Posts Tagged ‘daughter’

You Found Me

Friday, August 30th, 2013

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The tremulous touch of God’s presence is the palpable essence of electricity in the air before lightning touches the barren earth and thunder roars across the sky. This was what I felt when I encountered you. The hair raising slowness of breath when one encounters the Divine. Yet you, the unassuming, the plain, the patchwork pattern of a human being, knew not what was hidden behind your graying cataract eyes. Could you possibly have known? Could it possibly have been you? Cross knitted eyebrows and deeply etched forehead disguised in the baggy weightless clothing of a man lost under his own skies; I found God.

I suppose it took me a while to get to this point. I looked and searched for where it was that I found you, made up my own stories or even pretended I never felt your touch, but now I see with eyes wide open when it was that I saw your face truly for the first time. It was here. Tel Aviv, Israel, lost in the whirlwind of pigeons taking flight, creatures finding their wings, that I first encountered the divine. It may sound silly or even slightly deranged, but it is true, maybe even the truest part of me, that has seen within the faces of ordinary men, the image from which we were created. Felt the lightnings grip grab hold of my heart strings and play my soul like a harp into the deafening thunder of life’s storm. This was the first.

Another day in Israel. I walked in a huge group of my peers and as we moved on from one place to the next I noticed the swarm. The ebb and flow of flight and earth, of nourishment and hallowed hollowness. A man stood in their midst throwing crumbs to the birds who encircled him. He, the host of these winged creatures, the eye of the storm. In the flight of the birds he looked up and gazed right at me. Out of the entire group of forty, I was the one he locked eyes with and I felt the staggering weight of a gaze I could not hold.  I thought him homeless, and when he stopped what he was doing to make his way to where I stood, I felt as if I could not breathe. That if I could hold my breath long enough, I could stop the world from spinning, could stop his feet from moving, but he knew the path he had to travel whether I willed it or not. I was afraid of the stranger who approached so directly, who stared deeply into my eyes without ever knowing me, but some how, unwavering and unquestionably he knew. I was afraid as he came so close, and I knew not what to do or where to turn. To shout? To retreat? To escape this force of nature bound in the humble being of this man. I did nothing. I stood still, wired by his electricity that only I seemed to see.

He came to me with open hands, he came to me and called me mother, sister, daughter, he called me home. He looked into my eyes and told me that here, here I would always have a home. He told me he would give me the shirt off his back. He told me that he had nothing, but would give me whatever I asked. He told me I would always have a place to rest my head. He told me that I was home. Why? Because we were family. Because we all were tied beyond the binding of blood, bound by our utter being. We are one, we all have the same Father, and he his son and I his daughter.

He did not even know my name, yet he offered me all he had and beyond that, he offered me what he knew would and always had belonged to me, love. He offered me the obvious, the object of my desire that I had time and time again always failed to see. An eternal love that was beyond me, beyond him into the electricity of non-being.

His gaze never left my eyes as he offered, as he gave, as he sacrificed, as he begged me to understand. I didn’t. Days, weeks, months later, I didn’t understand. But now, now I finally think I am beginning to understand what it was his aging eyes begged of me. He was asking me to come home.

I had long ago lost the way, found myself in a dark wood where the forward way was lost with no Virgil to guide me. I had wandered into the desolation of my own accord, blaming the world, blaming him, and not understanding that through it all and finally at the end of it all, it was Him begging me to come home.

He was not homeless. He had a home that was open and welcome to all who cared to stop and listen to his kind empathetic words. He was direct and almost frightening, but only to the eye that knew not what he was. Strength is frightening, especially when we are so weak, but that does not make it cruel. He seemed a beggar because he was. He was the father begging the son to come home. The mother begging for the life of her children. Begging, broken and bruised, he begged for me, he begged for you. If there be only one righteous, let them live. Let them live let them live.

I didn’t know it yet, but at that very moment the lightning flash of this encounter resurrected me, brought me back to life into this utterly new being. Brought to life in the eye of the storm, I have not yet found my way out of the darkness but with new life comes new strength to forge on into the great unknown. I can, I finally can, knowing that at the end of every road is my ever welcoming home.

