I like the colors and the pictures and the word (re) cycle in this photo.
"... the remembering begins out of that new silence, through the time since. I reach back along my father's tellings and around the urgings which would have me face about and forget, to feel into these oldest shadows for the first sudden edge of it all."
My friend Leslie posted a poem that she wrote on her blog Journal of Omens that describes it all for me:
Epicenter of Desire
She never said how God fell out
but she bore his impression
like a mattress seldom turned
testifies to the lover’s absence.
She tried diversion, eastern philosophy
and the state of being fully present
as the ultimate gesture of affection.
Of course, it was affection few could return
so her advice was to, with every breath
exhale thank you, and let it go.
Maybe you know that hunger.
Maybe the gnawing is a molecular code
that, because of blood on the lintel
natural selection passed over. That said
just being is evidence you were chosen
strand by strand
to occupy this moment, this space.
Michelangelo tattooed
the epicenter of desire
on the ceiling, safe
from our greasy, egg-salad fingers
God and Adam reaching for each other.
More than anything we want God
or we don’t. There is little middle ground.
When we lie on our backs and reach upward
our hands are as large as Adam’s
as electric as God’s.
At some point, maybe vacuuming
she found where she’d lost God
and reset him like a stone in her ring.
Thank you, she exhaled.
We seem to be born with negative space
into which God might fit.
Origin of Me is the great question
not the science of creation
but the creation story that works.
God is preserved in the heavens
of the Sistine by ducting
and a conditioned atmosphere.
Are we so different
believing we are the center
of our own narratives,
that our mythologies matter more?
What I do know of God is this:
there are children
in cutoffs and tattered boat shoes
who come to the wild place
at the back of the field
and rearrange the world.
They dam and bridge the creek
to shape little oceans.
They breach the dams and howl
as floods crash through.
They braid baling twine
with whatever drifts downstream
into mats and furniture
and lash swings into trees
too tender to hold anything
but the world’s smallest creatures.
They leave a shovel and take a rake.
When I walk to that wild place
I know immediately—
a piece of lumber bridging
a new section of the creek,
a bit of twine in a tree—
that the little gods have been here.
but she bore his impression
like a mattress seldom turned
testifies to the lover’s absence.
She tried diversion, eastern philosophy
and the state of being fully present
as the ultimate gesture of affection.
Of course, it was affection few could return
so her advice was to, with every breath
exhale thank you, and let it go.
Maybe you know that hunger.
Maybe the gnawing is a molecular code
that, because of blood on the lintel
natural selection passed over. That said
just being is evidence you were chosen
strand by strand
to occupy this moment, this space.
Michelangelo tattooed
the epicenter of desire
on the ceiling, safe
from our greasy, egg-salad fingers
God and Adam reaching for each other.
More than anything we want God
or we don’t. There is little middle ground.
When we lie on our backs and reach upward
our hands are as large as Adam’s
as electric as God’s.
At some point, maybe vacuuming
she found where she’d lost God
and reset him like a stone in her ring.
Thank you, she exhaled.
We seem to be born with negative space
into which God might fit.
Origin of Me is the great question
not the science of creation
but the creation story that works.
God is preserved in the heavens
of the Sistine by ducting
and a conditioned atmosphere.
Are we so different
believing we are the center
of our own narratives,
that our mythologies matter more?
What I do know of God is this:
there are children
in cutoffs and tattered boat shoes
who come to the wild place
at the back of the field
and rearrange the world.
They dam and bridge the creek
to shape little oceans.
They breach the dams and howl
as floods crash through.
They braid baling twine
with whatever drifts downstream
into mats and furniture
and lash swings into trees
too tender to hold anything
but the world’s smallest creatures.
They leave a shovel and take a rake.
When I walk to that wild place
I know immediately—
a piece of lumber bridging
a new section of the creek,
a bit of twine in a tree—
that the little gods have been here.
The little gods in my life have long hair and glide through life by skateboard or are 18, on the edge of manhood and are exhibiting such responsibility it takes my breath away.
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing the poem. I have never read it before, and it is touching. We love you guys and we are always thinking of you.
I am so pleased you connected with my poem. Let me know if you want a writing prompt or an excuse to write (like a deadline). Looking foward to seeing some creative writing from you.
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