The wandering rise of morning light
Mingles in and through the crowns
Of oak and elm like broken speech.
The halting of a haunting while
This day breaks into pieces on the ground.
Light falling all around, resting on
Seemingly impenetrable surfaces.
Leave lie its’ yellow demure as it lay
in silent reflective yawns.
“Come. Recline. Bathe in my pouring.
Light loads I give you stretched
In Sabbath shine.”
Lord of the dance,
roll out the sun
and its shine.
Light up the scape
with nervous pastels
furrowing spring breezes.
Let the arias raise
like winged praise
above the seams.
Take our hand,
glide us, lead us,
light on our feet.
Till our dormant hearts.
Water us down to the
tip of our roots.
Guide us to the
updrafts of Your glory,
to float on Your praise.
You are the Lord
of the dance.
Sweep us up.
This was the writing prompt I found:
In order to grow, I feel I need to…
Cry.
That’s all. Simple. I’d John 11:35 it. Jesus didn’t cry though. He wept according to some versions of biblical text. One short sentence. Two words. Jesus wept. Period. Full stop.
In order to grow, I feel I need to…
Weep.
Weeping seems like more of a holistic release. A slow burn. Letting the tears fall where they may. Instead of blood-letting—tear letting, as it were. Slit those ducts open and let it rip.
Fill in the blank: _______ wept.
I used to cry quite a bit, back in the day, before pain, hurt, and loss weren’t thrown into an everlasting pyre and minimized as “life is difficult”– nothing to feel here. What the… How in the world?
“Have a heart,” they say.
“Do I have a heart?” I ask.
My as-sigh-nment this week from my counselor is to sit with the pain. What pain? Which pain? I’ve been to pain and back many times. Haven’t you?
Wait.
Sit.
Jerry, sling your memories over your shoulder as best you know how. Gather up your humanity and come down to the river. Be brave and vulnerable. I’ll help you unpack it. You know how people say “I laughed until I cried.” It works both ways, you know. You’ve said over the years “tears lubricate the soul”. You’ve stopped taking your own medicine. Your heart is broken, but not broken open. I Am a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. I’ll sit with you by the river as long as it takes. I want to replace the stony parts of your heart and give you a heart of flesh. Do you want a heart like that?
My poetry went missing,
The selected words
Blended in the white noise
Of yule mules and
Their sleigh bells a bouncing.
Commerce over Christmas,
The ever present threat
Of package over presence.
Infuse our giving with life,
Let not our hearts inflate
On front lawns of light.
Guide our hearts to
The hearth of the matter.
Warm us by the fire
Of Your reality,
And give us more than
Peace on earth,
Grant us a piece of
Your heart.
Amen.
If a leaf fell in the forest
would you hear the sound of it?
Would it’s still small voice
turn your ear to its descending color?
Before the fall, they hung in piles
upon the air, green and greener veins
sipping life out of the twig tips.
They clapped their hands upon the wind.
Now burnished and fainting, they blush
and leap on breezes that speak
of new seasons, changes that come
when they lay themselves down.
Burn brightly in the rain,
send your rays across the field,
or sit silently, wait, and whisper
on the wandering breeze.
Set your golden lips,
the ones mimicking the sun,
and blow her yellow kisses.
Lay them golden on her olive skin.
Cliff diving any one? I am not saying go jump off a cliff. While Congress clenched their fiscals we came to the end of the year surrounded by life, liberty and the pursuit of happenings. There is evidence lying/laying everywhere including teenage girls strewn about on our basement floor. Our house filled and emptied over night and fireworks could be seen just over the distant tree line as time and space birthed a new year. I thank God the Mayans weren’t the only ones who designed a way to keep track of our earth’s laps around the sun. For breakfast I drank dark Cafe’ Verona roast and consumed beans & franks and a miniature spice cupcake.
My finger tips now rest lightly on the keys here and I wonder if I will have anything in 2013. Gathering words from the swirling brain cells (Both of them.) and pushing down the plastic squares to form sentences worth reading seems a bit scary of late. I have been taking strolls around the writer’s block for months now it seems. I read much though and experience life here in the revolving door of our house of happenings. They say write from your experience. There is experience everywhere I look. So, what do you want to read about? Or rather, what do I want to write about?…or both.
Snowflakes drift down just far enough apart that if I tried really hard I could count them.
Bacon sizzles as a zombie daughter stands over it.
Buford the bloodhound snores on the couch…
New Year’s Eve, in the midst of convoluted conversation noise, I heard a blues riff in the corner of the living room. Over and over two guitarists laid down the well known ba dah dah ba bum… I sat betwixt them and waited on my muse to lyric the music. Nothing came. No words. They kept laying it down and I sat on me duff.
