Paper dolls

Paper dolls                                                                                                        

Our lives are spent cutting out paper dolls –

the piecemeal extracted from the whole.

Our hearts set, gazes fixed

upon various relative, handsome,

scissored and brightly-colored figures

we prop up and manage;

with whom we play act for our own exculpation,

amusement and gratification

while discarding the ravaged sheets

from which they are cut, the origin     

and background, field and root,

never to humbly let things lie

unhanded and dormant in their contextual truth

but take up our scissors, our scissors,

again and again, to wreak havoc

upon this paper-thin, flimsy, fluttering world.

O child of God, how improbable and illusory

is the human predicament and personality.

An emphatic breach

An emphatic breach                                                                                 

In the pouring rain, the old man said,

I do not get wet and one day,

not as theory or concept

but, in a clear, emphatic breach,

I answered, of course, of course.

Somewhere from a dry, rustling field

where he stood and spoke,

the words reached me

over thirty years but more –

over centuries and continents,

oceans and dynasties –

a crack of the door,

the stones of the temple

and the lush gardens behind the walls;

the crumbling old myths.

The earth shook, dislodged a stone,

the shift of an ancient foundation

upon which everything I am

and seem to be, everything

I know and seem to know, rests.

O child of God, the flowers of the garden

unfold strictly according to God’s schedule.

His child

His child                                                                                                     

Go into a closet to pray, advised Jesus.

O if I could lock myself in a closet

and not come out again! 

A narrow, soundproof cell,

too dark to use my eyes, nothing in reach

to afford or encourage escape,

everything at last falling away –

cleverness, confidence, obstinacy,

even faith and the last rays of hope.

Cornered and abandoned,

stripped of the extraneous,

down to the raw truth of myself,

nowhere to turn to but my Maker.

No one to be but His child.

There and then, might I be able

to articulate a closing prayer –

one that asks for nothing and receives

whatever it is, (whatever it is!) God has to give.

O child of God, it’s your worldly involvement 

that keeps you from going home.

That still clear center

That clear still center                                                                                

If I had my way, I’d never come back

to another lifetime of sin and ignorance,

causing pain and harm to myself and others.

But that’s no virtue –

not wanting to cause suffering.  

It’s just another desire – the root of suffering,

the barrier to surrender and non-return. 

In the realm of illusion

where might pure virtue be found?

Purity has nothing to do with perfection.

It has to do, apparently, with getting off the wheel

onto that clear still center even as

the rest of the world shakes and gyres,

rattles and quakes, wavers around you.

If I had my way, I’d never come back

but then – it’s never been about me having my way.

O child of God, round and round and round you go,

too drunk to find your way off the dance floor.