Walking on Water

Diving in headstrong,

Headfirst,

Cold-water    good-morning    baptism-by-fire

As yet the shivers rock her spine.

Intoxicating, deep-breaths     close-your-eyes

Because you can’t turn and look the other pair straight

Too-shy        territory-uncharted      wand’ring guesses

Straight to the heart of her fear.

Too-sure    too-good,  

I’m so much more than you’re even imagining.

Too-heavy    too-soon   but

This is how I was made to love.

Oh God, please catch my breath,

For I fear I lost it as I fell.

To Carry The Fire

Dear little one,

God’s newest dewy-eyed creation,

here begins mortality.

You’re a warrior, love.

Only the fighters make it here.

The days will end that

angels are your playmates,

and the lessons will begin with

swings to the sky and bloody knees,

sticky-sugar fingers and a stomachache.

Your toddler eyes will widen as you find the seed,

which you buried long ago in the Earth

has turned to tender, fragile life.

The day will come when you realize that

each tender, fragile life, in the end,

will again be buried deep in the Earth, and

The angels will hold you as your tears teach you to mourn.

You’ll learn, love, that they don’t exist only in Heaven.

They live all around you, flesh-veiled grace-

they are the reason there’s good in the world.

There will be times your giggles turn to tears

in one breath and you’ll realize, as you try to explain your sorrow,

that words have given way to depth,

your fears are deeper than the dark,

and sometimes, all you can do is feel.

You don’t know him yet,

but he will set you free.

You will meet heaven,

and find your tongue incapable, forever,

of adequately speaking your soul.

You will reach, silently begging him

to hear, behind your words, the

universe of experience unable to be spoken.

You’ll taste death when he leaves.

Sorrow will run rivers down your skin,

Love and hate will rule together and

when you fall to your knees,

you’ll burn with screaming anger

and whispering sorrow even as your lips

beg God to bless his dear, beloved soul.

You’ll lie between clean, white sheets in the pale yellow morning,

feeling the draw between your soft, still sanctuary and

the bright wild world, and many nights

your heavy head will be ready to return much sooner

than your vibrant mind.

You’ll learn memories are not transcendent-

you’ll ache in the midst of beauty at the thought

of losing something you’d never missed before.

Yet if you pay attention in excruciating pain,

you’ll feel the beauty growing.

You’ll stop one day, in your tracks

your tiny feet dwarfed in Christ’s footprints,

and ask why roses have thorns.

He’ll take your hand and explain that if He didn’t give you mountains,

you’d have nothing to climb.

You’ll learn little one, that

to be human is to experience every contradiction.

The friction in our muscles, in our minds, in our lives-

it’s the heat that fuels the flame, and we are created for nothing less

than to carry the fire.

(Fall 2014)

La Vérité Te Rendra Libres

Je m'a reveillé, et
je m'a inquièté
de toi.
Je ne sais pas qu'est-ce que tu es penser,
Mais je vraiment sais que je veux savoir.
Parce-que je suis penser que je veux que
nous soyons ensemble,
sans l'anxiété.
Dite-moi que tu penses la même que jeudi dernier,
parce-que je suis encore là.

What it Takes

Do you remember that day?

That day that you asked me, and I said

Yes.

That was so brave of you.

But I’d been asking myself that question for days,

It had been before my face long before

It had ever been on your lips

But you see, I’d been asking myself for months and years

And for forever the answer was always

No.

And I’d leave. I’d get scared and run away.

And now?

Now that’s the very last thing I want to do.

The tests say it will be an uphill battle and

Your eyes say it will be awhile before you can work through the fear

But the Earth’s axis runs right through her polar opposites and it’s around that

That everything else spins and so I still believe my heart when I hear it whisper,

Hope.

Hope that we won’t lose ourselves burning alone

Hope that I won’t break my bones kicking in my empty days

Hope that you won’t choke on all the joie de vivre pouring through my veins

And all the inexperienced fear pouring through yours.

Hope, desperately, that you’ll learn to talk to me and I’ll learn to listen to you

Because if we don’t learn that

We might as well consider ourselves drowned

In a sea churning all at once with too much and too little

And all the passion lacing it together will scorch our trust

And when burned fingertips jerk back in pain

They’re seldom offered again.

And you’re terrified of my words,

Scared to death, even,

But they’re all I have.

They are how I speak so nothing means anything but

Exactly what it’s supposed to.

And if I didn’t speak the words they’d remain

Always

Confused and thick, opaque,

And wading through them would take too long to keep up with our hearts

And I’d trip, falling through your arms

After you’d already let me go.

So I promise that I’m not giving up on you anytime soon.

But I see the mountains in front of us and

I’m not willing to climb them without your hand firmly pressed in mine

the clearest understanding running through them

And the biggest love in the world alive and well

In our brilliant hearts as they beat

Side by side.

Fools

Nothing good comes without hard work.

The night was hollow

Watery-grey, barren

jusqu’à toi.

You were earnest, simple,

childlike in your sincerity.

I read deeper.

Time reveals your unsure fear to me

My eyes know now how to see;

they pierce through the hesitance and

it tugs my heartstrings

earnestly, simply

childlike in their sincerity

to understand and be understood.

Heaven knows you’re out of practice and

only Heaven knows how tall our walls really are.

And you couldn’t know how different it feels for me

to have good reason

to trust.

And I couldn’t know, I can’t know

what lives in your mind

as we slowly whisper our way ahead. 

Beckoning

Come home.

They won’t be there for you,

But I will be, and

I’m good for the soul.

Come home because the crystal-soft clouds

Hover above the mountains

Blanketed with hushed snow

And the sinking sun tosses it all

In rose-white and grey.

Come home because I will be there

to stitch up your heart

After they cut open your body.

I will stay with you so you’re not alone.

Come home because as the glowing clouds drift across the

Last bit of daylight sky, they leave behind the blue and white,

The first touches of dusk spread across the windswept snow

And it’s then we’re all grateful to have our orange-bathed hearths.

Come home with peace.

Come with a love deeper than you’d ever known leaving.

Come wrapped in the arms of Christ and

Come in faith that you’ve never left them.

Come because you have to.

Come under the knife and the needle;

Walk brave through the fire;

Serve God, and mend.

Come with your heart full of their tears

And their wrinkles and their child’s faith.

Come with their fire to warm the cold people of the North.

Come in faith that you’ve never left them.

Come home.