My Spiritual Birthday Went Wrong

If my blog seems to have taken on religious overtones lately, well, that’s just because the winter season provides a lot of tradition that is handy for a writer to use. And this place is one of many forms into which I pour some of myself out, as a drink offering. 

Today is supposed to be the 30th Anniversary of my Spiritual Birthday. For anyone who has not been part of an evangelical faith, I will explain: your spiritual birthday is the day you decided to repent of your earthly and worldly ways and receive the Holy Spirit by way of the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. I’ve already lost half you reading this, because you’ve had some sort of bad experience with these kinds of words, or they don’t interest you, or this description of spiritual transactions are as confusing and numbing as legalese, or because you disdain religion altogether, or you are currently following a different path of faith. I get that, and that’s fine. I just want to tell my story, because that’s what this blog is for. It’s not an easy story for me to tell, simply because it’s so inescapably part of my history. I’ll try to make it easy to hear.

I have often sensed that someone is with me— a presence— as it is sometimes called. I know how that can sound. Please bear with me a little longer. I like to be around people in general, and I love to be with the people that I know personally. But, I also need to be alone much of the time. Sometimes this is because I prefer experiencing the world solo, which means I am not under the influence of someone else. It’s direct and uncomplicated. Sometimes the world is a bit much and I need to withdraw. Yet many times, this is because I want to be in the company of this presence, because I feel accepted as myself, no matter where I am exploring or what I am observing, imagining, doing or creating. People of the Buddhist tradition might call this the Buddha Baby who lives in all of us. A pop psychologist might call this the inner child. A theist would title it God.

I was about to say, “I don’t care what that eternal presence is called” in some conciliatory fashion, but that’s not entirely true. Rather, I should say that I care a great deal about what is said of the eternal presence that I experienced first-hand, because my conversion experience— my spiritual birthday— messed it up for a long time. That doesn’t mean that I have lost my faith, it’s just that I have since reclaimed the faith that I’ve always had and can never lose, regardless of what is said in words. But, here comes a bunch of words, anyway.

In my senior year of High School, I accepted an invitation from a good friend to attend a spiritual retreat in the White Mountains of Arizona. I was feeling a bit lonely and untethered at the time, which is usually a ripe condition to be in for all sorts of spiritual shenanigans to transpire. It’s as if a flare goes up, signaling that there is an empty space, and all sorts of things start to compete to take up residence, for better or worse. In my decision to move across the country from the place and people I knew before, I had lost my sense of home. I think I mistook that feeling for a loss of the neutral witnessing presence I was familiar with. I didn’t realize that the presence was experiencing the loss of home as well, and was facing the unfamiliar right along with me, even if it knew better. I was in a homesick and empty emotional state, but not an empty spiritual state. But at that time, I couldn’t tell the difference. It’s still difficult.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear that I’m not going to say that I “came to Jesus” on this retreat and found my home, and that you should, too. I’m also not going to say, instead, that I was fooled or tricked into fakery and now I’m embittered. I’m just going to tell what happened. 

The people that I went with on this mountain retreat were lovely, hospitable people. Nothing strange or creepy or lurid happened around the bonfire or in the cabins or woods. I didn’t feel coerced or hypnotized into following a cult leader or anything of that nature. In fact, the pine trees and the altitude and the fluctuating energy of the other kids made me feel more awake than usual. I remember laughing a lot. But I admit that my emotional state was still one of vulnerability. And being on the edge of seventeen, everything is turned up to eleven.

The youth pastor was an upstanding young man. The guest speaker was a nice older man with a white, well-groomed beard. I think his name might have been Bill. Their wives and children were there, too. All of the other kids were perhaps on their best behavior, because there were “the unsaved” among them. That meant me, and a few others. At the time, I didn’t think that I was in any sort of peril, other than the daily challenge of trying to find my way around hundreds of strangers and buildings and streets in a new city. All I knew was that these polite and gracious kids seemed to want me to be one of them for a while, and that felt fine. What I didn’t know was that I was a part of someone’s mission; someone who believed they had both the right and the wherewithal to mess with something as undefined and innocent as my soul.

