okay. good music.

feet sound: Imagine Dragons

#27 - 40 semi-forgotten

So, the creative Lenten process comes to a premature halt. After coming back from Ensenada, I thought about why I wanted to write everyday to prepare myself for the Risen Lord. Isn’t that nice and neat? There were pure motives: simply to write is pure in itself, to build my body of work, to experiment, to grow as an observer, to learn discipline. But the rigidity of the underlying bad motives made me second guess this endeavor. Many of my friends have gotten accepted to grad school (whoohoo!) and are skipping along (so it seems to me) in their creative pursuit (you should discover a new poet, click here) and I sought catching up to them in this make believe race before I sought all of those nice and neat motives.

I wanted to summarize this realization not only for transparencies sake, but because through it, I am honestly becoming a better writer. Letting go of expectations I cannot meet only to discover the ones that were meant for me is liberating, exciting - I am actually creative because of it.

At a small church gathering last week, a dear friend said, “Lent is slowing down to think about how God is setting me free.” A light turned on in my brain. I needed that definition. It captures what Lent has been for me this time around. The miraculous angle to all of this is that the poems sprouting up through semi-sandy soil filled by my selfish ambition have proven to be some of my most enjoyable poems yet. I value my writing, my experience more than I ever have because well, it’s mine and God created it. This is his freedom!

I conclude by highlighting a beautiful story that same friend, a well soiled mother, Jesus follower, chef (and many other things), drafted during this season! Enjoy:

[Bexley. We gave her our last love. Phil took her in my van, her last ride. We would receive her back, gone. Kelton dug her grave under the fruit trees for a couple of hours. He wanted to do it by himself. I know this is an important part of his letting go and facing the hard things of life.

Life is full of love and full of loss. Bexley had a hard life. We rescued her and yet she rescued Kelton. She was always emotionally needy, but somehow it is what bonded us to her. She was an old soul, if a dog can be one. She was one of our cherished memories of Portugal and Vicky's hospitality.

I remember my dad's story of losing his dog, Buck, and watching my dad walk my brother through burying his dog, Roman (also under our fruit trees). I still cry at the visual memory. Now we are there. And, Bexley will lay next to Roman.

Phil returned with Bexley, now a visual remnant of herself. He layed her in the deep earth, dug with tears and ache. We gathered and shared stories. Planted an olive tree next to her. Read from Psalm 52:8, “For I am like an olive tree/I trust in God's unfailing love.” Kelton chose the olive tree. With cracking pain his voice shared a story of a holocaust victim who took soil from his concentration camp and with it travelled to Israel to plant an olive tree. It symbolized how good could come out of evil. I thought, “Kelton, you have grown up overnight.” We shoveled dirt into the hole and slowly watched her fade from our eyes. The boys made a cross and wrote, "Bexley we love you, have the best sleep of your life". They draped it with her colar.

For some reason, this has hit me very hard. I couldn't sleep last night. I have been crying all day. It is somehow at the same time beautiful yet, very hard to see Kelton take his first real break toward manhood, digging the grave for hours in the drizzly weather alone, for his best friend (other than his best brother), muddy earth squished between his toes, the grime of pain covering his rugged bare feet, a white t-shirt splattered by the soil that would hold much of his heart for years to come. Later, sitting on top the grave looking out over the world as his legs hung over the edge of the chasm that held the lifeless form of what once brought such life, his toes softly brushing across the silky fur longing to feel a warm response, but receiving nothing but a chill, swollen eyes and wet rose flushed cheeks reflecting the pain that would begin to mark the trail toward manhood. Then, crouching over Bexley's stiff form, holding her for one last time to say a forever goodbye and to give her one last whole loved embrace. The end is worse than any bad dream. Hearing my boy sob groanings that I somehow know in my soul so well. Something deep in my inmost parts knows that language. How I wish I could gather up all the loss and tears and bury it instead of Bexley. How I long for gut pain to not be such a consuming part of humanity.

I do know that God fully feels it with us. And, that while it is only a dog, it is representative of so much that is broken in this life. Sometimes, a loss like this gives way to buried tears that have been damned up for years, whole lives...centuries. I know that in God's great design, he never intended for there to be such loss. His (God's) loss is now the only remedy for our pain. So, while Bexley is under the olive tree and will bring life to our memories, our tears are watering God's garden preparing a future of wholeness for us. Pain digs out a space for God, so that He fills that soul grave with His presence of relationship and births new life where nothing else will.

