Thursday, November 20, 2014

November 20th

These words aren’t working.
Even when I’m with you, the words stall.
I must offer you my open hands as another offering,
something not visible. I need another language.

the rough weave of your robe with the trailing hem
the glisten of light in your eyes as you turn your head to speak

how you came down off the mountaintop lucent still but willing
to walk into the piercing multitude and despite desperate, uncertain faith,
heal

when you stand unsteady on your feet while he washes his hands,
wait for the spoken verdict while the drops of blood and water
fall

I called and you caused me to know
everything you already taught me
those lessons tumbling back into the place
you never left, but
I love to be invited, you whisper
Though this is a secret you’ve already shared,
I love when you tell it to me.

I never live further away than the reach of your arm
Your heart is my hearthstone, touchstone, pillow
and if my love has any power to compel, I will pull
you toward me each time I sleep, wake, breathe
because you are there now.

Last night when we went to the orchard
the weeds pressed back the door
I had to open it hard over sweet smelling
tuffs of grass, even the trees were overgrown,
mossy. A branch had fallen.

We stood in the midst of this tumbled down beauty,
chiaroscuro traced and living, and it was more lovely
even than before, when I had lain in the grass to
watch the sky falling fathomless between the leaves
and you lifted me up to peer over the wall.

You asked me what I wanted to know.

Though I love that most excellent of songs,
it’s not your poetry that moves me,
it’s not your power or your glory.
It’s that you,
being the manifest image
of the unseen and living God,
sat somewhere near the sea of galilee and said
blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth
in the syllables of an eastern dialect,
your voice filled out by a whole human frame.

I love that you scraped your hand on the wood, sat tired on the well,
You wore your sandals out, stayed up sleepless, went hungry,
scattered the crumbs and compelled the riffraff to the
wedding feast, dismissed herod with vivid curtness
and pressed on toward the perfection of the third day.

It's your calloused fingers curling around the nail as
you die slowly amid the babble of mocking voices
and desperate grief, with the wooden sign inscribed
over the cornerstone.

o my beloved Rabboni,
teach me the language of your kingdom,
reveal your heart from the inside out
and show me again that I live there,
walking with you in the cool of the morning.