4th Day Poem challenge

040416

March caves in
caves into my annual calendar
like a florida sinkhole
having given one precious life
takes another
or year
or more
so much promise
pollinating all that is natural
with promise of Easter’s supernatural
hope in life hereafter
beyond the sinkhole
beyond the depth of fear
and the warmth
left on the sofa cushion
a minute only after rising

gratitude grows, cracks the seed of grief
Resurrection morning following on the cusp
of dead and buried

between death and resurrection

050514 early this morning I was overwhelmed again with that fierce burning desire to know that God really Is and that there is a heaven and that one day we who are beloved will be reunited and that desire extended to being one of the beloved and rather humbled at knowing it all so profoundly depended on trust and faith and I fear perpetually whether I have it in me to be so loved among the beloved if there is a beloved...and that circle just kept spinning and I think I was trying to articulate that in an email to Miriam and I basically only got so far as clumsily and without much ability to communicate it set down the words “God to Be” but looking at the email now, that’s as much as I actually penned but what happened in my head was this spinning desire and pursuit of being and knowing and feeling and understanding and having this conflicting painful sense that I couldn’t know and nothing would ever be right again and all I wanted was for God to be and for me to be able to SEE God and KNOW God and have no doubt about it and swarming in the back of all that was that same sense of brief connection with the disciples in the room between death and resurrection and how frustrating it is to see such a horrific death and those images keep tormenting me out of the blue sometimes and this is what I see and this is what is blocking me from the internal seeing that there is Heaven and so none of that stuff matters any more if there is God and is Heaven then it’s forgiven and understood within a different context and it’s all okay but my soul was crying out that this is crazy—I can’t SEE God!  I can’t SEE heaven or SEE Dad and I can’t SEE what isn’t right here before my eyes!  This feeling tormented me beyond words which were not there to be articulated this morning, only the feelings and the longings and tears rained down my face and my nose started running—I was sitting right there on the sofa where I always sit and writing on the computer or so I thought and I looked to my right where my box of kleenex sits right beside me on the cushion and it wasn’t there, but it’s always there but it wasn’t so I looked behind the throw pillows because sometimes I throw it back there when it gets in my feet’s way when watching tv and it wasn’t there so I looked on the floor because sometimes I kick it off by accident and it wasn’t there, not on the end table either and my nose was now running down my upper lip and I mumbled some incoherent expletive about the kleenex box that had to be there because it was there last night, as I walk indignantly into the kitchen to the box that always sits on the counter by the sink and I blew my nose and went back to the sofa and sat down and right there beside my leg on the sofa right there where it always is was that box of kleenex.  Right there where I had looked for it and around it and everywhere and it was NOT there before.  It was NOT.  I looked for it right there and didn’t see it.    I was right there that whole time and looked everywhere around it. How could it possibly have been there all along when I did NOT see it???

Holy Saturday and Dad's Memorial Service

041914

holy Saturday.  Day of Dad’s memorial service.  Not possible.  Writing it like that ravages my soul.  And this morning there will soon be chaos and ensuring this and that and suddenly the service will happen and the reception and I want to be there and I’m afraid I’ll scoot through it and it will all be over and I won’t have been really there.  Really present.  Because somehow in my head I think to be there is to be so present that time itself can’t pass.  Being there somehow should transcend time and rule time and yet...time keeps passing and proving that we’re not really here...not fully...not wholly...not truly.  Someday we will be here.  

so glad I awoke so early in this holy darkness...awoke surrounded by all the disciples...trying to get their head around what just happened...how horrible it was to watch him die like that.  Totally expected—he had told them he was going to die like that—but totally surprising.  Horrifying.  Unthinkable.  I’m sure they swirled heady and light with both fear and hope, doubt and sustaining story.  Remembering what Isaiah said.  Remembering Moses.  The psalmist.  It is written.  It is written.  Inscribed.  Spoken.  The only truth that matters, the only power that sustains, the spoken written word.  They gathered as we are going to do to remind each other of what he said and did, of what was written, they had yet to see the resurrection...they were in that horrible state of loss and shock and doubt and hope and fear and connection and reassurance and unknowing.  Perhaps one of them remembered the 139th psalm...when I awake, I am still with you...

It is also the 19th anniversary of the murrah bombing.  Dad was there for that.  He said he heard it as he was leaving the house, but it sounded like a sonic boom and as they lived nearer to stretches of country he thought perhaps maneuvers were being practiced.  Except that the dog started barking.  He knew it was something else.  And then his phone started ringing.  He coordinated the emergency phone information center for that day...turned out he was there for something like 72 hours without sleep connecting people and information...   That day then did not fall on holy Saturday as it does today...but those who survived have felt this same range of feelings and questions and ... this same sense of unreal movement of time impossible to grasp...

So blessedly quiet right now.  I have not awakened to such blessed quiet in a long time.  I have not been able to write in a long time.  Not from a place of peace and reflection.  I do not want to get up from this place...I do not want the day and the time to sweep me into the unconscious of survival but I know it will.  I know that soon keri and her family will come and we will go to the chapel and make sure the equipment is there.  I know that soon music will fill a chapel haunted by those of us who gather to talk about Dad and then we’ll move into reception and talk and laugh and tell stories and eat...and that will last for who knows how long and then we will slowly reluctantly eventually retire into the night and it will be over and life will go on impossibly and uncertainly and folks will then tomorrow attend the Easter services in the hope of resurrection...

And life will go on.  Nothing will ever really be right again until the hope becomes real...