Photo credit: E.J. Peiker, Apache Nat'l Forest

Bill told several stories in a gentle and captivating style. There were campy songs and skits, and because I was raised with the church, praying as a group was routine and nothing to be uncomfortable about. What was different about this church-like setting was the earnestness and focused attention on me, even if it was just furtive glances or sometimes stares from others at my reactions to everything that was going on. There was definitely something in the air asking, “Does she get it, now?” If that question had been spoken aloud, I could have replied, “I’ve always had it.”

Here’s where I got turned around on the Mountaintop and stuck in my journey. Bill gave a speech on the last evening, a Saturday night. In his speech, he made an analogy regarding the freedom offered by Christ. He told a parable about an average guy named Richard standing before a judge. Since the speech was directed at unsaved targets like myself, it was actually a parable about me. I was the average Richard, and suddenly I was picturing myself in a courtroom, and I didn’t even remember having been arrested. The imaginary judge looks over my crimes against God and everything in the universe and rules that I am to be sentenced to prison. It’s nothing personal, it’s because I’m a sinful human. But lo and behold, in walks Jesus, himself, and says, “I will carry out the sentence in your place!” He goes into the prison cell, and bingo-bango, I am free to go! I’ve been liberated, saved, bought and paid for, redeemed. Except I felt none of those things.

As I was listening to this story, I felt like the presence I had known all my life had been named as Jesus. I didn't have much of a chance to check this idea. Because suddenly, Jesus is in jail, and it’s all my fault. I didn’t feel free. I felt obligated and honor-bound to his plight. I wasn’t going to abandon— what had mistakenly been identified as the core of my being—  to a life behind bars. Instead, my mind turned around and faced the Jesus in that cell, and from there, my body went in search of ways to get him out: regular attendance at church functions, service to mankind in a variety of ways, studying and memorizing scriptural passages, praying and journaling and pleading and fretting without one taste of freedom. 

None of the tasks that had been set before me were hardships in themselves. There were many rewards. The religious education and observance of ritual expanded and disciplined my thinking. But as all of this contemplation and activity grew and blossomed into a prudent and profitable lifestyle, my spirit diminished, still standing outside the prison cell, holding onto the bars, guilt-ridden for having put him there just by my being born with an outstanding debt. In the scenario Bill had described, my part was a cypher, someone who can assume many forms and roles in the service of the greater good. That’s not a spiritual covenant drawn up between a Person and a person. That’s a social contract, which is self-limiting. Worse, yet, it's a double bind.

Did anyone intend for me to take that courtroom analogy so literally? I highly doubt it. I know I didn’t intend to. But the implications did take root inside that temporarily empty emotional place which I can see only in hindsight. And with the grace of hindsight, I can go back and preface the story I was told with, “The following program is brought to you by very well-meaning people. They will go on to show you many kindnesses, and excepting a few individuals, they mostly just want to serve alongside you to increase the love. Now, to the more imaginative among you, don’t go crazy with all the heavy symbolism.”

When it comes to stories about souls, even the Apostle Paul said, “For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power” (1 Cor 4:20).  That sounds right, because words are an invention. They can obviously carry power in them, but they are never a substitute for the power itself. They just sort of hover and point at it. So, here at the end of my topsy-turvy testimony, I offer you a hopeful song, like all good “goin’ to meetin’” rituals do. Wherever your power is, please feel truly free to go to that rich and never-closed-for-repairs kingdom at hand as you listen, not to the literal words, but to the spirit of the song. Kick it.

Exceptional Excerpts: LOST and FOUND

In the video below, it would seem that the music was written to accompany the animation, or vice versa. Actually, they were created years apart by different people for different reasons; and somehow, the two creations found each other. What this short film says to me is, All of us are both lost and found at the same time, all the time. The surprise comes when we realize just how much. So, I offer this as an encouragement to insist upon your lostness and to insist upon your foundness.

