The Chalice Well
(inside of everything is nothing)
Monday, November 20, 2023
Flight
Saturday, November 18, 2023
My Dad Shot a Woodchuck.
You pulled the curtain back on my window,
Opened the glass, and rested your shotgun on the ledge
Before the long shadow of the house had lifted,
Along with the dew, from the back yard.
It was a summer morning. I lay sleeping,
Yet a teenager, needing extra of everything,
When the woodchuck trundled into the garden,
Assuming that we all lay fast asleep, as I did--
Until the violent crack that ended him
And made me wake up mid-scream
To your infectious cackling.
Unable to help myself, I am laughing,
Then and now, remembering how you and I
Were really children at the same time.
Monday, November 13, 2023
Sunday Morning Run
Haunted to the grave by the eternity in our bones.
Friday, November 3, 2023
Outside Loretto Chapel
In the empty spaces between the pale adobe faces
Of buildings, chile ristras drying in bunches in doorways
Lift on the breeze that, on the twisted back of the evening,
Carries an ancient lament across the desert.
After the wedding party, led by a mariachi band
Up a sandstone staircase, falls asleep in white sheets,
The land recalls the rhythms of a thousand forgotten languages
Pressed by weary feet into its surface.
The dry aged hand of the wind with a hundred whistling names (all forgotten) — stops
To remember all the tears it has collected in its palm,
And once a year returns them to those who stop here now,
Strange tongues opening to catch the drops.
Sunday, April 2, 2023
Helium
I just wanted to buy some helium balloons.
It was my daughter’s sixteenth birthday and probably one of the last times I will do this.
A young man and woman scarcely older than she is walk me down the aisle to fill them,
Backs turned to me.
On the way, two people walking the other way remark, based on their faces, “Balloons?”
I hope the look is one of joy, not doom.
The earth is almost out of helium.
I try to act distracted while I wait, a cake in hand.
I have told them I want rainbow colors- they can pick.
He holds up a lime colored balloon for consideration. She agrees and fills it.
Then he says he wants to get a Jeep that color too,
Asks her if she wants to ride in the passenger seat. Says she would look good.
She deflects lightly, but the picture’s in her head now,
And no one knows now what she will do with that. What it will turn into.
What it will mean if the small materialistic dream comes true, or if it doesn’t.
What does it represent to them? What life and hopes does it signify— to him? To her? To me?
I walk out with a rainbow bouquet of hot air trailing behind me.
It is windy and the strings get tangled.
I wrangle them into my car.
But for a moment of colorful spectacle, I can’t help but beam with joy.
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Dining Room
Your dining room twenty years ago
Became a room that I could walk through in my mind--
Plush carpet piled high, I tiptoe barefoot past your ghost
As I consider how I'm spending down my life.
I still see you at the head of the table, presiding,
When your friend's words like a scalpel
Sliced the tendon from the bone of your desire.
Your face fell, and I caught it--
And I still tend to your sadness in myself.
If you're looking for a place where you can rest,
I am preparing a big feast and I saved the best seat for you.
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Freedom
I attended Houghton College for my undergraduate education. They are a Christian liberal arts school with a chapel in the center of campus. The school has a policy of compulsory worship-- or at least it did in the mid-1990s when I attended. We were required to attend chapel 3x per week and we had to scan in with our student IDs to prove that we attended. I found the concept of compulsory worship revolting, and during my senior year, continued to attend chapel, but stopped scanning in.
Mid-way through the year, I was called into the office of some college official who dressed me down for my lack of attendance. He made the assumption that I had not attended, without asking me any questions. So I kept my mouth shut, allowed him to persist in his incorrect judgment of my behavior, and accepted my punishment, which consisted of listening to recordings of chapel services and writing notes on them.
It was a liberating experience for me to remain silent in these circumstances. I knew that I was in the right, and that was all that mattered to me. That experience became something of a template for me. Whenever I am faced with judgments on my character or conduct based on something other than actual knowledge, and without being given the opportunity to tell my side of the story before judgments are passed, I simply hold my tongue and allow people to continue on their way. It costs me nothing to receive their wrong judgments-- nothing other than their esteem, which by then I place no value upon. And it seems to give them real enjoyment to pass these judgments. In a way, I enjoy it too. I enjoy my freedom from their view of the world.