The journey that never
was
A kind of exile you are now
unable to walk the same aisles,
sit in the same pew as others,
hands folded quietly in your lap.
Your eccentricity showing through
the bursting seams of your threadbare coat.
You’ve dropped the things you’re supposed to
care about; your interests few. Old
friends
(who never really were) have drifted away
while you to some measure have left behind
your loved ones, for their sake,
to go searching for the eternal connection.
You follow the flow of an uncharted river
as you push toward oblivion
and wonder when this latest rug
will be pulled out from under your feet.
It doesn’t really matter anymore.
It’s all a part of the journey that never was.
O child of God, should it be surprising
that the new life is nothing like the old?
(drawing by Rich Panico)
Paper tiger
At some point, the path becomes self-verifying,
its own guide; with easily discernible boundaries.
At some turn in the road, annihilation
portends freedom, the right thing to do;
the only treasure to give. Every
self-assertion
becomes transparent and repugnant;
every question identified as the dodge,
deflection that it is; every guile pathetic,
the crumbling castle, feet of clay;
the paper tiger insufficient in its roar.
At some point, the arrows fail to penetrate
and the clamor of the crowd, the invalidation
of the enchanted, the drunken and oblivious
become palm leaves under donkey hooves,
aiding the pilgrim to wend his the way.
At some arrival, you swing through a door
and though you weave in and out for a time thereafter,
losing your grip and footing, there’s no turning back,
no way to remain that which you no longer
seem to be and have lifelong been.
O child of God, the path never gets easier
but dedication brings surety and daring.
Out of earshot
You’ve had enough of words, said my Lord,
but in truth, I have been long content
measuring my appraised worth against
distant utterings and their echoes –
sound waves crashing upon an empty shore;
quotations taken always from someone else’s book.
I have sought lifelong the living among the dead,
surrounding myself like a consensus
with cardboard and paper gravestones
as I pray so touchingly, beseech so effetely
for a truth that was never there for me
or has long since fled.
So very long it has taken me to hear it –
truth doesn’t enter through the ear.
O child of God, seek the truth out of earshot –
in the cavern of your chest.
Green pastures
Jesus left the ninety-nine to find the one lost
and maybe that one lost, if its story be told,
was the only one not left behind, but truly
found, scooped up in the Savior’s arms.
You have to get lost to be found, I think.
You have to lose the flock,
go out on your own two shaky legs
into the dark fields, trading all there evidently is
for all that might be, short of any real evidence.
Thinking maybe of finding your own way if you must,
but not really caring anymore,
just tired to the bone of the painful,
the false and fleeting and at that moment
of utter despair and defeat, maybe
you get lifted up, or you die trying – and perhaps,
you get carried away, led – not back into the fold but safely
released onto those metaphorical green pastures
to fatten you up before your next adventure.
O child of God, to escape the counterfeit,
surround yourself with the Mystery.