Due to the vagueries and caprices of youtube, this video, itself, has often been lost and then found again. If it is not available at the time you are reading this post, please check back again. In the meantime, the writing below from "Brother Void" (Andrew Boyd) is offered as a tonic during times of adversity.

Excerpted from The Book of Daily Afflictions by Andrew Boyd:

Finding Sorrow

Let my hidden weeping arise and blossom – RAINER MARIA RILKE

When you get depressed, it's comforting to remember that deep inside you is a well of pain. This pain can help you. It's a reservoir of self-knowledge and nourishment. When you welcome this pain, it can carry you out of depression and into sorrow.

When depressed, you are merely numb and listless. But in sorrow, you feel the fine-grained texture of loss. Whereas depression diminishes your world, sorrow teaches you the true value of the things you mourn. Sorrow is the other side of joy– a dark, moist cradle of grief that slowly nourishes you, a solemn vigil that honors what you love. So the next time you are ensnared in darkness, cut through the gray armor of depression straight to the dark heart of sorrow.

Lost in depression, I am found in sorrow.

Mind All the Maggie Mays

In Britain’s underground train, the Tube, there are painted signs and a loudspeaker that intones “Mind the Gap” between the platform and the train. In the U.S., we see yellow warnings of “Caution.”  I prefer the admonishment to mind something because it seems more focused as a directed mental state rather than an emotional one. “Mind” suggests a watchful awareness of something specific, whereas “caution” evokes a generalized heightening of anxiety. After 9/11, the terror alert status was always somewhere around orange on a spectrum of colors from green to red, yet no one knew exactly what that meant in terms of action, and what could a traveler actually do about that warning, anyway? Then began a lot of “exercising caution” that felt like a nervous treadmill in the chest. 

Awareness of the human condition and the threats to its welfare is the responsibility of all people, but the expression of the human heart is the purview of the artist. Sometimes artistic expressions can be cautionary about society's ills, and those expressions hold up various red flags to us. But the kind of art that allows us into a singular person’s underground–and back out again– can reassure us that all is not lost, even if it seems that way at the time.

Which brings me to Rod Stewart’s "Maggie May", curiously. Usually, I hear it as a cautionary tale– lifted from the book of Proverbs–of a young man who was led astray, ending up heartbroken and empty as a result. Now that I’m older, I hear an invitation to a enter a mindful state of who and what Maggie May is, without recrimination or paranoia to always be on guard.

The original rendition begins with the lull of a mandolin followed by two rousing thumps and a command of “Wake up, Maggie! I think I’ve got something to say to you.” By contrast, this later live Unplugged rendition calls us to listen more tenderly. So let’s wake up, too, however rudely or gently, and mind what he has to say. There is so much in this performance that is instructive about what happens between us and our creative muses, displaying harmony in actuality:

The lyrics to this version:

Wake up, Maggie, I think I got something to say to you

It's late September and I really should be back at my school

I know I keep you amused, but I feel I'm being used

Oh, Maggie, I couldn't have tried any more

You lured me away from my home

Just to save you from being alone

You stole my heart, but I love you anyway

The morning sun, when it's in your face really shows your age

But that don't worry me none, in my eyes, you're everything

I laughed at all of your jokes

My love you didn't need to coax

Oh, Maggie, I couldn't have tried any more

You lured me away from home

Just to save you from being alone

You stole my soul, but I love you anyway

All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand

But you turned into a lover, and mother, what a lover, 

You wore me out

All you did was wreck my bed

And in the morning, kick me in the head

Oh, Maggie, I couldn't have tried any more

You made a first-class fool out of me

But I'm as blind as a fool can be

You stole my soul, but I love you anyway

I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school

Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool

Or find myself a rock 'n' roll band

That needs a helping hand

Oh, Maggie, I couldn’t have tried any more

You lured me away from my home,

Just to save you from being alone

You stole my soul, and that’s what really hurts

Maggie, I wish I'd never seen your face

I'll get on home, Maggie, one of these days

Oh, Mag

by Martin Quittenton/Rod Stewart

Well, I don’t need to be coaxed, either. I’m here to learn, I’m dropping my fishing nets, and I’m all in. Firstly, I notice that he wants to sing without too much accompaniment or embellishment. He’s vocally naked, and this exposure is what every artist has to risk. At some point, the second guitar and other instruments join in for emphasis, but the musicality doesn’t seem to be the highest priority here. The baring of the soul and the bearing of the message are. There’s no time for mere navel-gazing and strumming when you’ve got the attention of this many people.

