Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “Go Home and Sabbath Already”

 
After a week spent doing one's best,
honestly, and with gumption,
 
couch-planting,
snack-hoovering,
kisses stolen during 
commercial breaks
 
are all offerings
poured on the toes
of the One who kicked up
Their heels on the globe 
which now houses
 
this shadowy, gorgeous
life we all try
to lead.
 
Making, 
renewing,
authoring existence
is exhausting,
and if Divinity needed 
a day off,
who do I think
I am?
 
This is to say:
Reality can spin 
without balancing on 
my little fingertips, 
so I fold my hands
behind my weary head
and give it a rest.

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “Sandcastle Proverb”

The one who builds a sandcastle expecting it to last, to be the inner sanctum of peace wherein one can sit and be still with God, is the one most crushed when the best-laid blueprints fall to the tides. The crafts of human hands will always, and inevitably, wash away.

But the one who sits on the beach, who is covered in grains, who leans back to taste the salt in the wind, leans forward to feast the eyes on the waves, knows that the inner sanctum is in the Tabernacle is in all the world is in us–there is found peace, there is found God.

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “Goddess of the False Pasture”

What a sweet and shiny
golden calf!
Allow me to point out
its needled horns composed
of others’ opinions;
its meaty rack of ribs
which feature
only the most desperate efforts; 
the reflective eye,
always searching for the moment
to expose imperfection--
that piece keeps one 
tap dancing!

Its hooves record
the cool places I’ve been
and
its spine is as stiff
as my righteous soapboxes
and
its surface is beautiful 
it must be beautiful,
or else! Or else. 

Bruises bloom on 
my knees
from the kneeling,
but I need no salve--
only its gilded presence 
which shines down on me,
Goddess of the False Pasture,
makeshift deity.

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “Tired”

Sprinted all the way
only to find exhaustion,
not a whole lot else. 

Turns out erratic 
movements yield a little less
than satisfaction.

Here we are again
with spinning tracks in the mud
leading to nowhere.

Maybe I’ll stand still
and see what happens if I 
JUST STOP FREAKING OUT.

Prayer requires more
and less than all my efforts
to just stay alive.

Live free, live light, live
comfortably in the grey,
at peace with our God.

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “Skin”

The sun baking my shoulders bronze,
the thrill of my husband's hands,
making peace with unknown dimples,
the tension that released,
the gooseflesh that rose,
 when God whispered,
"I am working in the quiet,"
while the sun rose against
bruise-tinted clouds.
The birds shouted quietly,
and so did I. 

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “The Clockmaker’s Sales Pitch”

“Look at my flawlessly crafted wares!
The time is never off and
the wood is carved just so and
nowhere in the world is there
more beauty,
more perfection,
than in my little shop.”

“But…
the time is wrong,
the design leans left,
and there are veils
around them all…
can you see what I see? 
What do you think
you’re hiding?
What do you think
you’re proving?”

“Wait, don’t go!
You haven’t seen my best yet!
Watch as I dance
in time with 
the ticking;
watch as I sing
like a canary with
the chimes!
Surely you’re impressed.
Surely you want them all.”

“I hear dissonance.
I see panting, exertion, desperation.
But--”

“But?”
Expectancy,
lashes fluttering.

“But I also see
weathered hands and
shaking limbs and
the particular glint of 
eyes manic with exhaustion.
Are you okay? 
Do you know how 
hard you are trying?”

A frantic smile,
a twitching brow,
and the whole body cracks,
an eggshell that
sighs with relief.
In the rubble, 
a field mouse,
soft and small.

A hand,
scarred itself, 
lifts it, cradles it.

“That’s better. 
That’s more like it.”

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “The Church and Me”

She and I both
wear tattered veils that we
desecrated,
then repaired,
with our own jagged needles,
our own greasy
fishing line.
We call it “good enough.”

But He stands behind us,
holding out shimmering cobwebs,
lacy snow, 
crowned with gems whose colors
we have not yet seen. 
He is joyful, a groom. 

She and I both
know better than to 
kick sand or
pull hair, 
yet our wandering feet set
granules aloft,
our grubby knuckles 
constrict around our siblings. 

But He kneels in front of us,
holding out a wingspan 
of invitation,
a tear-banishing embrace,
longs for us to 
nestle our noses
in His collarbone, His safety. 

She and I both
realize there is more;
we are bristling with
awareness
of the far, encroaching shore
we wish we could reach;
we give up 
trying.

But He comes to stand beside us,
an electric, crackling
wire between us,
and begins to run, leap--
“Come on, pull! We can bring it nearer!”

Tug, rest, tug, rest.

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “Aaron’s Son”

A father reborn of
ornaments and ephods
leaves footprints on
tentatively conquered
sand and bids as 
he is bid as the
long line of tomorrow's sons
are bid--
"Come on, 
follow instructions,
I didn't ask for
such fearful glory, 
either."

We are the small storm clouds
sprinkling the blood of our neighbors'
meandering;
we risk the veil in the
name of calling, of fealty,
of love,
because what
else
can we do?

Sunday Afternoon Poetry: “Prayers of the Greedy”

Forlorn over phantoms
and leached of blooming color,
Your child just wants pretty things to be entirely her own.
Ask and ye shall receive?

The ask is for splendid green hopes
to crunch, burnt,
beneath feet put in their
proper place.

The ask is for every steeple
to crumble except
the ones carved by her
dimpled hands alone.

The ask is for the carousel
to grind to a halt so that
flashing lights and whirling music
would have time to seep into her veins

so that

she may burst forward in movement so that
she may dance at the parade’s head so that
she, Your sweet little she, might taste
the fruits of her entitlement,
plump and flowering and
sickly special.

But You see true jewels in the
greedy jowls of brats
and promise something
better,
better,
better–
slowly, surely better.