Birds

Prayer: As a bird

/ Brian / 1 Comment

As a bird, when tricked by a mirror image of itself in the sky, will fling its wings against the frame, hindering its inborn ability to fly, so too do the illusions in my vision injure my capacity to soar. My soul falls from its deathless star, and my body crumbles to the hard wet sand. I crawl underneath a parched plant to await the desert of absence, or recover the truth beyond the pall and pale, your miraculous resurrection. Find me here, my battered Lord, and beat your name in my chest like a drum. Find me here, and let me come to the blessed recognition of the Word beyond death, beyond fear.

    “As The Day Begins”

    / Brian / 3 Comments

    The day begins with a fire that cannot be seen
    like a young girl who does not speak
    for fear of losing what burns within her.

    The day begins with birds that cannot be seen
    singing like those who know better than to speak
    and so lose what gives them song.

    The day begins with doors that cannot be closed
    allowing what has lost itself with yearning
    to find itself as it burns.

    As the day begins,
    everyone needs to get something out
    to let something in:
    By the end of the day,
    no one remembers what it was.

    No one knows
    everyone needs
    to get out
    and let in
    the same thing
    in their own way.

    What feeds the ember
    feeds the hungering soul —
    rootless — seeking its own root
    in flames that grow invisible.

    The hard wood crackles in growing flame
    inside invisible growth
    as the heart withstands the splintering
    forced upon it to remain soft.

    As the day begins.

    Already the day begins, but
    the bottom of the root has not reached
    the top of the stem, and I
    am not ready for beginnings.

    The day begins
    only when I begin to listen
    to each moment ending
    and each moment beginning.

    I hear the unheard as the day begins:

    I hear the pressed down sobs of young children
    setting up lemonade stands
    to cool the mid-July heat of unspoken divisions
    and prove their own grown-upness,
    prove their groundedness
    to intoxicated parents,
    who are like children in their pettiness.

    I see the unseen as the day begins:

    I see the homelessness
    that hides behind estate gates;
    I see the clenched souls
    that hide behind open faces;
    I see the wrenching sorrow
    that hides behind too-wide grins;
    I see the yearning for purity
    that hides behind drunken eyes.

    And I feel the untouched as the day begins:

    I feel the push for contact,
    and I feel the pull back;
    I feel the pain of the one
    who does not know how to be
    with another,
    and I feel the pain of the one
    who does not know how to be
    alone,

    And I feel the pain of the one who knows she is alone,
    I feel her struggle to make contact;
    I feel what she feels
    when she finds herself
    unable
    to touch the truth
    of her aloneness.

    As the day begins.