So, I cry, probably for a lot of reasons, not just the loss of Bexley, partly in knowing what each of my children will face in this life, partly in watching Kelton bravely face the goodbye and taking that step toward manhood -all the while grateful that God walks with us and knows far more deeply the extent of loss and what gain it can bring.]

#13-25: Potter's Clay

#26: The one poem I created on Potter's Clay

Birds of Prey

The only time I've ever

pretended to be dead:

I was six years old in back yard

under the oak tree. I was a baby

when we moved in, the lambent branches

are my first memory of sight.

I pretended because of my fascination

with birds of prey. We lived on the north side

of the highway, so I watched them pierce

and tear the flesh of weekly roadkill.

I wondered if they had babies to feed,

where and if they slept. I folded my body in half,

bent towards the grass and lay still,

hoping they might come gently and peck

at my shirt. I trusted they would not break

any skin, only lift me off the ground

to the other side of the freeway.

#10: busy, didn't write

#11: rest

#12: From an exercise in The Practice of Poetry (p.51)

“Experience falls through language like water through a sieve.”

"Poems begin where ordinary conversations leave off. If we can say something clearly, we don't need to write a poem about that experience or feeling or idea. Such a poem would be superfluous. Instead, we write poems about what we can not articulate, but feel pressured to say, which is why poems use language in unusual ways. In ordinary conversation we rarely use fresh metaphors. We don’t say, as William Carlos Williams does in one poem,"nature in its barrennes/equals the stupidity of man" (These) or as Rita Dove writes in another, “Everyday a wilderness" (Dusting). But a poem will often begin with a metaphor the poet has to learn how to understand. And often, metaphor and simile may be a poets only means for capturing experience in all its rich complexity."

The things we leave undone are different (or)

how bitterness leads to unfinished poems

A book that has been

sitting on a shelf, dust

accumulating in its spine, unread

The corner of the yard,

thicket has spread over our fence

for years. I could weed it out,

plant a lemon tree.

Fifteen minutes of overtime

everyday - never leaves early enough

to tickle the toes trapped in a onesy pajama

or to make a long-distance call

on the drive home.

To work on: metaphor and simile, create them

The time between us not talking is like the cardboard between my wooden desk leg and the uneven floor. Pushed on, balancing, pretending to be steady, not true to the desk, telling of the floor.

#9

Atlanta weather | Storm rolls through area

Tornado watches

in my hometown, my brothers

sleep beneath lime green

clouds. Will they wake up

to missing walls and slashed trees,

or to your steady hands

smoothing out their hair,

whispering their deepest dreams

into belonging?

#8

Customer Service

My name is Gary.

I have worked at Home-Depot

for almost eleven years, been livin’

most of my life on Gaviota Beach,

finally quit partying there five years ago.

That’s how I got my job though,

I met the manager at a bonfire.

You need screws for drywall and studs.

You need one and a quarter. That’s plenty,

those will get you through the particle

board. You said you needed

an outdoor storage container too?

Those are not in my department but I’d be

glad to walk you to that aisle. You know,

if you need something really sturdy you might

try the on-site tool boxes. They are bullet proof.

No, it’s really okay. I don’t mind walking you

down there. This is a big store and I like

the company.

#6: not posted

#7: A Dialogue between Table and Chair

Table

I was made by her father after he came home

from Fort Benning in 1942. He never got shipped out

because of his clubfoot. He says, “I should have shut-up

and not said anything about the pain, then I coulda gone.”

She was eleven then and so happy

he’d not gone anywhere.

Chair

They got me before the table

was made. She needed me. Her legs didn’t work right

since she was born and the Women’s Missionary

Union had donated enough money to buy me. My wheels

were coated bright blue then. I remember when she saw me,

she said, “Mama, do you think

I can take it to heaven?”

Table

He built me to replace the one his mother-and-law had

loaned them when they married. She wanted it back

and he wanted a table the chair could easily

slide under. He didn’t worry about making me fine.

It was for utility’s sake, mine and her’s.

Chair

He finished the table on a Friday afternoon

in October. His wife asked if they wanted to celebrate

by making a special supper and my girl responded by quickly

rolling me to the edge of that table. She helped her mama chop

the last of the summer tomatoes, and asked,

“Can we invite miss Janey? They just sent her papa

off and I know she’d like to see our new table?”