New Poetry, Summer 2013

People Might Get the Wrong Idea

To pray for you

May be nothing other than the impulse to hold you

In my arms and share what you’re going through,

To take the suffering away from you

And give you whatever part of me happens not to be sad or afraid.

This being the best I can do in face of the fact that
God doesn’t usually honor my requests to eradicate your suffering.

And it’s limited to aspiration, because if I actually took you in my arms,

People, including you and me, might get the wrong idea,

So I withhold my literal embrace and make a wish:

That the lack of distinction between us will be revealed

And we’ll find consolation in that truth.

Unless to pray for you

Is nothing other than ascesis in the face of your hatred of me

Nothing but the impulse to force you into my arms

Against both our wills, and make siblings of us in spite of it all.

To give you whatever part of me happens not to be sad or afraid,

Even if I don’t really want to.

This being the best I can do in face of the fact that

God doesn’t usually honor my request to morph us into brotherhood.

And it’s limited to aspiration because if I actually took you in my arms,

People, including you and me, might get the wrong idea,

So I withhold my literal embrace and make a wish:

That the lack of distinction between us will be revealed

And we’ll find consolation in that truth.

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The Cure

 

Our great shared illness: 
Belief in the Supernatural. 
Koan becomes a riddle to be solved  
(with a prize, naturally, expected). 
Eucharist becomes a magic trick.
Resurrection becomes a miracle different from all the others. 

Enlightenment becomes something other than what’s there  
whenever I open my eyes, 
Or close them.

I was once cured of the illness 
When someone smiled at me with kindness 
And I smiled back. 
Though the cure lasted only as long as that moment.
Nice moment, though.

 

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Transcendence

From a crevice in the granite

Of a mountain on this planet

Alpine flowers testify

To resurrection. Then they die.

The rocks so recently bedecked

Remain unmoved, as you’d expect.

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Prayer

Lord have mercy:

On those I hate,

On those who hate me,

On those I love,

On those who love me,

On those I’m indifferent to,

And on those who are indifferent toward me.

If that doesn’t cover everyone,

Let me know.

 

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Chalcedon

Shared experience

Requires articulation.

But a problem arises

When the word

We speak in response--

Even φύσις--

Isn’t seen to be as provisional

as all other words.

And another problem arises

When we think of provisional as untrue.

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Poem for Any Day of the Week

None of us escapes idolatry.

We’re born into it.

It teaches us our story.

It explains all our sorrows

And joys.

We get PhDs in it.

Life is the process of

Undoing it

To see what remains.