Before the feast, an anointing,
which is to say I see you
which is to set the table
in hope
that when bread falls
like grain of wheat to soil
we may break
and eat a chorus
of amens.
Hallow
Oil of perception.
Category: faith
For Grace
May she be heard.
No words today. Not mine.
Only this plea, for protection
of the heart and spirit,
will, and strength
of Grace, that her
voice be lifted as
a torch through
this long dark.
It is time.
Into Next
With winged hero.
Hello, messenger. You are no good at flying but faithful in your attempts.
Pranked again by your devices, you can’t resist the dime store crown, the glitter-wrapped wand to go with it, even as it leaves you short one palm to break the fall. What resistance you have, you spend against gravity.
A study in wreckage, your devotion. There you go again to the height of the last wall in the next fallen fortress, to meet the updraft, that it may lift you backward into the hour at your open hand.
Hope Memo
Long view from well bottom.
Reminder: you will not be always in this gnawing gut at the center of your terror, and you will laugh again, and love someone who smiles back at you still. Even as you look away now, afraid to push your luck when it comes to what may be saved, you are raised to take less than anyone’s idea of deserving and that face tastes like the last memory you need. To hold that gaze from this deep a vantage for finding still this little light. A want to yell, Go, and keep them in it.
Not Yet Trained
In walking.
It may be the last step,
the bud of you forgetting
to open.
Will you
suggest it by your
form, enduring
this our dark.
Creature
what are you bringing?
as much bird as light
but show me kneeling
how it weeps
the bell of you
over us.
In the Making
Guardian forms.
Here is your origin: flame
crossing over sky, you
curve from here, from
two lines meeting
at an acute angle
to whisper wings
from these shapes,
nothing but
your parts.
***
Inspired by Paul Klee’s angels.
Behind the Curve
At the bottom of the lens.
Where is the story to account for waves of squirrel over branch, or this ache reminding there is no way sometimes it seems to reckon with (to recognize?) the way things are and when the fall and the hawk and the fire–––?
No. Look. Stop this.
I am looking. It’s the seeing that won’t come. I remember when sight was like a vision, the undulating body of it, ripe with equal parts recognition and want. Now this spinning, keeping watch, shapeshifting dark. It knows me. But I want to remember the other one. Who laughed and meant it.
Sparrow
For your deliverance.
Your bed the hole
you return to
in this house
your den this
noise looming
scourge upon tree,
this engine to drown
your last note and
the first, how
little one, do you keep––
singing
time?
How do you––?
Keep. Sing this
time.
The Size of a Day
Time for vigilance.
Then comes a big day. The kind suspended in stop-motion with a sound in the ears like the high notes of a distant organ, with bird quaking in chest and stomach sliding sick-slick with anticipation against the ribs. For saying Okay and Breathe and Please. For hyper-awareness of need, for the moment to respond to events already in motion. To accept all offers to be carried, prayed over, protected where you go alone. These big ones have a way of reminding what a day is. The others are no smaller, only less well known.
Late Work
An offering to other hands.
Over large canvasses, he painted whole body, whole space, his life.
When his given form could no longer rise to meet the wall, his family offered theirs as new mediums.
He used a laser pointer to guide their hands, the paint. Saying No, there, and Yes, like that. The work evolved, with them.
I miss being able to do it myself, he said, but it’s about the art and you have to go where it takes you.
***
Inspired by the life and work of of Frank Bowling.