Findings

Findings

Sam?

Samantha, the dog I thought a “he” until just before her owner left her with me to join his friends kayaking, has disappeared. One minute, Sam’s splashing in the rocky shallows with me, the next, all I see is the cliff we climbed down to get here. I’m left with the sound of the river and hot August sun. And the diesel truck back up at the road. The hill and truck are enough of an adventure. The rapids eight kayakers just put into here don’t even register.

My whistle’s worthless. Sam!

I’m driving shuttle for people who love to ride fast rivers. I love to sit beside a river, let it go about its business. Right now, that business includes moving eight, bright boats for hopefully enough water miles that Sam will come back before I drive down to the take-out.

I read somewhere that dogs respond better to lower tones—they carry authority. I lower my voice: SAAAAAM. I look for a place to sit, find a scoop of rock chair’d by time, and watch the frothing. One thing about waiting, it makes you pay attention. A racked buck bends to drink on the other shore. A red dragonfly is followed by two blue. The summer-exposed boulders stair the river down with thick, white water. The roar around them is so loud I can’t hear any thoughts but water’s. I wonder if I envy wildness and flight. Another bit of the river’s business is to speak, I think. Its voice is constant, like God’s. As with both, I’m not always listening. Listen.

Sam?

Beside the unstill waters

of the Salmon,

I have been calling

the river by its nickname.

Sam the dog isn’t here.

I am.

The river is—

with red and blue boats

with red and blue wings

with me finally glad for my stillness.

Loss makes way for being found

by a river in the full sun

of late summer,

unmoving

but unready to return

to a stationary world.

P.S. Two days later, the message comes: Found: lost dog across the river. All is well.

Flight has hands

A cat, a restaurant table, a feather decal, a camera, and the window that sees us together. If hands can take flight, then maybe flight has hands.

Bikini Season for the Spirit

This is the time of year when side-bar internet advertisements flash with “secret” tips to slim down and tone up in time for donning that swimsuit. Gyms, weight-loss programs, and diet supplement distributors are hoping we’ve strayed into caloric and sedentary detours during bundled winter days.

The last time I wore a swimsuit was in September. Then, this last week, we had a gorgeously balmy day. I borrowed my friend’s book by Watchman Nee and sat by her pool. The book was Releasing the Spirit, and it managed—in just one hundred pages—to put the entire spirit-soul-body connection in perfect perspective. As I read that progress comes when the soul and body have yielded to the spirit, I drifted into the lovely sunlight-between-the-fibers-of-my-hat land.

When I lived in the tropics, I wore a swimsuit every day. I even kept one in the car so that I could pop to the beach from wherever I was. There was none of the spring surprise at what cold winter had paled and densed because winter near the equator is still dang hot (I didn’t use hot water in my shower ‘til the trade winds of January). When I was faced with the reality of myself daily, I easily kept my physical life in balance: jog on the beach, one helping of sushi.

Temperate winters are sneaky. All of a sudden it’s January, and my body craves almond butter and sharp cheddar. With no need to wear a bikini, I can forget the importance of discipline. At least, I used to. After those two island years, something shifted: I liked that I was always ready to go to the beach. And so here on the mainland, far, far away, (and far away from a warm, turquoise sea), I still keep a swim suit and sarong in a little bag in my car. Who knows when someone will suggest a jaunt to the hot springs or offer a spontaneous vacation to the Maldives?

But now the bigger challenge: I want my spirit to be even more prepared than my soul, let alone my body. I’m getting ready to finish my second year at a school of supernatural ministry. Soon, I will get to see whether I have set into place the discipline required for the bikini season of the spirit—awkward metaphor and all.

For Habakkuk & his readers

Words, solid as stone,
flighted as feathers,
turn into both
the honey comb
and the sweetness
running from it.

Run with them.

Advent Poems

Five Christmas gifts follow: a sampling of the twenty-four poems I wrote--one each day--for this Advent. Starting with the stocking stuffer . . . .

Harbor hopes as big as ships

equipped to cross worlds.

*

Fog rests in the forest, hiding

a world between grass and branches—

a world so soft and molecular

that breath would end it.

Once I was invited to a back room.

A man opened a drawer, then a box.

Then a folio with a spine thick as my fist.

He opened to a page illumined in gold leaf.

I could see my face in the burnished

brightness limning a birth.

I leaned over it, “Oh . . .”

The man shook his head.

That brilliance I could dull by breath.

Oh, fragility kept pressed

behind pages, boards, box, drawer

robbed of light. How can such beauty

shine if not exposed to the elements

that could destroy it?

How like its subject, deity turned

mortal to show us light.

Walk in this winter.

Wave your arms and holler

until you see your own breath.

*

Inspired by a vision of a ship’s figurehead turning outside in, as if she were looking to see if she had a heart.

My ship points inward

like a sleeve stuck

inside a shirt. Any

limb will reach core.

My cargo is heart,

heaven. The weight

so light, it almost

flies, this vessel.

Yes. See beneath me?

Stars. Here I plot

course, planetless.

Orbit with me. Hold

the north-pointing compass.

Tell me when it’ll be

to bright to read,

then kiss me with sleep.

I wake, seams back

inside, sleeves filled

with reasonable arms

holding reasonable things:

A bowl of stars

as souvenirs.

*

Inspired by the Celtic belief of “thin places,” where the veil is thinner between this world and the next

Love, sweet alias for the world

we wish to see, come rest

on our heads, close as hair.

Be the reason for the scalp’s

work—to grow strands that lift

with the physics of angels.

Love, watch the hair thinning,

guide the white. Give

us the wisdom we cannot reach

but which reaches us—

like a mother bending down

to lift up her child.

Her touch is tonsure,

marks us as those

who walk between.

*

The candle’s second end

is meant to rest, deep in white,

held curled asleep.

It is light’s tiny fly

stilled in waxen

amber millennia past.

That moist wick, not

meant for flame,

is signal—will

sputter and snap at fire.

Burn everything else

in the long line of life,

but leave yourself

a remainder of what

you’ll be remembered for.

To Fear & Love

Irony may be on his deathbed, but now and then he sits bolt upright and wide-eyed, scaring the mourning relatives. He did this the other day. I jumped, and my heart raced when he said: “Fear of love keeps you from love.” And then he slumped back into his pillows and the doctor told us to go home and get some sleep.

If fear is my worst emotion, then love is my best. But trust the worst to try keeping me from the best. Fear is the proverbial pot of crabs, set on the stove to boil. If one of them finds a way to reach the rim, the others will pull him back in; if they can’t escape, they don’t want anyone else to. Fear doesn’t want me to know that there’s a way out. Fear is afraid of Love, so it keeps me from it. Oh, the times I sat, turning red, in boiling water!

Perhaps the deeper irony is that true Love took away all fear on the Cross, and yet I still yank fear back and hold onto it. Ridiculous.

So I decide to let ill irony die, and fear with him.

Love is living water. Love is refreshing, restoring, resplendent. Once in its wide and lovely waters, there should be no hint of a desire for that pot on the stove.

I am writing an obituary for fear and a “thank you” card for Love.