To the Rain
Sunday Mornings Are Never Really Sacred
A poem I wrote years and years ago that I am reminded of today. I like to think something really new and beautiful awakened after I wrote it. I don’t really go to church or am A practicing Christian” any longer, but I do find something wonderful about a Sunday.
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Sunday Mornings are Never Really Sacred
Sunday mornings are
never really sacred.
You walk to church,
like your feet are carrying you there.
You can’t say why.
It just feels like something you’re supposed to do.
Minds eye takes me home
Meandering road
Pennsylvanian vistas of the
Hilltop crest past the Christmas tree farm,
Barn door tucked into valley folds of
sunlight soaked evergreen pond.
Tampered by the promise of
Lumped on fracking wells
To end this recession.
In the city you arrive at the church
and climb to the balcony.
No familiar faces greet you. The sounds of a passionate piano do not guide the way.
No tapestry of a labyrinth, or a Pentecostal dove.
No smell of flowers or wax dripping off of candles.
No need to brush legs with your neighbor while you step into the pew.
No prayers of concern, no reverend who raises his hands –
Let us stand and greet each other.
Just that little black book, where you write your name and check whether you are a member or not.
And the hymnal too. It’s the same shade of blue.
Without white walls to use as a pallet for the colors seeping out of organ pipes,
your gaze tracks the leaden frame of a stained glass window,
dodging eye contact with a painting of Christ.
Your mind drifts during the sermon,
And when the collection plate comes around you throw a dollar in,
hoping it will atone for the sin of forgetting to tip the cabbie last night.
These avoidances keep you vulnerable,
until the end of the service, when the man in front of you with a startling stare turns around and invites you downstairs for coffee.
Tells you about what a great church this is and boasts of former reverend with Princeton accolades who boosted membership with his own bare hands.
Walking back to your apartment under a grey sheet of sky
you call your father and remember that today after church
you won’t be watching red cardinals and clumsy squirrels
dancing in the big pine tree
outside your long glass window
Rather hum to yourself
Be Thou my Vision
While washing the dishes
Ode to 艾 and 爱 (Ode to Ai and Love)
Compassion
Found you in the woods
I found myself lost again in
your words, in your embrace on
the rock
We watched a child splashing through the
water
Both of us, wanting to be present – but what was missing?
For me – the absence of a child between our sevles
How I wanted a part of you to fill me again –
your energy to sink into me, your breezy
cloud of healing, as my hips opened
and you declared me whole
But you never stayed you always
had to leave, somewhere better to be, I guess,
I craved to hold you again, admit you are my meant to be,
a powerful master, and held beneath you I wonder –
Why did I choose this life?
We only see the subconscious,
subtle,
We can never really be free from
a society of laws, yet you and I are divine
creation, in four
hands