Imagine, if you will, a person No, wait, I don’t mean imagine the idea of a person I mean SEE a person How tall, how heavy What color hair, eyes, skin How old, how gendered SMELL that person Are they Clean smelling Slightly stale smelling Or really rank HEAR that person Is their voice soft or loud Their accent particular Or talking heads generic Do they snuffle Sneeze Cough Or just quietly breathe I don’t want you to sit there Reading and imagining a vague person I want you to imagine A flesh and blood person With girth and height Color and clothing Name that person Know that person Believe in that person Now here’s the hard part Believe that person In their very particularity Nothing more and nothing less Is God That is, that person is Divine Just like you Just like me
Month: April 2023
Growing Silence
For six years From 92 to 98 My mother lived with us … I have paused now After writing those words Because to give true texture To that simple declarative I have to reveal Our ragged raveled family Cut to pieces too often By jealousy and illness Alcohol and abuse You see? Already to write just that Grows a weed in me That offers no shelter Even before the worm destroys it And I sit, burning and cursing And feeling sorry for myself That is why my words stood still A minute ago Because what grows in my now stillness Is just simple stillness Silence Sweet sweet quiet But to appreciate what it means to me To snuggle with Woody Within this tightly woven Wide warm quiet quilt For you to appreciate that I would have to show you my family’s rags And I would rather not Or maybe, all I need tell you is this: My mother When she lived with us Got up early, went to bed late And kept CNN on her TV, loud, louder, loudest Despite hearing aids and surround sound So that even in my bedroom A floor and a more away I could hear the words of the talking heads Louder than my own thoughts Maybe I don’t need to tell you More than that For you to glimpse The gorgeous flowering Of silence in my home And what it means to me
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