this slow rainy day

is slick with silver

sliding off the roof,

plinking and running

down the pane

in the eloquence

of nature's hand

what lives is what we feed

i.

all tucked in, neatly folded

between the cold sheets

of where i was last sunday

and where i am now,

safely home, absent the exiled heart

seeking solace outside somewhere

rafting on the river of this endless night...

it doesn't matter.

you are not here.

you are unable to make this journey.

ii.

eventually i will welcome the solitude

more as a corm for survival

than for relief from keeping up appearances.

and although leaving the conversation

works against me,

i'll journal on, writing exercises on the

flimsiness of hope in the spartan night

and parsing with care the

excellence of my defeat

while words still come

rather than submissively to lie down

on the daybed of despair

making love to the prideful muse of silence

iii.

i wonder what you think this is,

this not-saying-anything time,

this letting-time-pass thing

i wonder if you think i've moved on

and left it all behind.

vacated love.

i haven't.

that stuff lives inside me forever.

when we talked truth to his arrogance, and love to his vacant heart

i.

wasn't there a certain elegiac grace

in our halting voices, telling out our truths?

a room full of precious many-colored birds

of the same sacramental spirit...?

just so, love's bounty was slain by fear this night

ii.

spirit linger

until no sky is left that doesn't mourn the light

until nothing comes but the comforter's voice

to wash off the stink of my disbelief

and, replenished, to love wastefully the vacant heart

through a glass darkly

the face in the mirror, the one

that is hard to look at with it's
vague stepford smile, is not you.

your face is not you.

your fear is not you.

you are not your monkey.

you are in here. come inside.
look out on this day
with your feral child eyes.

look out from the warmth of your own true light,

the soft you that was made in the image of Love

Who made the first morning of the world.

you are not your legs.
you are not your painted fingernails.
you are not your borrowed face.

the courage required

smiley and rosey, her morning face on

and earphones, garrison keillor online

bananas, bluets and flakes, spoon by spoon

at the farmer's market, company face

primly erect in her jet black walker

as if pretty is as pretty just is

so much for the watchword of my childhood

how long does one fake it, and life is made?

what is the point if we don't find the point?

business face on, she's ready for heaven

but she'd hold up for crackers and cheese, and

a half glass of wine at 4 o'clock, sharp

credo

i believe God is the presence of Love

that animates the soul

and shines through the eyes of all whom we behold as loved.

nothing

and everything

is profound about that

i believe that we understand a little more each time our bodies die

and we take up life again in our spiritual home between lives...

i believe the enrichment of our own Soul enriches the Life of the Whole


i believe God's Great Risk was NOT

killing the Son to appease the Holy Split Personality--with Hate for some and unconditional Love for others ...living out the Eternal Snit: "They Done Me Wrong In The Garden"...


no.


i believe

Love's Risk was creating you and me

out of Their own Spiritual Image,

and then giving us Free Will

to grow, learn, and live our gifts forward through each life,

or to smash everything to bits and start over.

i believe we have a life lessons plan that we agreed to before we come into the physical world...each time...and that we return to be accountable for the gifts we are given and the goodness we came to increase in ourselves by living in the world for others.

i believe every path is made holy by love
and i believe

it is Good and Life-giving and Spirit-honoring

to love 

consciously, intentionally, freely, without expectation
so to live and breathe and mature in our Being of the Spirit