Interestingly, that message has changed a little bit from its earliest days. The original lyric is “It’s late September and I really should be back at school.” A more mature Rod Stewart adds in and lingers on the words, "my school" to which the audience curiously responds with approval. Perhaps this reminds us that we are always in some sort of school, some stage of learning, and staying away for too long for whatever reason, just makes it harder to rejoin, like a friend you haven’t seen in a while.

There is a great deal reflected about the neglect of self and natural growth in such a small number of words. The insertion of the word “my” is a resolve to go to wherever we have experienced the most important and meaningful expansion of our capacity to love and to put the best of ourselves into the world. “School” is just a place where we should be because we don’t know any better yet. Others who know better decide for us, and we’re thrown into it along with others. "My school" is the one we choose alongside the Should Be Places. Our continuing education is a blend of what others know and what we know, and we make it our own.

Illumination framed by a calcified window. "Pelvis IV" by Georgia O'Keefe 1944, oil on canvas

Maggie May is a distraction from all of that. She doesn’t have to be an older female lover; she is anything that calls upon us to amuse, busy and occupy ourselves or someone else until we’re spent. And yet, Maggie May has been an education for him, herself. He feels foolish, blind and robbed, but he loves her anyway, which is the startling moment of self-knowledge. But, Maggie May is not the muse— she is the a-muse, the opposite of the muse—the drain on his life force.

A few things happen with the A-muse. She seems like she’ll be a good thing, but her increasingly clinging demands bring our true needs into sharper focus. He needed a guiding hand, but she grabs his and keeps him as a toy. Admitting that he gave his all to please her, he realizes he is as lost as he was before he “saw her face”. She only took from his hands without filling them back, so now they are without purpose and his soul is bemused and bewildered. He’s trying to decide where to put the hands to good use— to hold books as a scholar, to hustle at pool, or to play in a band. In the story of Rod Stewart, he chose the last one, to his benefit and ours. 

And so a funny thing happens in the education of Rod Stewart, apart from an Institute of Higher Learning. His empty-handed experience with a Maggie May becomes a self-sustaining song, a breakout hit, and then one of the most famous and beloved songs in Rock and Roll music history. Rolling Stone ranks it at 130 of the top 500 Songs of All Time. So, naturally, he still loves her. In this version he replaces old lines of "that's what really hurts" and "that's a pain I can do without" with "I love you, anyway". Yet he still admits once to feeling the hurt, because he is not a Rock god. He is a human being, and that’s who we connect with. Whether or not we like the song, there’s a person sharing a memory under all that hair.

As a human, and not a god, he is also still vulnerable to the Maggie May occupations and fantasies that lead nowhere, and he is precociously aware of that as a very young man: “I’ll get on home… one of these days.” Inside of this sigh of self-conscious resignation, he is simultaneously hopeful that he will discover where his true home is, that his muse will guide him, even if he doesn’t yet know when. Sometimes he sings: “I’ll get a ride home one of these days.” The same line is a statement of his need to mind his own powerlessness, and is at other times a statement of faith in deliverance. 

If we want to see a muse in action, watch Rod Stewart as the inspiration to the lead guitarist, Ronnie Wood. They are like the Yin and Yang of punked-out hair, party-weathered faces and tight pants. The guitarist is taking all of his cues from his muse that is singing. See how he watches. There is focused attention, flexibility, and a temporary surrender to the leading of the musical spirit that is creating this moment. And so how could the muse not finally seal that moment with a gracious kiss, and recognize and lift up the artist for all to see? If someone wants to hide you behind them and keep you as a possession or commodity, or if an activity or occupation causes you to skip your school, they are an A-Muse, a Maggie May. Mind them, like a gap.

