Nightfall

The longest night is full
of sweet lullabies,

polite and skittish
in all this darkness
like shopworn lovers who forget
the language of the heart.

Stars are brusque in this land of sleeping
where the charred blackness of the sky
roosts with a certain
anticipation of the clamor
of a deeper dawn.

In this solitude
the question isn't
how much time has passed.

The question is
how much trust
was withdrawn

when Hope lost her way
and she had to walk blindly

with only the sound of her breath
to keep her from surrendering
to the panic that comes
at the sound of our own
vacant and echoing footsteps
at the edge of every nightfall.

The Ways Love Calls Out

The pulse rides smoothly
under these shoulders today--

this enamel and a cursory edge
to the body is just a drum
that I have learned

to conquer before dawn
when the mind is crisp
and slightly awake

like the broken sky
at civil twilight.

The heart leaps up near these shores
and the ocean cannot contain
the brightness here.

The heart cannot contain
the ways Love calls out
in rose and clementine at the seam
between night and the bursting

open,

the smile of God rushes forward,
embraces a flower that splits
this inexact beauty
into a thousand petals
of prayer.

Hastening Home

In the charred and curved motion of the morning
let me hasten home to justify my flammable self.

Let me hasten to the home where God smiles with verification
and justice for the small things that collect in the corners
of the heart waiting to burst into flame
only to be shaped and moved to the middle
of this constant longing.

These volumes of words and contracts with the mind
are bound together in themes of color like dreams
and other lives unlived
or unloved.

I want the urgent love
that has me watching the clock
until the minutes drag me to the finish line
and I anticipate the exact fluttering breath
just before turning the key in the lock

and calling out your holiest name
in welcome and surprise.

I Will Not

It is not my mission
to ever be the martyr.

I will not grovel
at the feet of the fractures

fallen and broken on the ground;
edges sharp and spiritually dangerous.

There will be no sighing
or gnashing of words
to make an impression
or grabbing the hand
of a vulnerable stranger
for sympathy.

Instead, let me volunteer
the drab truth:

Life is messy,
love is often
imperfectly cruel,
and fair is fictionally
dysfunctional.

This heart is the seldom wise guide
we must learn to trust.

The Single Strand

Most mornings my mind
is the detective
finding clues after sleep,

grimacing at the exhibition
of the exact ways
the night has undone me,
torn apart my confidence
like a bundle of tattered sheets
and forced the mandatory examination
of what was the past.

This endurance race
is a competition against
the time kept by the heart.

The heart sits silently
arms crossed in judgement
waiting for the thief
to give himself up
for good.

Finally, giving back
that precious gift
of light shining
on the single strand
of a delicate web thread
that was missing all along.

The Companion of a Man

This is the story
of how we were all
once the companion of a man
who mauled our soul
with corrosive emotion
and grief.

The hand was bound
as it always is
in a shield
over another silent mouth
where no singing
was aloud.

The man didn't love the warble of our days,
but only counted the abundance of others
who were not his to count.

We wriggled free of the confines
of that greed and cloying closet of untruths
and walked as if our kettle was fully of new wine
and not of bitter boiled and then cold tea.

"Be faithful,"
he said
"Why do you loveth me not?"

We are gone to the sea
and the light of another
where he will never find the lonely heart
or the wise mind of many again.

This is that story
of loss and so much
more than grief.

Bringing Back the Living

The supple curve of the mind
beseeches a distant thought
to venture out

into the open spaces
where I left you
like a shard
of a shattered clay pot,

admonished for an unknown sin
or some unspoken emotion forgotten,
slouching near a silent cradle,

lost in a dark cravasse
or a echoing tomb
waiting for prayers
and intercessions
to bring back
the living.