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Rage (A Sheltered Cove)

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

Hands shaking as fingernails bite
Into the palms of his hands
Clenched into tight fists
Trying to suffocate his rage
Choking on words which burn
In his throat like poison
This bile in the belly of a monster
Belongs not to a demon but a man
With eyes that burn with anger
Smoldering like embers in dark sockets
Even as their fire dwindles
Into the soft glow of feigned comfort
They have the power to burn
Power to set the world on fire
But here and now
His rage has no place
Except in the quiver of his fist
And the monstrosity of his eyes
He lets out a long forced breath
Letting his body go slack
And his eyes slowly drift closed
Wraps a controlled arm around
His little girl’s shoulders
Which shake with quiet little sobs
Bringing her in close
To shelter her from the world
That took the light from his eyes
Wrung out his heart until all that was left
Was this bitterness, this rage
This monster
That even as this wrath builds in his chest
He pushes it back down
Forcing a gentle, unnatural smile on to his face
Holding his daughter as she cries
Turning his hollowed out chest
Where his heart should have been
Into a cove of resounding calm
To harbor her heart and make sure
That hers, unlike his, would survive
The cold abrasive storm
As he held her tight in his arms
Looking ahead with dead determined eyes
She would survive
Even if that meant what was left of him died
He slowly unclenched his fist
Which had gathered in rage
Opening it out of love
To wipe the tears from her face
And with a calm and controlled voice
Hinted with the melancholy
Of humanity’s cacophony
He whispered in her ear
Everything is going to be all right

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Half Heartedly

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

I fret back and forth,
Bite my fingers for a moment
Hide it by tilting my face away
Look, look away
Tilt my head this way and that
Frame my face with worried fingers
Supporting my chin on my hand
Purse my lips, bite my lip
Look back again
Mom!
Like a thunder clap
It brings me back again
The clouds over my face part
I smile half-heartedly
I have to go
She looks up at me with an odd look
Lurking in her stormy grey eyes
They are her father’s
So much like her father
I begin to bite my nails again
Flick my eyes off towards the window
Throwing my attention across the room
So I don’t have to look at her
Question looming in those haunting eyes
A light but insistent tug on my dress
Brings me back
I look down and smile
Half heartedly
You are going to have so much fun
I place my shaking hand on the top of her head
Feeling her feathery hair
Trace my finger along the red ribbon twisted
Among the feathers of her hair
So soft and smooth
So much fun
I mutter to myself as my attention drifts away again
–the bus
the honk hits me like a slap to the face
I wince slightly
Clawing to bring me back to her to here
I really have to go now
She reaches up with her little hands and turns
The door knob slowly and with effort
I place my hand over hers
Helping her open the door that is too big for her
I feel the softness of her unmarred hands
I wonder if she feels the bones of my fingers
The sadness etched lines of my hands
It swings open
She runs out the door
Like a clumsy fawn
Her back pack shifting back and forth
The monster in front of the house waits
Taking her away from me
I hover at the doorway
Unwilling to leave the threshold
But unwilling to let her go
–Wait!
A desperate yell
Bursts from my breaking heart
She stops and looks back at me
That question still hiding in her eyes
I hesitate for only a moment
And depart from the sanctuary
Running down the little walkway
On legs atrophied with sorrow
I stop before her
She says nothing
Just looks up at me with stormy eyes
Innocent and curious
I grab the end of the red ribbon
Which had come undone on her escape from the house
I kneel in front of her
And tie the ribbon with foolish hands
That shake even as I smile
Half-heartedly
And look into her eyes
I smooth her hair when I am finished
Put my hands whittled away with grief
On her small shoulders
Let out a sigh
That wanted to be a scream
And watch
As she faintly smiles and turns away
The monster honks again
Taking her away from me
I slowly stand as the bus drives away
Leaving me on the shores of my sorrow
Alone
With half a heart.

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Worlds Touching

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

I looked out the window
My chin resting on my open palm
The glass fogged
As I peered out
Cars filled with people
Some lonely, some afraid, some dead inside
Some looking for life, and some giving up on it
Trees blending into one another
Black top, yellow lines
Black top, yellow lines
I pulled up my sleeve
And wipe away the clouds
Forming on my window
I watch more cars pass by
In a hurry to reach nowhere
Each face in the car
Blank as they stare forward
Eyes only on the destination
Not the beauty on the way
A car pulls along side us
Silver and low to the ground
A mom talking on the phone
But in the back
Sat a little girl
She was looking out of her window
Right at me
For a moment I just stared back
It felt like an eternity
That our eyes were latched together
In that instant
I knew her
I knew her whole life
And I am sure she knew mine
She was the daughter ignored
She made her own world
Because the one she had
Had no place for her in it
I could see her parents in her eyes
Arguing, yelling
She heard it all through thin walls
And cried herself to sleep at night
She was the odd man out
Always the child in the back seat
She didn’t need them
Or their fickle love
She had all she needed
But not all she wanted
She made her own way
Through a treacherous life
And always would
I raised my hand
And waved to her
I smiled and nodded slightly
And she did the same
And our cars moved on
Our worlds separated
Just a moment
That our worlds touched
I wonder what she saw in my life
What she thought
Of a stranger through a car window
I just sat back and smiled
My mom looked over at me and smiled back
“What are you smiling at?”
“Nothing” I reply
Because no one could understand
How I understood
So I keep her world a secret
Locked tightly away
Of a daughter ignored
And a world passing by

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