Magazine ad, 1926

How will all of this mindfulness play itself out? It’s impossible to know. No one can guarantee commercial success and acclaim. In the instance of this particular performance, the audience is present, but not necessary to the moment. The applause is an enthusiastic and energetic response, but is extraneous. This all could have happened away from the public in a closed session and would have been no less sacred. When this does happen, when we find our genuine muse and see her face, we couldn’t leave her if we tried.

La Paloma de Mi Vida Desierta

So she went and found a bird.

Moreover, it found her.

Lying partially flattened,

a broken wing fastened

blood-stuck

to the road.

Great, just great, just great.

Kids are in the back of the car,

sweaty, tired.

It is always hot here,

even in

winter,

and we all 

stick to our seats,

as we stick to our plans,

shiny petal pink noses

and fine soil-powdered

feet and hands.

Cupped hands, cups,
glasses

bowls

baths

fountains

pools,

we all live magnetized to water,

practicing water-divination,

succumbing to 

water-seeking behavior,

the perpetually parched.

Scattered throughout

this paved and

grid-locked city

stands Our Lady,

beatified in bathtub shrines,

and Our Savior’s cross

bedecked with garlands

of acetate roses

to mark the spots

where the dearly departed have

left the earth,

now quenched in mercy.

But this day, the beaten path

of school-uniformed pilgrims

taxied between 

bus stop and home

toward water 

in all

of its dispensations

is disrupted

and halted

by this

half-doomed

wave of a wing,

blowing up

from gusts of wind,

and not of its

own
will.

So now, a pregnant moment of sighs,

inside the metallic sand Honda,

steering, gear-shifting, braking,

hands and feet 

acting apart from mind,

but from a part of

the call of the road 

to halt

for this tiny toll,

and the heat 

shimmers

over the hood.

Pull over, get out, assess.

A goner. 

A dumb mourning dove

done got itself hit

and now just here lies,

peeking up at 
her peering down,

she bent over
hands on knees,

the glare

on her back,

It in her shade.

Well, this can’t be right.

This is out of order.
Highly irregular.

Dove should be above,

Woman should be below.

To realign this upset is

over the line

of requirements 
for the maternally inclined

as they circumscribe

their days

around this valley

of sacred heart mysteries

that never fail

to remind

how one false move 

and show’s over, bud.

She doesn’t have long

to stand exposed,

scalp prickling,

assaying viability

in this dry riverbed,

the engine running.

Lord, what to do?

What to do? What to do?

She pops the trunk

and hopes, then sees 

an old towel waiting for

emergency—

but one such
not imagined

as This: 

an aviation crisis
in a city where
Howard Hughes gathered
his airplane graveyard
with upward tails
on a plain
that glitter like sails
moored in a dry marina
and F-16s fly over
in trained quad
formation,
criss-crossing
trails
that spread
like cotton wool
and settle upon them,
alighting on shoulders
as a chemical
benediction
of the well-pleased
from the wide silver-blue.
Sparking, perhaps, 
an impulse of mercy
toward this
espied and singular sparrow

from those of us below,

arising

from a thinly veiled and 
disgusted faith 

in the ever unalloyed 

igneous truth 

of the tender young
family:

It’s Always

Something.

She covers the dove

in this

faded-as-the-desert-sky-blue

raggedy-edged, 

fringy towel-for-a-shroud

and heaves and sighs

in exasperation,

looking away to the sidewalk

and away from It,

aware of the faces in the car

straining to see

What is Mom Doing?

There is conditionally cooled

and welcome home to get to 

and popsicles

and cartoons

but we are strapped in,

red-cheeked, sweat-streaked,

our little beaks open.

This won’t take long,

can’t take long,

her chickadees

are sweltering.

