George Floyd

“I can’t breathe” you said,

and your last flame ignited

a deep, deep river

of anger that lit the night

of a thousand curfewed skies.

 

“I can’t breathe,” you said,

and your words were a mirror

that reflected back 

a vile truth so large it could

no longer be avoided.

 

“I can’t breathe,” you said,

and eight drawn out minutes and 

forty six seconds

taught us how long repentance

can feel when you’re on your knees.

 

“I can’t breathe” you said,

and the air they pressed out

from your dying lungs

filled voices across the world

and a multitude began to roar.

Here is the violent truth

Here is the violent truth
I can not move my eyes from—
I do not know,
today, of tomorrow.

I do not know
if a chance cough
from the packing boy
or the laughter
of a friend
will, in a fortnight,
leave me begging
for breath
on a sweat-stained bed.

I do not know
if that time I didn’t
wash my hands,
or the sweat I wiped
from my face today
will leave my children
alone and strange
in a far away land.

I do not know
if the normal
that felt so heavy
last March
will ever regain its weight
or if it will feather out
further each day
in a changing forever.

And so I must choose.

Distraction
or fear
or trust, each
with its weaknesses;
for distraction
cannot comfort me
in the small, sad hours,
and fear
cannot keep me
from death- heavy air,
and trust
cannot hold
my treasures as they are
but will transform them,
and metamorphosis
is never cheap.

Plastic Fork

Thousands of years from now,

you’ll wonder if it was worth it.

That brief functional start to life,

somewhere in a Chinese industrial zone;

the travel, the wraps,

the anxious wait,

undone, hustled, jostled;

then – joy!  seven minutes

of being all you were made to be-

director of the foreign and fresh,

the pressure of lips,

the teeth, the tongue, the tease;

Then back to the enfolding darkness,

to transport and machinations,

compression, suppression,

the long thousand-year wait

for obliteration, in ever diminishing particles.

Sure, you’ll outlive the lot of them,

factory worker,

driver,

shop girl,

eater;

outlive their grandchildren’s granchildren,

their kings and king-makers,

outlive their nations, no doubt.

But still you wonder,

was it worth it?

Overcoming

Sometimes it’s more than I can bear

the night that seeps into

the mildest afternoon,

a horror waiting at the sunshine’s rim.

But you said look,

so I looked,

and what I saw

was wonderful;

 

I saw scars,

once full of terror,

beautified by the telling,

the poison slowly gone

until only the story was left.

 

I saw oppression’s weight,

and under it a strength

that grew, and when its moment

came it dislodged mighty

boulders full of days.

 

I saw your light

within the cracked misshapen jars,

shining out to those around

and beating back the darkness

with their very wounds.

 

You said look,

and I saw

the overcoming.

Jan 2019

Descent

When the author of life

stepped into his own text

he chose a shed;

crud poor, a child of dust.

This was not the low point

though, the trough

in a rags to riches trope;

no no, far darker days

would come;

add shame, add hate,

and taunting hostile death,

and spit,

and agony,

Add the cup

of the wrath of God,

drunk to its dregs;

find how deep

the abyss runs.

 

Only then,

across the chasm’s floor,

the shock waves and

the overcoming;

 

Triumph’s compressed coils

unspringing faster than a soul

could leave its shell;

The adoration of the nations

growing ever louder

with the turning earth;

and the songs of angels

filling night and day

with shouts of praise,

Oh King of Kings!

the sun of righteousness

who rose and reigns;

the Lord of Lords,

with healing in his wings.

End of the Day

I wear the weary day

and hurry on, eyes down

toward the pebble-crete,

but you say, stop, cos

This. Is. It.

And so I stop. –

I see a green

I never saw before,

a piece of Eden, come

to visit down the ages,

pushing, furry and furnicular,

lone voice against the pavers,

speaking future truth

to a mighty now.

And this tiled tunnel

that once aspired to sterility –

it is not packed with people,

each a walking testament of wonder,

each, though bent

below flourescent strips,

a breathing child of the gods?

Three years ago today

Three years today

you went, and all

the folded world dipped

in toward the weight

of tears, all waters

ran toward it; then

a trickle ran one day

along another path

and that absorbing

dent was slowly raised up bit by bit.

Now  when my mind

runs freely past the gridded

surfaces, I feel the downward

run into the curve, but find

instead, not the hard unmoving

bowling ball of grief, but rather

a gap that I had not known

was there, a silent outline

standing in relief to the scribbled

busy palimpsest of life,

waiting quietly for my

uncertain fingers to find.

 

-Three years, Miss Tina.

6/11/2018.

 

 

To love at all is to be vulnerable

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

CS Lewis, The Four Loves.

 

There is no surety in love, except

its fall, and this as certain as its rise.

Perhaps unmet, unmatched across the void,

or maybe matched only  to meet an end

by bitter words or bitter death,  or left

behind by checkered changing ways,

it cannot last.

 

because the price of love is always pain,

then should I stay, and make instead

a wall? Wear out my days in grim fatigue,

or press  into an icy crystal pleasure,

cold and  numb? let vapid duty drain it

of it’s blood, let worming wearing doubt

unseat it’s strength?

 

I cannot, for you call me, Lord, to love.

Not shirk its price but enter wholly though;

be fully in, embrace the curling  fire,

the wound that’s waiting for it’s day; to fall

towards the awful fare and follow you

who loved the most, who knew the most how high

the price must go.

 

@ecnance Jan 2018

All or nothing

Sun after sun,
a waffled ocean out
beyond the distance
of the mindful mind,
the millennial breakers 
rolling on and in,

set after soundless set.
And here we all are,
the froth and foam of
a single noisy wave
in a sea of silence

still beyond still
empty endlessness.
We’re surely nothing;
or surely everything.
A temporary tumult
tossed up by time

or cell on balanced cell;
the summit of grace,
fearful in wonder,
a creature of love
in conscious-less cosmos.

Sunday Morning Prayer

Keep me Lord today on even keel
Not swayed by passing people’s acquiescence
Not searching for approval’s quiet nods
Not vigilant for others sweet acceptance

But shaded from my own sharp watching eyes
The inner judge, the wary referee
From ego’s pride or self same condemnation
Oh give me Lord forgetfulness of me.

Father, give me consciousness of you
Walk with me, lift my eyes up to your face
That your glory may be beautiful before me
And my restless heart be pulled toward your grace

May your heart be the treasure of my own
Let me find my fullness at your throne.