I closed my eyes and fell into a dream.
Someone was complaining about
the bother of a person who saw the world
as it is and insisted on changing it.
"She'll never fit in," he said,
"She'll always be a few steps off the path."
Then another voice, this one attached to a body
slanting up the hill toward me.
I sensed a strength, but I could not see a face.
"Everybody has a piece of God in them"
said the voice. "Even her?" scoffed the other.
"Especially her!" said the voice.
From the hill we could see
far down across the roofs of the town
to the ocean, a shining sliver of silver
just under the sky.
Something so vast poured
into the thinnest horizon line . . .
but that was all we needed
to know it was there.

Take the good as you find it;
don't set down a marker to say,
'This far and no farther' or nothing
may come to you that you could recognize.
And if you could recognize it
you would be saying, 'Hello, old friend,
I wondered if I'd see you again.' But then
how to find the new, the good newness
that is out there, slipped in between
the hard rocks of experience, the sudden
shiver on the water's surface, the quiet
breath of the person next to you leaning
into the vast open vault of forgiveness
there for the taking, not depleted,
a spring of everlasting life, a seeing
through the grime and dust to something
beautiful, ancient, original —
yours.

Why does every bright day with wind
arrive like San Francisco in '68?
The fog pouring in like horses
over the Golden Gate and the cough
of seals down at Fisherman's Wharf.
City Lights opens its narrow stair
and Ferlinghetti is there at the top
to turn and welcome you
with his slow smile. And the feeling
of reaching toward the bread
of something substantial, the bread
not yet broken, the sacrifice not yet made,
the world still a kingdom to be discovered.

The rain began precisely when
the weather app said it would.
First, the street was spattered, then
the drops crowded in like tourists.

I never believed I could lay claim to anybody,
to say, "You are mine," like they do in
all the songs we knew. This is serious,
what we call love. Maybe it is rare.

I don't want to overthink it; I do that
too much already. There was no one
to say, "Watch now, this is how you do it,
this is how you love without tethering someone."

So, I fail, fail gloriously. Fail at arm's length
and fail up close. The rain begins and begins,
and all the while the bodhisattvas among us
wait patiently. They will not enter Nirvana
until all have found their way.

I am thinking of that chain link fence
around the schoolyard meant to keep out
intruders. I am thinking of the sound
of shell casings hitting the ground, dancing
up in slo-mo, golden offerings to Moloch.
I am thinking of adults who will not
protect children because ambition
matters more.
I am praying this grief we share
will become a prayer.
I'm praying this anger remain
a hard knot in my throat.
I am praying that the broken ones
who break others will be helped
before they kill.
That the ones who make the laws
to keep the broken wreaking havoc
will be stopped.
I am praying that the ones who cannot
find a reason to go on will find
the breath to pray. 

That we are slow, unwitting, confused.
Prone to mistakes, predictable.
That we are flightless, but a little lower
in the great chain of being than they are.

How simple it all seems to them, our lives:
Born, walk awhile, lie down, die.

What could they know of us?
Not all of us cross
a rickety bridge as children.
Some will go out for bread
and not return home.

Perhaps they think of us
as younger siblings born as a
late, last surprise, another generation
between, yet familial duties remain —
and they pity our constant stumbling.

When we went to the movies,
they would gather in the parking lot,
comparing notes, sharing a smoke.
You could almost see them in
the slight distortion around the lights.

They are messengers bearing announcements.
They stoop a little when they approach us.
"Don't be afraid," they often say. They don't
linger. Like older siblings they have to be
somewhere else, holding back the Furies,
pouring out plagues, circling the throne.

Where the road cuts deep
in the mountain's flank
there are seams of ash in stone.
There was violence once
which a wound reveals
and the fractured bones
still strain
to stand.

Only the wound reveals.

The janitor rests his head
against the window
of the morning bus to home.
He lives alone.
He shuts the door.
And when he dies
he leaves a million dollars
to the music school
for scholarships.

Who could have known?

The heart sets out on its way,
a pilgrim through the world.
The heart draws to itself
all that which can be seen,
though words are not yet born
to name it all to sound.

The heart bears all.

In the end the apostle writes,
"There were many things that Jesus did.
If they were all to be written down,
I suppose the world could not hold the books."

There is so much more to tell.

I slept out in the field under the oak.
The rain was soft. I'd climbed the fence
just off the road. One light through the mist
from a shed across the field.
In California it was rush hour, all traffic
stopped in stinking heat. But I was there
in Wales in the night hours, grinning like
a fool. Still praising the great world.
At home in the fields of the Lord.

There are secrets in the forest,
quiet movements of coming and going.
A communion of deer reaching out
with delicate tongues for the Host,
administered by an invisible priestess.
If you hold your breath you might hear their
murmured Amens, see the green shoots
as the body of their god moves gently
in response.

I was thinking as I walked,
'Where are the deer?' and I looked up
to see one regarding me placidly.
Then there were five more and two
off in a thicket by themselves.

Theirs is a language of movement,
of gestures. They have no secrets;
they are like the books
on the table
by the window
that you meant to read.
You walk by today, tomorrow.
Soon, you cannot see them.

Parabola: The path of a projectile under the influence of gravity.

And we arrived squalling,
after deep immersion in warmth,
projectiles shot into the world, tumbling end

over end, caroming off walls of bent law,
jolting down the rough scree of injustice,
dragging the long tail of generations.

We split the air, the air streaming around us,
feathering up behind in colors only seen
against the dark clouds of history.

What drew us forward was hunger
for justice, memory and longing.
Also, accidents of place, conjunction
of powers, and limits.

How long we ascended,
thrust over gravity!
The arc of ambition, a certain defiance
of inertia and the cost of fuel.

The wide heart of goodness,
the cool fire of sacrifice.

History is a book of stone,
open always to the chapters
that will break your bones
when you fall.

Leap!

We who are alive
shall be caught up
in the arc of this parabola.

We shall rise and fly,
somehow stay aloft against
the gravity of this hour.