In one sudden final swoop 

she heroics,

angelics,

and magics

this quivering,

wrapped and enraptured

delicacy of prey

up and off

the blinding

black asphalt

all cushiony tar 

binding gleaming white stones 

frosted with thick florescent

yellow striping,

her backside

now babooned up

before any upcoming

traffic,

yet covered up modestly, 
sensibly, practically, in
reasonably priced and

serviceable khaki 

skirting above

inevitably 
burned then 
tanned legs 

straddling

the fallen,

shod in sweating 
suede sandals

slippery and pigeon-toed

so that polished nails

are in situ
on either side

of this breath-pulsing
not  yet toe-tagged
lump of

blanketed Bird.

If it all comes down to

ten coral-red drops 

on the ends of her feet

spread but fixed 
onto this street,

beneath the Cross,

beneath the roaring eye

of Jupiter,

where is God Not?

If not Nowhere,

Then why not Here

just a moment ago

in this forsaken

suburban canyon

of stucco and tile and gravel,

Swiss-dotted 

with lizard 

footprints

up the concrete walls,

why not Here,

where All is Now,

just long enough

to Deus-Ex this

feather-mashed,

pinion-snapped,

helplessness

under an

all-seeing

sun that never relents,

not one moment of

concealment

does it provide,

no, not even in death

on a steam-rolled

strip of smooth

cruising on any afternoon,

carefully surveyed

over layer upon layer

of broken caliche,
sprayed

from enormous mustard

cylindrical tanks of water

standing up

on T-Rex legs,

dangling

slack hoses waiting to swell out

at each dawn’s

early light

with the shooting,

the blast.

She has witnessed this daily

soaking, grading, bull-dozing, baptizing

and stratifying of 

sifted sediment

in real time,

for a plasticine era.

No dignity in

this age

of the instant potato,

the sudden neighborhood,

the divided and conquered

and sub-divided

plots of nowhereland

of which she was gladly,

gratefully, 

breathe deeply in relief, yes, 

oh yes, she was the proud

owner of one,

by all that is profane,

because, funny, it turned out 
that there also was not dignity

in the quarrel of the

far off fixer-upper,

the spackle, paint-spattered

troweled off, wallpapered

marriage.

So now they are respectable

but not entirely decent

in these isles of homes
which aren’t

cut cookies at all

but chickenwire, styrofoam,

snap-together

press-on, bake-oven

glitter-sprinkled

hunkered down

anthills 
veined with 

termite tunnels

laid out

for all of them

raising these children,

these children,

so many children,

hair gleaming

baby teeth baring

knees scraping

in all of this maze

of too many

and never enough

children

sequestered

in mobile trailer

add-on schoolrooms

because

stuff and nonsense

the government dares

to want property taxes

to pay for these 

mini-educations,

and the elders would rather

save for their rainy days

which are numbered

in the teens

in this Old Pueblo,

and mutter disappointment

as a eulogy over

“these kids”,

appalled

at their own non-legacy,

a gathered-in nest

kept pristine for themselves,

a crying shame of comfort

in these

four bedroom houses

built for two

and free doctoral care,

and gambling and voting 

against these offspring,

as the coil shuffles off,

offering less and still less as their

to-whiches they have become accustomed

become evermore custom,

while we all expect more and still more,

of the younguns, 

to keep up with the Russians,

the Chinese, the Indians, with

jokes of “feathers or dots?”

and build up and around

retiring communes,

rather than commons,

in which, one day 

she will as well,

and again,

gladly, gratefully, merge into 

and become one with,

expiring relief that so much

more is behind than ahead,

so much that should have

been uprighted,

yet is still

left hanging in effigy

or shot down

like a starfish

drying out upon 

parking lot pavement

but first,

she and this

last days, endtimes,

not-long-for

this-world Dove

together, now,

alone in all the golden

stillness,

everything silent

in the geologic age

of a seafloor turned to

low tide desert.

