On a day when I sat the six year old down
And taught her about emancipation, segregation,
Lynching and white privilege
We tuned in to see the processions
The finery and the flags
Because frozen solid was the world outside
We had no tickets to the balls or bangs to speak of
Tears welled up because of the impossibility of it all
No sister, no president, no friends, no school
If brave folks hadn’t fought and died
Her whole world would have refused to exist
What she doesn’t know is that sometimes it still refuses
Our rich deep heritage takes over and pushes down
Watch out, it gets weird in the middle
Leaving our enclave of struggle for inclusion
You end up scraping off what you stepped in
Not because you noticed when you put your foot down
But eventually you smell it distant enough to pretend
It doesn’t affect you in any meaningful way
Well meaning, but ignorant to what you’re missing
A huge chunk of the Kingdom, the cross you’ve never known
Hope unborn, reborn, died and resurrected
Again
I’m just going to hold your hands
Because they are cold
Swollen and misshapen
Frostbitten and battered
And you are crying
Drunken sobs
Crocodile tears
They are cold
All you want to do is help
Frantically scraping and stacking
I just want you to stop
For two minutes
So I can warm
Your cartoonishly flat fingers
My kid screaming on my hip
Trying to push bus fare
Into the ice and you take it
Stop.
For the love of it all,
Just stop.
What are you up to when
We aren’t holding your hand?
Beaten on the corner
For your bike
Taking me to task for my racism
Harassing the nurses after saving your life
Real pain on your brother’s death
Getting kicked out of Subway
Routinely.
I don’t want to attend your funeral.
Heck, I don’t want to officiate it either.
And the privileged, spoiled
Response is to believe
I have anything to say
About this at all.
It’s your life
Your choices
Your way of being
In a world that beats
You up regularly,
Almost predictably.
So you get to it first.
Do it, before someone
Does it to you.
For all the power handed to me
I cannot fix this,
Only feed it.
I’m just going to hold your hand.
But you will talk my husband out of his mittens
Later.
Fall Flyover
Around here in flyover country
We occasionally look up and notice
The sharp white lines on the pure blue sky
You leave, and consider you
Crammed into the tiny time worn seats.
But honestly when the hidden lakes
Pop unexpectedly from the red maples
Reflecting a deeper hue than from above
And the air carries an oaky decomposition
The melting frost sparkles each grassy weed
Purple asters catch attention like the last reminders
Of a summer spent on the dock
Where now it’s too cold to dangle your feet
But the geese have stopped to rest
Only a minute before they need to go
And join you above
We raise our eyes as they flyover too.
In the last dregs of summer
When we try to cram in the intentions of early June
Thinking that might hold off the inevitable
The crunchy leaves that can’t stop the crunchier snow
And the onslaught of other’s scheduling
Things to plan for and get ready for
To prepare and engage and get back at it
Somehow wiping away the days of unstructured play
Tan lines and filthy feet, sticky kisses and sand
Fall does not lend itself to ducking out early
But instead to obligation and responsibility
Winterizing the cabin in our new school shoes
Trying to not get them too dirty
No more excuses of vacation or out of office auto responses
And we try to coax out the grown up inside
To be thankful for a routine and stability
A time when the bus shows up again
Whisking away the eager and reluctant alike
In the deep darkness of early January
The stifling humidity will be remembered fondly
Coupled with the heat that persisted
Not long enough to radiate and generate
Long enough to make its mark
Encourage our longing
And pencil in vacations
In the next calendar year
A year later
I still try not to look
To the left and the right
In the toughest parts
While I traverse again
To remove a foreign object
Pierced and slowly leaking
Hissing when I stop
I wonder if another patch
Will hold
Or how much of the original remains
And the looks
Of utter pity
When they remember why I’m here again.
I don’t want to talk about it
With a week
Of special reports
And remembrance coverage
Maps with a path in orange
Like a tourist trail
It feels like someone’s peeping
Peering into our private pain
Placing it all in plain view again
For their profit
Tearing apart what we’ve so purposefully repaired.
Let me put my head down
Pull away and be protective
Of me and my people.
HCMC
Have you come here
For healing or wholeness
Completeness or shalom?
With caution,
This is a stony place to land.
It’s not like they don’t warn you
Built in the manner of a classic fortress
Running spikes on every available ledge
Affixed pebbles just to be sure
Nothing is, can be, or will be smooth
As a speckled egg
Left perched behind the glass
Filthy from care
It must be warm must
Not be abandoned on the stony surface
And sure enough,
It’s not.
On returning the deep grey
Of rich business suits
With deep feathery weight
Protects and preens
There is no resting here
Not with finger pricks
The OT, PT, TBI, CBC
Roll this way and that
To dislodge the delicate skin below
We know that healing
Has come and will come
Sooner would be better
Says collective wisdom
And until it does
A schedule will be drafted
Turns will be taken
Prayers will be prayed
The Word will be proclaimed
Through squeezes of eyes and hands
Tight smiles and God bless yous
About to do a new thing
In these walls?
