Dented fenders

A dented fender threatened me,

Rose up, tried to shout it's name

and smacked my child.

You reached out

Saying Not Today

And laid her down on an asphalt bed
Between two parallel lines of white

And kissed her on the head.

Meanwhile you pushed a father's legs to run faster

and calmed his heart to keep him steady.

You handed the cell phone to a sister and helped her press 911

while you lifted a driver's head and straightened a mother's route,
moved a car to the left to let an ambulance through
and cleared a policeman's desk.

Woke a grandparent and gave a church a prayer,
suggesting a space for community where we had decided none.
Opened a room at the hospital and settled a coughing nurse,

joined hands of a feuding couple,
and introduced strangers, offering space to pray again.
Gave doctors negative reports and denied their findings.

It was just one small moment in one small space,
but You connected dots like stars
and made us all look up.
Then walked away as if to say:
It was nothing.

   a deck shuffled
   a warm up stretch
   perhaps a pebble kick

And we were left to wonder:
   why and how

And perhaps that,
precisely,
is the point.

On givenness

What is gifted from conception
Is givenness.
The toe of a child or the birthmark scarring flesh
Is givenness.

Inside, around, or without
Our exposed being
Swells shame and pride
Love and hate
Forces swirling into fallenness
So there is constant need for divine connectivity.

An umbilical chord pulls heavenly,
But being tethered to this earth
With weighted pulleys
We ox-like trod.

Like a painting on a ceiling 

Man's reach is only high enough

To be lofty

And then in our finest moments

When others see our demigodliness

Our hand begins to drop

But for a God who reaches further

Down and out

We would fall into our givenness.

Nonlinear dreams

Draw a line.

Imagine it is time.

Plot out the births and deaths that define you.

Pencil a dot for droughts and famines.

Shade in years of peace.

Mark the points of decision and regret.

Now add God.

And the line is swallowed into space.

Imagine again:

A desert. Forty days.

Utter dryness. Sand in cracked skin, teeth gritty from swallowed wind.

Parched plans and empty water beds.

Beyond this vastness-

the finiteness of living-

God rests outside all this.

An oasis perhaps we see,but mostly don't.

What if

we need not plod straight through the desert,

but could be plucked

in a nonlinear way

from this gritty beach

and placed gently

so toes touch a shore?

And the wind might start smelling salty

And the air might begin to moisten 

With bursts of Breath

As moments drop from space

Like a single taste of sweetness 

Pulled from honeysuckle -

And we find our way again.

Numbers and lettre

It amazes me

In a way both

Happily, confusedly, and fearfully

That there are enough letters in the English alphabet 

That languages can gonfler sans arrêter ou mélanger.

Frotter

Frauder et

Frapper

Words tumble upon words

Yet worlds somehow don't converge.

still there is room for

Forget

Forgive 

And follow.

With 26-

And a limitless amount of combinations-

Still not enough to express our hopes and fears

Because we have pictures and hieroglyphs, too.

I am but a letter-

Or a punctuation-

Wanting to write a book.

A garden gives you perfectly good reason not to be anywhere else.

I asked for good things

I asked for good things.

Not selfishly

Or out of reach.

Just normal.

American things.

Middle class caucasian things

Upwardly mobile of course.

They aren't bad things.

But my home went into foreclosure

While I had a good paying job.

My ovaries made eggs

But the lining wouldn't hold

And children got crossed off.

I paid enough

And was given two.

But I wanted a house full

And to stay home to teach them

But my womb closed up

And rotted

While I went stressed out to care for others' blessings

And they quietly and quickly grew

Outside of the size of my lap.

I prayed humbly for another

Or another two.

But no amount could allow my wishful control

No more courting life

No more joy of brightness

Infertile. Empty bed. Unproductive life.

So I asked for Africa...

And I asked for a child not my own

I asked for France

I asked for Haiti, asked for kingdoms and countries and 

To these,

You firmly touted:

No.

And I can wonder why and detest the strife

 For it is hard work to long so much

And I can eye the jones's happy life

Whose inside walls may be furniture and pictureless

But the outside is perfection

And fescued dreams

And I, like David,

Have glimpsed into their gardens.

It makes my coffee bitter

And then I growl at the kids.

And when I growl at the kids

The dog barks and I forget to water the lawn

And my house begins to crumble

Just a long the edges...

So I choose to offer up my questions

And let them hang like the caterpillars' who are yous...

Just floating and drifting into the air

Accepting soft rebukes:

Beware the sin of comparison.

As if I didn't know.

Simple, subtle.

Full of hesitance - 

I turn to the dead lot behind my house

And bury dreams in the dirt.

Knowing one day

Rains will come.