Broken Faith

15 September 2011

Think before you call it quits--
you’ll never stop
realizing all you’ve lost,
even when the sting subsides
and you’ve forgiven yourself
and other. There will always be
another reminder of where and who
you could or should have been;
who you should be with.
No matter how good it gets,
it’s never quite perfect,
and you can’t ever make it
what it’s not, no matter how you long,
no matter how you try to believe
you never loved,
you never broke faith.

Harvest

28 December 2010
I don't generally make New Year's resolutions, because they seem a recipe for failure. But I need to be writing, and am going to try to write more in 2011.

There was a time when I wrote everything
in hopes that nothing would be missed,
no part of myself would remain
unseen--by you, by anybody.
I never expected the exercise would yield
such lovely fruit, and in the yielding
steal my drive to capture every moment
on a page. What once came more like gasping;
grasping for air than breathing
now becomes an exquisite discipline;
straining to hear the sweetest melody
amidst the musical swell suffusing every breath.

New Memory

16 June 2010

I emptied the sugar bowl this morning,
the Tour d'Eiffel disappearing through the hole in the lid.
That spoon hung useless on the wall, sat neglected
in the bottom of a box since a dark childhood
visit to the City of Lights.

Suddenly comes purpose, though
I keep running out of sugar. So much
coffee to drink, so many bottles of under-valued
wine to enjoy, so many sweetnesses to spoon out
that sometimes I forget the grief altogether
in the midst of forcing words, struggling to write
anything anywhere--keep poetry flowing
through the books that will someday fill
the shelves we have not built.

Those pages once were bound to be topped off
with bitter melancholy--so many caged and angry
women and their box of useless spoons.
I cannot possibly grieve again as I did back then,
and I wonder if there is less meaning now,
with joy and grief so unevenly matched--
one grown, contented woman stirring her coffee
with a new memory of Paris.

Deep Magic at 27 Weeks

Today, I am 27 weeks pregnant.

Yesterday, I picked up a paintbrush for the first time since I found out I was pregnant.

I don't think these two realities are coincidental. I've been on pins and needles throughout this pregnancy, waiting for the fateful 27 weeks to pass. Not that it's a magic number; I know it's not. Or maybe it is--"Deep Magic", as a friend of mine at church quoth (very C.S. Lewis of her...) the other day when the incessant back pain I'd been having for 5 months suddenly vanished in the middle of the Holy Unction service of Holy Week. Not magic--but God's hand, God's grace, God's peace--and the little girl in my abdomen finally choosing a more comfy position for what I hope will be the duration of the pregnancy.

I think most people would be surprised to hear me talk like that. The years between 2000 and 2005 beat a lot of things out of me, including the ability to speak in platitudes. But it has struck me constantly, in the midst of those years; in the midst of the Blessing Years that have followed, that God's grace and love and peace are not platitudes. And they are certainly not to be hidden away, but they are very precious, wonderful, mysterious, unfathomable realities that work even when we can't see them. Even when we are so reduced by our circumstances that we wonder if He's even there.

So--27 weeks. Not a magic number. But definitely a point of new vision, and hopefully a point of rebirth of creativity. Deep Magic.

White Christmas

20 December 2009

Madness infuses the everyday

rituals that help our home get through

the holidays, but now and then we manage

contentment--as near perfection

as we’ll ever get--as near the wishes,

hopes and dreams we’ve feared

we’d never realize as we can hope to come.

I am given to analysis,

though I could never manage to encapsulate

what makes these moments happen,

what gives me eyes to see this

brief window into Paradise. I’ll quit now,

while I’m ahead and my vision’s clear,

the children are here and ours

for a white Christmas.

Without Fear

17 October 2009

My eyes are open today. I see

how fruitless are the hours spent worrying

about a form and substance you adore.

These conversations never cease behind the eyes,

laughing or weeping. They never cease.

I hear the fretting accusations,

the whispers of starvation. I hear them,

but they grow quieter with time. Or perhaps

I build a wall inside my head, beyond which

their power diminishes--

I am, without fear, who I am.

Song Lyrics

I'm not a huge fan of the Christian music industry. A lot of the music played on Christian stations strikes me as insipid or manipulative jargon aimed at winning people into the Kingdom, or keeping them there, by means of an emotional high or, worse, an emotional low, when being faithful really has very little to do with how we feel. (Just as an aside, I know a lot of people who enjoy Christian music as a genre. I can completely respect that. I just don't tend to enjoy it myself.)

There have been songs over the years, though, that immediately struck a deep, deep chord of truth in me, despite my very strong bias against the genre. They may or may not have appealed to my emotions as they proclaimed, loud and clear, a truth which was not only valid, but vital. The lyrics below come from a song by a band called Tree 63. And perhaps the reason it strikes so profoundly every time I hear it is that they didn't try to say anything new or bend the Message to be "relevant". The song is scriptural, almost straight from the Psalms, and it acknowledges joy and grief, while praising all the while the God who works in all circumstances.