More miraculous events
Have occurred
Single fledgling
Incubated here
Tubes for just a minute
A moment
To be heavy
And remain
In hope.
Good Friday
Granny always got the peas in their beds
By Good Friday.
Which made perfect sense
As a small child I even knew
Growing seasons were different
Below the Bridge.
How did I miss the tide
That ebbs with the date though?
The moon pulls and tugs
On when we hang him high
So that it’s never as constant
As say the Fifth of April
I’ve spent too many of them
Too similar to separate
Holding hands while sitting bedside
Where the news is rarely good.
Nails pushed into my palm
That leaves their little crescents behind
Deep breath taken upon deep breath
Chased out to the parking lot
For a much needed reality check
Of the odds.
You win more throwing dice.
My peas are still in the wire spinning rack
Down at the Co-op
We will see if they get planted
Or tended
Or harvested
This year.
Can I be honest?
I mean really honest
About stuff you don’t want to talk about
Hard as the butt of a gun up to your skull
Soft as the warm pulse beating on top of my sweet baby’s head
As I nuzzle in and drink her oily goodness
I cannot understand what changes in me
Until a trip out with more little girls
Lands one in my lap
Bawling for the pain in her thawing fingers
Grasping with terror for mommy calm
So I hold her tight
Warm her hands
Shhhh her and rock
Until she buries her face into me
And quiets
I stop short of kissing her head
Many years before this
I would have gone through the same motions
But now when I reach out
In love it’s more and different
As different as talking and walking
You can “it takes a village”
Up one side and down the other
But if you still cross the street
Instead of lock eyes and check in
I don’t want to hear it.
They are all our children.
Not in some hand holding metaphorical sense
But in the brutality of a 12 year old’s murder
And the whispering about his gang ties
Facebook pictures of mirror poses
Like some kind of proof
He is yours to protect and love and raise
He is mine to prepare and bury and mourn
And we will visit when the grass has grown in.
Do whatever it takes
So that this isn’t a water cooler discussion
But a way of life
Dying to ourselves
Enough to bring about change
Women’s Day Eve
I got to listen to two men today
(One of whom I respected)
Discuss at length
“How things have come so far
For women
These days
More are graduating from college
More are working for higher wages
The battle is fought
The war is won.”
And it took every ounce of my being
To keep my damned mouth shut
I will not negate the work accomplished
But I cannot stomach the back slaps
Of ignorance.
And trying to be someone besides
The angry bitch in the room
Really got me nowhere today.
Ash Wednesday
Blow the trumpet in Zion
Says Joel, Sound the alarm
He’s talking about the air raid horns
The sirens blaring a warning
Like when the tornado came
He wants to warn you
Give you a heads up
So that you are not caught unaware
Better than the bumper sticker
Jesus is coming. Look busy.
Honestly, we have not done our best
Using the trumpet for ill
To announce, “We are coming to give alms!”
Like some kind of perverse ice cream truck
So we can be praised and patted on the back
For being such good little Christians
In the sanctuaries and on the streets
Not in secret
With the door shut
It all makes us dusty
Filthy dirty
Full of clouds and gloom
That is ever before us
Spread across our face
For the whole world to see
Offensive and wicked
Sinful and evil
And all the rest
As if there could be more
So we come
Like God asks
Return to the Lord, your God
Return to me
God begs
We beg
For restoration, rescue, reconciliation
Create in me a clean heart
Cast me not away
Cleanse me from my sin
For our sake
He made him
To be sin
Who knew no sin
So that in him
We might become
The righteousness of God
And we are
Though in these cracked and dusty pots
Still not perfect
But wasting away
Devolving into ash
All the time
Is there a holier pursuit
Than becoming dirty and dusty and ash like?
To mess ourselves
With the stuff of this world
Is to take on the work
Of restoration, rescue, and reconciliation
What the tornado splintered
Pulverized and obliterated
Takes on this endurance
So do the rest of our afflictions
Hardships, calamities, beatings
Imprisonments, riots, labors
Sleepless nights and hunger.
Who asked for the comprehensive list?
Did we forget the moths and rust and thieves?
Hardly.
Do you feel ashy yet?
We travel through this life so
We barely need the black smudge
To tell others
Once in a while we need the reminder
Of our own part
And God’s answer
To the ash
To the dust
To the dirt
The playground burnt
Behind Jordan Park this weekend
There was some ash
But mostly melted plastic
Firefighters pried up with shovels
To ensure the fire was out
Driving north the plume
Was visible
Hanging over downtown
From as far away as Bloomington
A smudge that started to disperse
Almost immediately
But the work remains
For the right hand
And the left
Barely knowing what the other is up to
Sounds like the church
On a good day
When our God is secretive
We do our best
And ask for forgiveness later
Knowing the truth is deep within
The treasurers are in heaven
And though we are dust
And to dust we shall return
We keep returning
To our God
Who covers us
In the ash of salvation.
