of peace, then with choking faith in heaven
will silently shake our heads. the day it happened,
still covered in ash, makes the light grow thin for
us—the ears torn off still listen.
[The Letter]
the future, is resting
on the steps of the old
building with chipped
bricks, where the old man
likes to sit to stare at windows
on the other side of the street.
in his pocket buried deep is an
unopened letter from a love still
wept that long ago descended into
a still dark. a child takes a place
beside him and with an upward glance
smiles for his older eyes, making any
semblance of sadness on the stoop take
flight. together they sat jumping over
shadows, searching for spots on the sidewalk
that glowed, and laughing about the Summer
drifting away. for hours they kept company
greeting the changing day, naming creatures
in the clouds slowly floating by, feeling love
moved to offer the changing tides a gentle peace
costing nothing to believe.
[The Bum]
he walked the city streets looking
at the wandering priests, mothers,
dealers, junkies, and aging drunks
who live in different worlds. they
looked like strangers to him carved
from simple clay, names of flesh
and bone, tossed across the altars
of the earth, and planted with too
many longings. sometimes, he
imagined whispering to their wintered
hearts a world of things about sleeping
in a cardboard box, the wine bottle in
his exhausted hands, the family he no
longer knows, and the burning-bush of
nightly dreams that does not speak.
when his huge beggar eyes teared with
sparrows infinitely near, you could
see him sunk in silence finally whisper God
is hunger, not love.
[The Candle Store]
I walked past the house of candles
that tells us to think dutifully of light,
to search the spreading night with blue
flames, to find warmth for the feverish
words that tug within. I saw a magician
looking around in front of the store with
a small group closing the day with laughter
given by tricks. on the faces of the candle
buyers you could see a curtain gently part
to disclose bells ringing above their heads
sounds of kindness. I stare up the street to
the place that makes us bend our heads real
low, where the silence received another son,
and the Great Will that pines for the loud world
has not yet come. tonight, I care about our
weeping, not the sun, the moon, the stars, the
deep sea, the mountains forested in green. I
light candles for the most loved, the lost, the
mothers weary of sleep, the beautiful brown
faces not yet born that will walk this way some
day. I will stand still now with the candle in
my hand praying for the tiny flame to lift our
spirits high above the thinning air for a taste
of peace.
[The Prayer]
on the way to the corner church
whenever he walked pass the store
window with the broken flower pots,
in him something shouted a concern for
prayer, a need to hurry up to kneel at the
altar rail to speak to the teacher who wrote
in sand disclosing eternal truth. beyond the
discords of a wounded world and deep in
the roaming of his heart, the radiant images
of infants in their mother’s arms interpreting
love in shadowy pews comes to him. inside
the space where the Mother of Heaven has
made her residence, he gets as close to the Holy
One at the foot of a simple wood cross as flesh
permits. on the way back to his apartment where
the
