s reminder of my humanity is that
I can deal with the diseases of my friends
And I can ignore for the moment the reports of famine
And the fires clouding the horizon

But on my way to face the day, I could not find the start of the damned toilet paper, 
And I sat endlessly spinning the roll while my fingers found no purchase
Until cursing, I cried out 

I can, it seems, make peace with the things I cannot control nor understand
I can ignore them in the hope I can implore from reality some other kind hand, a friend
But when those things close to me go awry, I am reminded
Just how long the slope up is
And how powerless we are
And how far we fall 

Still, just beyond the bend, how beautiful the hope is
How perfect the laughter after a well-timed curse 
And the mirth when we can shake our heads
Our desire knowing, always, just how things should be
With fingers who so easily want to find just what they are looking for
And feel, even still, somehow
That this remains their destiny 

Deer at the Gay Bar (Patrick Angus II)

He painted men at gay nightclubs, watching other men undress, obsessed with the moment of unveiling, I guess
(Aren’t we all? 
With unveiling, at least, if not the rest)

They weren’t his best, but
I was beckoned into the hidden gallery by the sign that said "Adults only"
And rarely tantalized by the hope of something tawdry in a museum gallery, I went inside 

I would have been six or seven when he painted, this man who now has died
And the image of a deer comes strangely to mind
Rising as it tries to find its footfalls and stumbles forward 

Such is every person’s desire: 
To rise,
Until they are buried by whatever shirt-off-the-rack they settle for, thereafter hiding inside it

But Patrick Angus—and all true gods and poets and painters—by God, he reveals the deer’s shy heart 
All of them, with gently stepping hooves, quietly strike the ground
Lest they stick too far down in the mix of mud and grass and be tracked down by the hounds 

He painted a couple, too, sitting quietly on their couch
And in his self-portraits, he is like them, wandering and lost
But in these paintings, maybe not his best, nevertheless he painted 
At his greatest point of longing
Like his subjects, looking for some good thing to find

These men become his best metaphor, take one, take all:
At a gay bar
Every face so sedate, you’d think they’d never cried
The placid face over an inflamed belly, ashamed for having so much desire, eyes averted or looking down
The ground never answering
The ground quiet and silent

But then, one by one, they lift their eyes, some good thing to find, a deer looking for water 
With stoic faces
Alert eyes, 
All poised to not betray the racing heart inside
The stealthy glide into a meadow 
Leaning forward, slowly, like each of us, 
A doe dipping into an answering stream
Hoping one deep drink will turn the tide 

God Bless and Thank Him

May I never forget the man whose name I can’t recall, 
Who called English pounds squids instead of quid
As a dollar is a buck and not a duck, I’ll never know why he did it
Nor why he never smiled, since I thought he was letting me in on a little joke
But no,
He just ordered another pint and told me of his woes
With no self-indulgence, no pity
No invitation to carry his laundry 
Just an honest man, in reality, pointing out all the things that shouldn’t be and icing them with a swig of lager, before a glass of ale
Like we were all old friends

Some sorts are out of sync with life, thank God
We need them, jesters of a mad age
The knaves who personify our frustration, and our longing 
Who refuse to run and duck but look at life with pluck and stand out, the sore thumbs, 
Shirts untucked,
Taking a cigarette and hoping for luck
Stewing in their longing, for love, amid the rust and muck,
Waiting for the bus
Crayons unable to be pushed into their place within the box

God bless them, those un-coy foxes, and may they find happiness
And may we all find, each of us, trust 
On hearts unruffled by time’s dust 
Throwing down a glass upon the table, pushing over our squids,
And saying “One more,” with hearty lust