Forgive me my groanings.
Today I surrender
These repetitive strains,
These perpetual embers,
My lingering hopes
And unmet desires
Have I forgotten so soon
How to douse these fires?
I don’t need someone
To see my soul
When I know You see.
I believe You know.
And earth is a place
Broken and ragged,
And loveless,
And jagged,
But still under Your nose
And skillful hands.
My hopes may never be met,
But I must still stand.
I remember today
It’s not about me; it’s about You.
Give me what I need
To do what I must do.
I write off the loss
Of everything’s sum.
I hand You the grief that stings,
Remember me when You come

Into Your Kingdom
Oh Tender King.

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health
of the daughter of my people
not been restored?
Jeremiah 8:22

I am broken down again.
This last revolution around the sun
Was costlier than my preparations
And by my seams, I am undone.
Isolation sent echoes, reverberations
Of reality, calculations, on and on they drone
In abandoned, sensate cerebral chasms,
But I am not alone
If You indwell me.
Keep me near.
I surrender any sin to scalpel,
Or any part of me that interferes
With Your everlasting kindness.
By my own eyes
I’m beyond repair,
Too much to bear, or to disguise.
Redeem me, Great Redeemer.
Lead me from death to life.
My sums come in: I’m insufficient
As a daughter, a mother, a wife;
Let me be Yours anyway.
Let Your countenance shine on me
So all my loss reflects Your grace,
All my ugliness, Your beauty.
I have endeavored to live for You,
But all my efforts have turned to dross
And all my love is trampled down
And all that remains is the gaping cost
And this is just my broken grief
Forgive me the manner in which I wail
Only You can do great things.
Only You can never fail.

Love me with Your everlasting love
For which I yearn, I hope, I sing
For only You can overcome
To love the unlovable thing.

Tender at the sailors’ knees
I heard the throaty tales
Of the mighty, masted vessels
Tossed by malevolent gales
Standing firm against the tide-
And oh! To hear the sailors brag,
Between a man and god, by hand
Pulling the ship back from the crags
When the warning beacon flashed
They could approach no more:
There be shipwreck here;
Do not pursue the shore.
The pulsing light an omen
Of the ships that crashed before.

But for the solitary soul
Abandoned to the sea
Punching waves with weakened fists
Pulled beneath the lee
The rays of light stretch forth
Like arms across the churning foam
Calling, “Fight! Do not succumb!
You will yet find your home.”
And the strength to fight,
To strive, to cope
Is fueled only by the nearness
Of the shining light of hope.

Father God,
The ones too strong upon their own
May turn by force at the first sight
Of Your shoreline, crags,
And streaming light,
But those of us too weak,
Storm-tossed by salty waves,
Call out under crests
To the True Light who may yet save.

And the thought will not leave me
Though my faculties stay poor
If You are who You say You are,
That I believe the more and more,
And if You love me as You’ve said
From before time and through Your core:

Then I am as safe inside the waves
As I am upon the shore.

Isaiah 54:4-17

O afflicted one,
storm-tossed, and not comforted,
Behold, I will set your stones in antimony,
And your foundations I will lay in sapphires.

I said farewell to the ocean
Throwing myself in his forceful embrace
In a fit of passion and bereavement
Kissing the foam from his white-capped face
He pulled me deep
Battering me with gray and blue
Before spitting me back
Like lovers do
Though I was yet a maid
But still I pay my vows
From the desolate sand I crawled
To firmer land, wandering out
Into the plains, unto a place
I cannot know
Where the tide cannot find me
Where the ships cannot go
Where the raindrops always run
From home to the coast
Like secret spies
Betraying their host
And I am alone
Staggering on spent feet
Wincing at the ghost current
Rolling the wheat,
Stopping in shock
As cicadas swell… and ebb… and swell…
Like roaring waves keep time
I find his handprints here as well
Under the wide sky
Stretching end to end
Over the mirror fields
Around one earthen body it bends

I sing myself an ancient lullaby
I sing it new every day
…to soothe the ache
…to keep the ghost at bay
…to rejoice in the infant sun

I tell myself the world is new,
Perhaps somehow I can be too

When the salt is off my lips.

May Your laughter roll like fiat.
Interrupt the scheming tongues
So blades that crave
Blood and dung
May drag behind as weights
Tie our fate
To Your eternal mast
And may Your laughter urge us on.