I am determined not to come up empty in 2013! We all have something to say. In fact, we say much with or without words. Like I responded to a text from a long time friend’s wishes of ‘Happy New Year’…”The world is still spinning and we are hangin’ on!” There were many times in 2012 in which letting go flashed across my mind. The world seemed to spin faster and out of control with Innocents killed, wars and rumors of them, fallen leaders, economies with faint pulses, and not to mention my own faint of heart self. Hmmm.
I am still here. You are still here. Ever ask why? Don’t spend a lot of time with this question, but do ask. Maybe when your eyes first peel open as you lie on a new day is a good time to ask away. I ask with the expectation of a still small voice response. The other day I said a short prayer: (My prayers seem to be shorter and shorter, but more to the point.) Lord, touch my heart.
The day went as expected. Lisien, my special needs child, asks every evening when I arrive home “how was your day daddy?” My standard reply is “Long and arduous.” That night she even answered the question herself with a smile…”I know, long and arduous, right?” Hmmm. What is my family catching from me with these words? Better change the conversation even if each day IS long and arduous.
My wife and I planned a date to see the movie Les’ Miserables that evening. I almost backed out because I was kind of whipped from a day of grannie stepping deliveries to each door because of ice and snow. I tend to nod off in movies anyway and I heard Les Mis was stellar. I didn’t want to miss any part of it. We went with my oldest son. My heart was deeply touched and I remembered the morning prayer. After the credits and music stopped I thought: We need more Jean Valjeans in this world. Can I become one? Can you?
Short Prayer: Lord, mold my heart. May the choices I make today be the change for a better tomorrow.
I mean it. This isn’t a Hallmark commercial…:)
Then breaks a day
like an egg.
Sunshine in the pan,
golden bubble
clouded ‘round.
Crack us open
to bend rays of hope
on this new day.
May our joy
be easy over.
How many have written of a sunrise?
The darkness peeled slowly like an orange.
The thumb of God pushed up the dimmer switch.
The light swept the horizon and overflowed its banks.
Silhouettes shed layer after layer.
Shadows stretched, yawned, and shrunk.
It dawned on me.
This day, I will stand in the light.
I will walk in the light.
No sense in tripping over shadows.
“Jesus once again addressed them: ‘I am the world’s Light. No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness. I provide plenty of light to live in.'” John 8:12 The Message
I know,
is the back seat really a place for love?
In one respect, I think not…
But hold on a minute,
I’m talking about love.
I dreamt I was a taxi driver,
in and out of traffic and jams.
My light was on, waiting for a whistle or a hand.
She got in and sat in the middle back.
The rear view cropped her face.
Her brown eyes caught mine in the mirror.
“Just drive a bit,” she said calmly.
I nodded and pulled back out into it.
She smiled her eyes and
I think I smiled mine back.
“So, any destination in mind?”
“Life.”
“Ah, sure, is that near West 42nd Street?”
“You never know.”
“Well, I will never know if you don’t tell me.”
She winked and fully opened her eyes,
briefly exposing the whites like teeth.
Somewhere, I heard the eyes are the window to the soul.
What a beautiful window.
I thought I saw her soul…even more beautiful.
She leaned forward with her chin
nestled in her forearms.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I am not in a hurry.”
“I’m starting to get that. What about the meter?”
“Keep it running, where I want to go is priceless.”
I took one hand off the wheel and relaxed a little.
“A taxi driver not knowing where he is going…”
“…is a nice diversion,” she whispered.
“Wait a minute, you just hinted at a destination.”
“I suppose I did, but you are the driver. Without you,
I am not going anywhere,” she sang with a smirk.
“What kind of Jell-o logic is that?”
“Oh, let’s not get strapped too tightly into logic.”
I took a cleansing breath. “Jell-o,” I said flatly.
She sat back in the seat and stared in the mirror.
“What?” I said.
She brushed the band of brown hair from her eyes
and tucked it behind one ear.
She said softly, “Look into my eyes.
I know you saw it the first time.
That’s right. It’s the beauty beyond the eyes.”
I did see it.
I pulled over and the tears in my eyes magnified
the beauty I saw in hers.
I felt something jump into me.
“That’s where I was hoping to go,” She said as she
handed me the fare and walked away.
God is love and is closer than you think.
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you;
I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26
Pull over, out of the traffic for a moment and look into the eyes of the lover of your soul; Jesus.
Gerald the Writer 