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WANTED: FAIRY GODMOTHER

Qualifications: plump, adorable, middle aged to elderly. Sparkles are a must.

Job Requirements:

            Granting wishes

            Dressmaking

            Transfiguration

            Appearing/vanishing into thin air

Hours: 24/7 on call

Compensation: up to and including Firstborn

Please send resume to

im_wishing14@yensid.com

Auto-Autopsy

"How do you feel?"

"I'm a little cold.
     I feel stiff.
          I am a stiff--
     I'm dead.
I've been murdered."

Unspeakable Gift

So much noise in my head—

It’s hard to keep you in focus.

Even beyond the veil of the world

Sometimes you seem shrouded in

Too many motifs,

Buried in a garden of symbols.

Must I attend a symposium of

                the world’s finest religious theorists

                and theologians?

Can I climb inside the T.A.R.D.I.S.

                and travel to that hallowed glowing stable

                under Bethlehem’s star?

Stories upon stories

Testimonies stacked together.

What shall be my avenue to know my LORD?

Is my brain that elastic,

                my heart so broad?

And while I worry about

                what color of train to take,

                or oysters dying,

                or white, warm houses,

                or what flowers will adorn my grave,

There are bits of you flying around everywhere,

Ready to jump out at me, dancing,

                then fade out of sight,

                as elusive and ephemeral as I make them.

Even in my contemplation

I can adhere to no one symbol.

Don’t you worry that my mortal train of thought

Is running circles around the station??

I do!

Once lost, now found—

That constant ebb and flow,

                A delta of mercy,

                The oxygen exchange in love’s lungs.

How many names have you?

How can I see all of you, your form so impossibly big

and more than four-dimensional?

How many  lines of poetry must I write

                before the ink and lead scratch away

                this paper and paint your portrait?

Even then it will be a mere fraction of your dimensions.

Perhaps that is why so many artists

Have chosen you as a subject.

But all their painting combined are still just a number, not ∞.

How do you quantify holiness?

                or bottle mercy?

What is the arithmetic of righteousness?

                or the pH of forgiveness?

All of us— scientists, artists,

Engineers and ventriloquists—

                Shall we bounce endlessly around

                our rubber room,

                hoping one of us will hit the target

                and set us all Free?

It seems that distance intransversible

Is the one between you and me…

And yet—

In some curious way—

Last night you wrapped your warm carpenter’s hands

Around that familiar place between my lungs,

And I could smell the sawdust of the cross

Under the bright and holy mountain.

And as I close my eyes and try to

“Feel” or “Sense” or rub against

That veil again…

Perhaps it is more real now

                for just being once.

You managed to fold time and space

                and made that hopeless distance

                totally transversible.

Something tells me I may never find you.

You always find me.

Unarbitrary

Not friend, not father, not lover,
Like (but not) a mentor.
Perfect part of world--
     Not flawless;
Worlds are flawed by design:
Inedible answer to a hunger,
The other side of distance intransversible,
Balance of balance and imbalance.

A Dog will not choose another master.
     Master is God
          And mortals can't choose a different one of those either.

"This is a Red Line Train to Daybreak"

Hadn't I found the beating heart?
I'd forgotten I was staring at a sunset.
Surprised,
     I found myself
     sitting without light

Wondering
     How
          the clouds lost their brilliance;
     Why
          the sky had dimmed that
               breath-snatching blue
                             captivating blue
                                                 a blue surpassing
                                                     blue I'd seen
          but never tasted before;
     Who
          whispered those empty things in the dark
               that sounded like grayness
                                   and like not being free--
                                            like mediocrity--

And the Christmas lights were muted
     and there's too much time to think
          on this train
     about things that don't matter
                   things that are safe to say
                                 that nothing can be done about them.

How many ways am I!
         pruned tree
    harvested field
    discarded apple core

          sunglasses for a seer
                                         a poet
                 (but mostly a copycat)
     but none of that matters because

I'm on a train at dusk
     that I can't make faster or slower
          watching the sun set
And Daddy is teaching me in his
     cold-hard-facts-cash-and-a-hard-place way
          that you get there
               when you get there
          and how in darkness
               I can't see a foot forward
                    (even if it's my best)
               but I can see planets and stars and galaxies
                    light-years up and away
          and how Eve felt
               because she was happy
          and how a rush of perspective
               is chemo that will hopefully
               kill the right bad parts of you
                    before you die
                    of too much living
          and how there's so so much more
               to be meant for
               than to fall apart
                    over one sunset
          that He made.