BLESSING

 

                                                May God bless and fructify this sunrise.

                                                May it edify and round us on our fragile globe.

                                                May we learn patience, giving and forgiving.

                                                May we pick the daisy that is ours.

                                                May we weather storms and fortify our stalks.

                                                May we cherish the vanishing wind.

                                                May we know and cradle that centipede, time.

                                                May we knead each other’s flesh into spiritual bread.

                                                May we smile into each other’s veins.

                                                May we daily catch that flicker of bright water.

                                                May we walk white fields to find our warmth.
 

 

 

 

DIPTYCH

DIPTYCH

Outside, the sun

                        reflects a golden icon

 

                        hovering

above grass,

 

                        madonna and child

                        suspended in air, divorced

 

                        from the wall, two

                        places at once

 

                        here

                        and beyond

 

                        caring both ways,

                        reminder of dualities:

 

                        The self created

and creating

 

                        God

 

                        against

the naked glass

 

 

 

 

 

GOD-GIVING

 

                                                Why do you stare so at my vestments?

                                                This is my job.  I take bread and wine at the altar,

                                                bless young couples, the dying and the sick,

                                                cleanse all those guilty consciences.

 

                                                This is the work of the Lord.

                                                Why should a particular physique be

                                                requirement for consecration?—

                                                how can the beard, the stoop, particulars

                                                of the body make God’s flesh more digestible?

 

                                                I will tell you plainly:

                                                The divine is both male and female,

                                                Adam and Eve in the primordial garden.

                                                Two-fold reality eating the apple.

                                                                                               

                                                How can a woman lead the flock?

                                                Same as a man: with a crook in her hand,

                                                eye alert for cold dangers.

 

                                                This bread—baked by one of our own

                                                parishioners, truly dedicated woman, a real dear—

                                                is not just filled with flavor and sustenance.

                                                This is the awakening; anyone can come and be healed.

                                                No requirements at the door, no gate fee,

                                                just these hands, and what a woman has baked.

 

                                                You see this wine?  Darker than

                                                anyone’s blood that’s spent of oxygen—

                                                I love this color.  So full-bodied,

                                                smooth, you know the substance is real,

                                                not juice, not table wine—sacrifice.

 

 

 

                                                My congregation loves me—most of them.

                                                A few dropped when I came, there were fights,

                                                finances, apocalyptic overhaul—

                                                that’s why I was hired, to cure a dying

                                                church, to give it life and breath.

 

                                                That I have done.  To all I give

                                                the same absolution: Kneel and be reborn.

                                                The fundamental promise of this place.

 

                                                Whatever cloaks the body or mind,

                                                whatever ravages the heart and tongue,

                                                whatever ties us to earth and night,

                                                we hold out our hands: Let all

                                                come who choose to live with bounty.

                                               

 

 

MOTHER AND CHILD ON BOARD

 

 

                                                They sit on the seat beside me—

                                                commuter flight, departing late,

                                                thunderstorms around us,

                                                curled up like two question marks,

                                                one safely inside the other.

 

                                                The poem we hoped so much

                                                for, struggled so much for,

                                                sleeps now beside us

                                                with rhyming shirt and shoes,

                                                male face and female face

                                                that scarcely differ.

 

                                                Again the universe is trying

                                                to correct us, correct our maladies,

                                                feed us back into the body,

                                                connect us one to another peacefully.

 

                                                Storms hardly matter

                                                in this arc of hair.

 

                                                Eventually they wake—no crying,

                                                big eyes, a new world everywhere—

                                                and home comes near

                                                by itself, opening its big arms

 

                                                at the gate, where we

                                                enter our own new place

                                                with such gifts.