She throws out the towel,

in the towel,

down the towel, 

swaddles bird murder,

someone else’s 

hit and run, 
until she can’t

see It through her

sunglasses and hair,

cascades It away,

as far as hands

can be, farther

than arms’s length

if that were possible,

so as not to

feel the final beating,

the trilling, the squeamish

brokenness of this

aviarian mammalian

reptilian hollow-boned 
grim-reaped other
that is not her

in the wholeness

of her arms that still work,

still bend, straighten and hold,
but never could fly
oh, why, oh why

and then swift up the eroded

embankment,

to the shored up strip

of vegetation

so highly prized

when it was once just

deemed scrub not fit

for man nor beast

nor any living thing creeping

upon the ground

but now is lined

with view-fencing,

for empty pools

and clanking

Sunbrellas,

an iron-railed

churchyard

for these

fossils and bones

that lie down, betrayed,

because the water no longer

runs through it, in these

choked up wish-washes.

She finds a half-circle

of shade beneath

a straggling Texas sage,
of questionable wisdom

to inter this 

still-living bird,

on this errand

of the mercilessly

bewildered

and shocked.

Yet how many times

can we come to a standstill,

a-mazed before death,

’til it simply

sits down beside us

and takes us by the hand,

not to reap

but to release

and to give

and to restore

to the divine

or at least

to provide

the natural

order

Because, Once upon

a nobler time,

a friend,

an artist of prosperity

perspicacity

and fenced-in property

featuring an O’Keefian

skull of a cow

nailed to his wooden

entrance gate

along with other signs

of authentic desert dwelling,

in tune and beknighted with

naturalist leanings,

discovered an owl

graciously already passed on

under his lone swaying cottonwood tree.

Of course such a find becomes

sacred duty to not

leave a horned,

grand and wise

mythological One

to moulder in anything

less than a grave

spaded deeply beneath

the shimmering

majesty of circular leaves,

each one a wafer

of communion

with the light above

and the sweet cool

below

a proper burial

fit for a king.

But here lies her poor common dove,

whom no one will mourn,

with no Godseye upon it,

under its pauper’s bower

of dusty and dried out quivering stems

which makes a lame story

for no one to hear,

so the Three:

a Madonna

and what Children are these?

are freed from the dying
to drive along
the living and quick distance home,
re-placed,
re-enhoused,

but only for a brevity

and the breviary

of tasks and chores

and Hail Housewares
in the Cult of Domesticity

before the suspense

coils round, overtakes her,

a hidden snake, poised,

striking the sternum.

She checks to see the littles

are sprawled on the couches

and white carpetburn,

now fed, now watered,

now cooled off, scrubbed up,

rubbed down,

drifting 

into dazes

and trances

in the lull before

dinner, 
the sweet children’s hour

when the ants

come marching home,

stunned, from the

city.

Errant again,

she glides the Accord,

their armored vehicle of

the nuclear family

back to the spot

of cease and desist

and clambers

back up to the Sage,

to find the denouement,

the resolution, the final act

of this mystery:

Has the misery 

at last been put out?

Will the coyote, the housecat,

the buzzard, the packrat,

have stolen inside

this terrycloth bundle

to find its task already

a fated fait accompli

but still warm enough,

Ooo, yes, a quick bite,

a cocktailed 
amuse bouche

before sunset?

Undisturbed,

just as she left it,

all is unmoving—

but Que Pasa?

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Not immoveable

at all, after all,

for she squats

and grasps only

the corner with

a shudder 

a grimace

an intake of air,

bated,

and tugs,

not as a magician

standing at table,

but gentle as the touch

of a hand in a nightmare,

and the questing fingers

are answered back

with a flurry of feathers

under the chin

a flutter skyward

commonplace to none,

the empty linen

left below,

an ascending life-whirl 

that does indeed

set her back on her heels,

nearly a bottoming out

caught by bracing palms,

and a laugh in her throat

as the Sun, now sunk in the sky 

to chest level,

calls this tiny flighted one

high 

into its 

red solar winds.

Her lips crack

as her mouth

of little faith

spreads open

over a plain of white teeth

smiling upward,

eyes squinting

sightless

daring not to look upon

the holy of foolish holies

within the eternal

glory

of getting played

by God.

"White Dove of the Desert, in Pink," (of  the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson, AZ), oil on linen-lined board, 12"h x 16"w
copyright Jill Banks 2012, jillbanks.blogspot.com

© Copyright 2016 by Gilded Lily Press