Delight

Delight comes in parentheses,

whenever life's relentless syntax

cracks and you can see God waiting.

Delight is where you part from plans

mid-plan and depart out the hole

in the whole you thought you'd built.

Delight's the exit from our sentence

and is itself a little death, just like

all our comings, all becoming,

and maybe even second comings.

(Every second, one thing's going

just as another's coming.)

Ding Dong

Everyday's now strewn with 
wonders disappearing unremarked. 
I give you yesterday.  
Something almost utterly 
unspecial. Ding Dongs. 
For sale at a food-court
restaurant. Except, except
I hadn't tasted one in years. 
I wanted to call. I wanted 
to ask if you ever sat on a 
curb in summertime, you and
your best friend. No plans. 
Nibbling the chocolate shell 
till only spongy puck remained. 
Which you gulped. I wanted 
to ask if you ever conjured 
pterodactyls from the foil wrappers,
then flew them round the lawn. 
If some lost creatures momentarily 
took flight.

The Divorced Couple Puts Their Dog to Sleep

We hold her

while the chemicals

gently stop her heart,

hold one of the last things

we love in common.

We rub her ears and murmur,

"Good girl. Such a good girl."

And then there's just a body.

Where she goes

we've only seen in flashes –

dreams, deep pain,

or fast collapses –

whenever what in us will last

goes wandering and then returns.

Or when it stays, and waits

unresurrected.

We Tell the Kids

I take our daughter to her lesson.

She takes our son to soccer.

We come home

and have a snack.

We tell the kids.

Our son shouts at us.

Our daughter bows her head.

We all weep for an hour.

Our daughter goes out to rake leaves.

Our son starts watching cartoons.

I take our son to a party

She takes our daughter

to another lesson.

A chain of endings ends.

Another one begins.

There's a Thread

Pick up the end

of the golden thread.

It begins anywhere --

a church, these plums,

a drop of blood, the rain

-- and leads on through

the universe out to the

other end of yourself.

If you lose the thread

for a time in the dark,

be gentle. You'll find

it again. You can always

start here.

Solstice

Oh, thou exuberant sun
with your arms flung wide 
to me all day in welcome.
I ease into your warmth,
finally ready to set down 
these dark things I carry. 
Ready to be light.




(Happy birthday.)

The Wrapper

There's something holy wrapped

in nothing: The least bit of litter

that blows by your shoes

tells a story as deep as humanity.

The physicist who crossed the street,

the one who ate the candy bar

and dropped the wrapper,

had stopped with the thought

that all we are is lifeless quarks and

space. We're nearly nothing

and still we're somehow holy.

She stood there lost and grinning,

wholly rapt.