Springbud

Let me bud
Then burst forth
Like a pink treeblossom
In just-spring
When the sky is warming
And the days are lengthening
And the ground is thawed
And the birds eager and amorous
When the old story replays
And all creation gasps
Because it’s shocking
To see death
Spring forth
Into life

Winter

Winter was a surprise,
Arriving suddenly
In the coldest week I can remember,
So cold our basement toilet froze
And the water treatment plant broke
And Andy Reed’s mustache at Arrowhead
Looked like a cluster of bite-sized snotsicles
As Taylor Swift watched from a fogged-up box.

But inside with Winter,
We had abundant snuggles,

Cozy blankets,

Warm baths in the kitchen sink
And clean-boiled water for tea and bottles.

It did not matter that the roads were slick

Or that the courthouse was closed all week;

Winter warmed us all. 

Adventus

You came, not for those full of good cheer,
Or those endowed with generosity and human kindness,
Or those who have learned the True Meaning of Christmas,

But for us who weep under the world's weight,
Who scrape and slave to keep the lights on,
Or have fat retirement accounts and empty hearts,

For the lonesome mother at the kitchen sink
Scrubbing a shitstained onesie and wondering
How everything ended up like this,

For the lovetorn poet
Who has tried for years to see the point of it all --
Any point at all -- and keeps coming up short,

For all who wander in darkness,
Overwhelmed and overwrought,
Outdone by chaos that seems inescapable.

You are the point of this pointless world,
The still center of this swirling mess,
The true promise in a sea of disappointment,
The deliverance of a travailing world,
The only answer that makes any sense,
The way out,
The way up,
The fullness that will cure
Our hollow hearts.

Virtualization

Virtualization

Is a tradeoff:

Not a bad one for computer systems,
But not a great one for people made of meat,
Designed to breathe the same air
And warm the same space
As other people made of meat,
To sweat in summer
And shiver in winter
And love and be loved in person, in the meat.

In my virtualized world
I seek the love of those
Who cannot, will not love me back.
I span time and space and culture
To proliferate trivialities,
To consume carefully curated slices of friends,
To sample the fashionable fears and rage and ambitions
Of a perishing world.

 
How much better to keep my head down
And my eyes open here and now?

To seek connection to flesh and blood where I am,
To see the virtual world for what it is:
A neat trick, but ultimately
An empty simulacrum,

A pale imitation,

An overpromising,

Underdelivering

Distraction from the world God made.

All Saints

For Leslie

I remember the last time we spoke
At the Whole Foods in Cool Springs
And I knew death was at work in you,
But I could hardly see it through your radiant light.

You read me a few poems from the book
You would just barely live to see in print
And I promised to preorder it
And you listened to some of my poems, too,
And were so generous and kind in your comments
And now you have permanently breached the veil
And I’m here serving out the rest of my own death sentence.

But I smile to picture how you’ll welcome me –
How you’ll welcome us all –
As we trickle in by ones and twos
Or flood in all at once with a shout and a trumpet
And it will be just like that
February day in Lancaster
When you smiled so wide and warm up front
And eagerly told us of all the joys that waited.