empathy

Every moment prepares you for every other moment. That moment when the universe stormed and shut off the sun and the dark went click and you felt torched by hot rain in a black well, when you said I was never prepared for this and you were right. It was living not for that moment but to prepare you for this one here, this one now. The one where your eyes see - she has lost something, something she has lost in the same moment when you had muddled your mind with thoughts about the mess and the long drive and the temperature of the weather and you feel pangs of guilt and confusion of how fate works such pain like rain clouds over the wrong people. Searching, you search for your faith, it leads you not to answers but to look up. You look up and recognize the nebulous shapes to realize the fire has struck your neighbor's house and not your own, not this time. Such distance yet so close your fingers can touch, city limits touch, continents touch. You wonder how it feels to have lost something immense - a child, a dream, purpose, hope. What all vanishes when the sun clicks off. Except immeasurable despair, and almost you turn away to prepare your hands to make dinner. But can you rise long enough to stand, to reach out, to feel the feeling that she is a real person and not a camera shot of suffering. Nor story board. Nor anything except the heat and hair and skin and fabric of a real human being. You wonder if she can feel her own hands holding each other, or if all is lost. You wish you could exchange breaths, to give her a moment's relief. So there it rises. Reach deep. The swath of empty you recognize. You barely believe you can. But you know the well and that day and the darkness I was never prepared for this and somehow it calls you forward from way back there to do what you were never prepared to do except you are.

If only empathy, let it be empathy. If prayer, let it be prayer. But if it is more, let it be more.     

Songs to my kids

Why? Write to be not forgotten.
----
It's a Beautiful Day
It's a beautiful day it's a beautiful day it's a beautiful day
God gave us: sun (clouds, grey skies, rain, snow, etc...) today -

The farmers and the bees and the plants and the trees say: thanks!
I'll join the heavens and the earth to sing His praises

It's a beautiful day it's a beautiful day it's a beautiful day! (2X).


Little Cloud
there's a little cloud in the blue, blue sky
and it's calling out your name

singing: Addy, Joey - come to me
and catch the breeze and I will be
the little pillow in your dreams

(there's a little cloud in the orange, orange sky...)
(there's a little could in the snowy white sky...)
(there's a little cloud in the starry night sky...)


I Love You
I love you I love you I love you I do (4X)
I love you Joey bigger than the sky
I love you I love you 'cause you are my guy
I love you I love you and I always will
And when I'm not with you my love's with you still
I love you I love you I love you I do
I love you Joey I love you - I do.

I love you I love you I love you I do (4X)
I love you Addy bigger than this world
I love you I love you 'cause you are my girl
I love you I love you and I always will
And when I'm not with you my love's with you still
I love you I love you I love you I do
I love you Addy I love you - I do.


Hey Baby
Hey baby, I think maybe it's time it's time
It's time to go to sleep and catch 100 winks
as the sun sinks
into tomorrow's brink and I will sing
this little song to you.

To you to you to you
I don't know what I'd do I'd do I'd do
If you were feeling blue so blue so blue
I don't know what I'd do.

So goodnight goodnight goodnight
Everything will be alright alright alright
Don't let those bedbugs bite those bedbugs bite
Okay I'll sing it one more time.

Goodnight goodnight goodnight
Everything will be alright alright alright
Don't pee your pants tonight tonight tonight
Darling - goodnight.

writing by feeling

Writing by feeling is ostensibly a junk exercise, a serial malpractice; of, recklessly explaining the rivers of oneself out loud with feverish expectation of complete loss and futility. An ample test of tepid rejection; one I try for and pass. I cannot help it. That first nameless street leaves me predisposed to loss and no simple words to explain it. It being: imminent loss. unreachable loss. I was small and spun a plastic globe and could understand that distance meant so much more. So I dig, write, not to tell of oceans but of rivers, the narrowest ones. Invite rejection, make accidents. Both are easier to accept that way.

Sleeping on the train

The motion made my eyes close
my lungs sigh.

I was thinking of closets and separating
what all doesn't fit right.
What to keep or give away.
The end of work day conundrum --
to accept life or
sleep through it.

I was jolted --
his deep voice behind me a few seats over
as I heard him sing like gospel on a swing:

Life is a-waltzin'! 

He broke out in a raspy old tune and cleared
his throat to the metal wheels clacking faster
faster as we pulled away from South station.

(I could tell from how South station makes my bones feel.)

I held in my smile, let out one more sigh.
Ours was a traincar clicking west.
west. west.

Muscle memory and counting clicks.

From behind I hear the young new couple giggling her
thin leg draped over his their
four arms tangled like doves in knitted stupor.

So what about that! they exchange a long
long sheepish
look, the type --
you hang love on.

Uniformly their limbs untwist,
their bodies rise
nervously in splendor --

Love is anyhow
a spectacular occasion no matter the era

(It is their first trip into the big city.
She has dressed for this and he in his father's suit).

In slight mock and the rest excitement
they share their very
first dance
on this train
to his bluesy wisdom:

Life is a-waltzin'! Baa-ba! 
Daa-badee-da!  

Through rusty metal humming and cement tunnels
I hear her old time smoky heels and his wingtips
her bouncing curls and warm red lips as he reaches
low to tip his hat and
steady her hips.

I'm not going to turn to watch because
I am afraid
of the fiction but
I open my eyes,

and did because imagination
gets every last one of us.

The traincar was colder and dimmer
than when we left.

Today's newspaper was rolled
loosely
inside his worn black fingers his
gaze caught elsewhere.

We slowed to still.
Picked up west,
west again and
I don't recall him leaving.

Somehow I found myself alone and
mourning a man singing, crying
life is a-waltzin' 
to no one,
not even me.

Life Observation #8

On holding hands:

two hands holding feels like two hearts sharing one prayer. 

What Bert taught me

1. Nothing, and no one, is invisible to God.

2. Spit is an art tool. So is sand, and hands, and sticks. And his story reminds me: there is no creative poverty in God’s economy. 

3. Some art forms are nameless. But every artist has a name.

4. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21. God’s holy map leads to every single heart. Bert, and so many like him, knows this better than me. Before I see disability and strangeness, I need to start with their beating red heart. God, help me to remember Bert, and how he, without agenda, taught a famous artist the art of quiet awe and passing.

5. The canvas of earth is 4.5 billion years old. The Bible tells us our lives are but evaporating mist upon it. We are here and in long generations from now no one will know we lived except by the traces of how we loved.

And my faith tells me: we are evaporating elsewhere.

I stayed

I stayed
watching the little leaves dance
upon cooling September asphalt
like they knew this will end.