I heard it in the car on my way home from having a cup of coffee with friends after celebrating a liturgy with them this morning. I haven't heard this song since the Divorce Years, and while the trials in my life have morphed and eased dramatically since that time, it still brought tears to my eyes. Blessed be the name of the Lord--when I'm celebrating triumphs and redemption, or when I'm struggling with the results of my sin--blessed be the name of the Lord.

Blessed Be Your Name--by Tree 63

Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out,
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out,
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name

Sketching

Fiddling around with colored pencils. Not my best work, but I'm really stuck on the image.

New Moon

25 December 2008, 1:07 PM
Since I first begain writing, the moon has always held a very specific meaning for me, and for reasons I can't really explain in a public forum, I have used it less and less over the last two years as a symbol in my poetry. Today, I redefined the moon.

No one would disparage the mutual influence,
subtle yet inexorable. The Sea is the Sea,
The Moon is the Moon, the two indivisibly
intertwingled, undiminished by his sway.
She has never been subdued by this drawing
and releasing. He gently pulls upon the tides,
makes her more, not less, than what she is.
As he pulls away, the tides pull back
to follow, woo him back again.

Chimera

12 December 2008
chimera: noun: a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.
inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

This House is...
should have been built on Sanity,

but even a foothold is rare purchase.
At least the Cornerstone sits solidly
upon rock-hard, sound rationality--
he does not wander. The Little Ones go,
return again, find the House
in need of repair, but standing,
safe and warm, sheltering,
in her right mind.

Floating

inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

It’s a precarious thing,
floating un-buoyed on perceptions
of a man’s integrity, character
which might change course
at any moment. Yet the constant,
the one thing unchanging, is you.

While the tent-poles of manhood fall,
all around, all around,
you remain. You may yet fall,
and you can fall,

but not here, Beloved.

Here of all places I need you
to stand-- take up the Center-pole,
give me space to stand, not to fall.
Give me space to learn to trust
your mettle after all.

Main & Maple

I went to the Main & Maple Cafe in Nicholasville on a lark today while I was there on business. I thought to myself as I walked in that it would be nice to run into someone I know, since I don't make it to Nicholasville very often these days.

I ran into six someones, as a matter of fact. Five of them I haven't really seen much of for about five years, and one I haven't seen at all for at least eight. What surprised me is that, although my relationships with these people were all during the pre-divorce era of my life, it was an absolute pleasure to talk with each of them, and to let them know what's been going on in my life. I find lately that there's just about nothing that can't be transformed and redeemed in time.

Barbara, Dottie, Mary, Dexter, Scott and Cody, it was really great to see you again today.

White-Robed Sorrow

I wrote once about George MacDonald's book, _Phantastes_. My life was a chaotic whirlpool of grief and throbbing wounds at the time, and being the non-linear, analytical thinker that I am, MacDonald's fantastic worlds and seemingly random images of beauty, love, grief and the like touched me so deeply. Today I ran across one of the passages which meant the most to me, and I wrote the following about it to my husband:

"There's this scene where [the narrator and main character of the story] is floating along in a boat, making his way down river, and he catches a glimpse of a woman in white running through the woods alongside him. She stays with him right up to the castle. It was, for me, an image of the wounds we receive being faithful to lead us on to something else if we let them- to redemption I guess, cliche though that may sound. But one certainly cannot see it as such when the wounds are fresh and throbbing.

That scene in the book is a gift to me, because the character, and therefore the reader, is given a moment to stand back from the pain and view it somewhat objectively. To see the very thing that wounds us running along beside us in white, weeping for us, leading us on to redemption, is so very beautiful. I remember, though, that it made my heart ache for the woman in the woods. She was just a metaphor for other things, but I guess I think of her as almost a part of ourselves- the part that is wounded and has been lost in so many ways, and cannot completely enter into the joy of the present."

I need to go back and read that book again.

"As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love."

George MacDonald, Phantastes

Mandolin Rain

I rediscovered a song last night that I haven't really listened to since highschool. Bruce Hornsby & the Range had two songs that everyone knew, even if they didn't care for them. They were The Way It Is and Mandolin Rain.

I was always particularly fond of Mandolin Rain. I couldn't have said why back then other than the fact that I loved the way he played (piano), and I loved his voice, and his style, and and and... I guess those are reasons enough.