I remember the struggle
Stumbling forward, learning the steps
Momentum threatening a fall
But I embraced the trouble
Learning with no nets,
And inherent risk in all.

I sensed the imperative
Coded in the marrow of deep bone
Living unrehearsed
In a wild, meterless narrative
A billion and alone
Tasked to contribute a verse

While the heartbeats counted down
And the drums pounded time
To the metronome of breath
My temporal feet bare on ancient ground
Fumbling the rhymes
To say what I could before death

And the grave rang like an alarm.

I can’t hear the drumbeats anymore.
Nor the rhythm of fife and song
Beside which, step by step in step
My naive words marched along
Gone, all gone.

I can’t taste the disturbed earth
Stirred between the sole and the globe
Scuffled into rising clouds, trailing down
Like the train of a monarch’s robe
As off we’d go

And I don’t miss the words
A galaxy in locus
Weaving points to define ideas
Complexities in single-minded focus
Or endeavoring thus.

The everyday simplicity
Of working with my hands,
And leaning into silence
Feels a better way to stand
But either way,

I yield to Your plan,
Come what may.

I approach sunset
Unafraid
My shadow fleeing from me
Like some wild spectre
Stretching, grasping
Clawing through time
And the dirt
I’ve already tread
As though one shadow to another
Clasping, scratching
Could reanimate the dead
Or wind back the sun.

Behind, pale bones picked clean
Neglected by hollow ghosts
Empty promises of youth
Immortality and boundlessness
Lies of passion, hubris, myopia
Haunting formless night
While everything worth having
Walks in bare feet
Leaving tiny toe prints
In the dirt
Facing the sun
With a gait that spins the earth.

My eyes seek
Smiling light warming my nose
My dancing fingertips
Shining forth grace and purpose
Shrieks in my wake,
Twisted, dying distortions,
Use the obscurity of darkness
To belie their value
Joyfully I march
Through the dirt
Chasing the waning rays
Reaching out to catch me.

Everyone has an admission price.

Eight years ago
She arrived
From France
Clad in black and red
Leather and high heels
White wispy hair
Pinned tight on one side
And wild on the other.
She had no children
Just an abusive man
Of the child bride she was,
Left at once, but never divorced
Life is this way,
And she is straight in it, sweetheart.

Six years ago
She worked all hours
To buy her own home
In all parts of town but local
Maybe in decoration
Or an embassy
She spoke nine languages
But her French was slipping
She had one daughter
Ambiguously aged
Stolen by a man
She hates
She wants family here
But no man, sweetheart.

Four years ago
She worked for Princess Diana
In Inglaterra
She has a friend
He cuts her grass
But she doesn’t care for him
He hates children and animals
She had children
Six babies in her tummy
But she killed them.
That’s how she says it,
In tears every time,
Because she couldn’t afford
To send them to the fancy schools.

Two years ago
She was a nurse,
And had one granddaughter,
The paramedics asked her age,
Her sunken eyes shifted,
Spiderweb hair drifting
“Fifty-eight.”
Her loose-skinned fingers
Tightened in finality
Fifty-eight, final answer
And we looked at her
And we looked at each other
Trying to decide whether
She believed that nonsense.

Today
Her birthday cements:
She’s eighty-one.
Her husband, divorced,
Has been buying her home
In her name, as a gesture of kindness
She complains hitting her daughter
Somehow drove her away
And there’s another granddaughter
She isn’t impressed
She’s never been to France
She grew up in Portugal.
Twenty-years separated
Not more, not less

Today
She said her friend died
But she drove him away
She screams her age
Is her decision
And her husband is inside
Taking a shower
She didn’t lose her keys
The locksmith stole them
She’s never lost them
She’s never lied
She is straight in life
When everyone else is crooked
Like a gaping question mark

And I’d love her still
But for the high price of admission.

I’m angry.
Hawks skim and scratch
Earth to hunt, to fill their gut
Seeing as far as smooth beak
Unable to see
The pointed dagger curved beneath
That rips to feed.
Unfeeling toward the weaker things
Caught between tear and talon

The hawk exists as predator
Skilled at the catch
His hunger and his instinct
Drive his vessel
Searching the easy prey
Incapable, intolerant
Of sympathy
And humility
Is a foreign language.

Everything must eat.