As I listened last night, though, we were sending our daughter- my step-daughter, I call her Epona- back to her mom after a short visit here with us- me, my husband and my son (the Yob). Something in the song struck a chord with the situation- the joy the kids bring with them, a portion of which walks out the door with them every time they leave, the bittersweet sadness that's a part of daily life in a blended family, the irrevocability of all the little broken pieces that led us to this place where we get to redeem as much as we can, and learn to live with what can't be borne. The joys come and go, and we always know in the back of our minds, or very much in the forefront, that what we have will never quite feel whole, but you'd have to wrench it from our cold, dead hands if you wanted to take it away from us.

MANDOLIN RAIN
Bruce Hornsby & the Range

The song came and went
Like the times that we spent
Hiding out from the rain under the carnival tent
I laughed and she'd smile
It would last for awhile
You don't know what you've got 'til you lose it all again

Listen to the mandolin rain
Listen to the music on the lake
Listen to my heart break every time she runs away
Listen to the banjo wind
A sad song drifting low
Listen to the tears roll
Down my face as she turns to go

A cool evening dance
Listening to the bluegrass band
Takes the chill from the air till they play the last song
I'll do my time keeping you off my mind
but there's moments that I find, I'm not feeling so strong

Listen to the mandolin rain
Listen to the music on the lake
Listen to my heart break every time she runs away
Listen to the banjo wind
A sad song drifting low
Listen to the tears roll
Down my face as she turns to go

Running down by the lakeshore
She did love the sound of a summer storm
It played on the lake like a mandolin
Now its washing her away once again

Listen to the mandolin rain
Listen to the music on the lake
Listen to my heart break every time she runs away
Listen to the banjo wind
A sad song drifting low
Listen to the tears roll
Down my face as she turns to go

The boat's steaming in
I watch the sidewheel spin
And I think about her when I hear that whistle blow
I can't change my mind
I knew all the time that she'd go
But that's a choice I made long ago

Listen to the mandolin rain
Listen to the music on the lake
Listen to my heart break every time she runs away
Listen to the banjo wind
A sad song drifting low
Listen to the tears roll
Down my face as she turns to go

While They're Away

26 December 2007, 5:17
Upon reading Wendell Berry’s The Clearing.

Mr. Berry,

You have a way of taking the most noble
and daily responsibilities of a lover of the earth;
casting them in a light of profundity
which makes me wish I also walked The Farm
with you and pondered such meaning-filled subjects
as politics, religion, and care of the earth.

I forget our craft can be bent upon
the commonest of life’s comings and goings-
those tasks which you and I must do,
regardless of our level of environmental sophistication
and our preference for or against politics-
that there is laundry to be folded
which does not fold itself, and dishes
in the kitchen which require my attention.

The world will turn, but this home will not live
of its own accord. I must help it breathe
and pulse and love. The children
who live within my care will not thrive
without a deliberate sort of care-
a tilling, a sowing, a watering of sorts,
a nurturing of their loves, their wants
and their needs which only I can tend to,
assuming they are with me on any given day.

Even when they’re not, it is my willful
diligence which sets their feet on solid ground
when they return. I will be waiting- this house
will still be home to them because I make it so;
because I am faithful to the fields
while they’re away.

Snowballs with Baba

17 December 2007, 11:26 AM

I watched my African put on
his warm against the bitterness
of a belated Kentucky cold snap. There are
few things he hates more than winter,
and there’s not enough snow on the porch
to justify the donning of his gloves,
his scarf, his hat, his lined winter coat,

yet he dons, and I smile,

because I know why he goes
to the purported tundra. For my little boy
is out there in his too-big snow gloves,
clumsily shoveling the paltry powder
into a plastic bag. He wants to be
the only kid with a snowball next summer,
and this man-not-his-father
won’t let our precious boy
gather his dreams alone.

Another Glimpse

7 December 2007, 2 PM

I slept beside sharper skies
than ever I imagined on my own;
his dreams bled into mine, revealed
sunset skies I’d never known,
fading into diamond-scattered midnight
cerulean, so deep and dark and bright.

I couldn’t catch my breath amidst
the beauty of a thing so brutally
gentle; in the wake of brushing up
against a sea of so much tenderness,
all within me bruised and raw-
aching for another glimpse of Paradise.

Beauty of Ashes

24 November 2007, 12:03 PM
RCB

What matters most,
Beloved, is no longer living in fear
of emotion,
of color,
of light and life and goodness-

of beauty

evincing all I have attained
as cold, dry, dead ash, inert
for want of one to walk the road
beside me toward redemption.

Windy Day

25 May 2004

The tide is turning.
I stand on the cusp of life
awaiting rebirth.

True Colors

I rediscovered an old song today- a favorite from highschool. I haven't heard it in at least ten years, or at least I haven't listened to it in that long. The words struck me profoundly after a long absence, and a decade of life not being what I thought it would be.

TRUE COLORS

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
Your true colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don't be unhappy, can't remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
Your true colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow