be present

how do i approach the edge
of my everything and leap with the
conviction of a man in search
of a fickle faith?

i am the promises
and the comfort of things
i offer to a select few,
but beyond that i am
mostly deferred by the
dead and living among me

who dog me
as spirits chase the
frenzied man
into corners of
vacated houses

i want that i should
go sightless into that abyss
like a sea captain commands
his ship into the night gale;
his is the power of a
man twice possessed

to leap is to say yes
and to say yes is to bow
to it all; the fear of it
consuming you is what holds
me fast to my line

i know
i know...
tell me though again
with your lips to my ear
and i will leap

faith is a chemical
reaction in the fiber of
the soul, breaking you
down as rain does to
wood left in a pile in a
fallow field

it lulls everything to
earth, founders the erect,
breaks your cells down so
that in time
you are absorbed into a
magnificence made of the
minerals of life

i'm open to it
because i know the
truth of you is in its germ;

because the future
lingers there with you
and just how spectacular
this horizon is when your
arms remain wide to my
reception!

faith is listening to
the flower suckle
the rain

it is tasting the
crimson blood of
the virgin

it is smelling the
air after a storm
has prowled the land

it is touching the
fertile moss hidden in the
hollow of a fallen tree

it is seeing
you when you are
not in front of me

spirit me here
to my right place! and be
present and repeat
in my ear
the story with
your fine faithful
breath

any story

i don't care

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the soul is the master of itself

he frets:

what passion is this that

comes dawning over my horizon

like a prowling feline?

i am unawares

and ill-prepared, my

heart now inflated,

my mind thrown into flux

make it stop!

(but stop it slow)

make it cease!

(but fill me first)

i'd say to him: consider

every new love is an 

exercise in delicate variations

of chaos, its violence truth to the core

he paces in a stir and says

to the muse who brought him

here: i don't know but i'm alive

it's you! it's you! blesséd you!

but i'm torn, have i gone too far?

but maybe not far enough? i've been

struck by this and it's sent me into

undulating fits of joy and fear

i'd suggest to him: you see,

you want to master

the reigns to something

God set wild in The Beginning

you desire to be

transported just deep enough

then halt at the line you've

heeled in the sands of your heart

yet the soul is the master

of itself, boundless, and

it holds what it holds and gives

back to the universe unbound

and it humors none who'd

be its champion, beguiles

those who would attempt

to beguile it with reason

so know that if you leaped

(and you leaped, you leaped)

you did so with the wonderment

of a man soul-seduced

and while a breathless descent is the

expectation: a short, furious

fall ended by the impact of

colliding stars,

if you listen, open your

eyes, breathe, and feel

the pull from without

and the heat from within

you will realize that

the world leaped from you

in the moment this passion

came to play

you have the lover

now in an airy sway above

the cosmos, so dance

with her

and leave love to its

uncontrollable devices

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little. league

i remember matty
from little league who'd
broken his arm from
elbow to wrist
while going after a
sharp grounder to short,
how he wailed in the
dust of the infield while
we players all looked on

i stood absently in left
field watching the chaos
of running grown ups
and seeing the faces
go white as the boy was
carried off the field
by his father, who let
a cigarette dangle between
his lips, the smoke slipping
soundlessly across his son's
pinched face

a week later the cast
was already covered with
the scrawled names of matty's
favorite teammates and girls
from school and it was the color of
dirt and the left field grass where
he'd been relegated

his father
fired obscenities at the
coach as much as the ump
in that game, don't think
he didn't

'for christ's sake paul,
he can still play,
it's his glove hand,
he can squeeze it -
squeeze the glove, matty! -
why is he out there
in the fucking reeds,
paul?' and later, he told the
plate ump he was
a blind piece of shit

matty had replaced me
in left, so now i was
out of the lineup altogether
and that was okay with
me, i couldn't hit
and the coach never
looked at me without a
scowl

so
i sat the bench and watched
the drinking-buddy
fathers of the team's most
favored kids strain the third base
line chain-link fence and
smoke and bark at their boys and
slap the asses of their wives

later
we marched in the
memorial day parade, the
favored boys in a rowdy boast
in the front led by matty while
i hung back, told the shortest always
carries the team banner alone

the baking heat bore down
on the bills of our caps and on
our necks while a gangling high school
senior played taps and my father
took a picture of me with his
instamatic and waved

after the reading of
Flanders Fields and the
jolting fire of the rifles and the
inaudible prayers by clergy we
ate ice cream from round cups while
matty thumped his cast against the
porch railing of the vfw

'it don't hurt,' he said to
us, swinging the arm down
and letting the cast bounce off
'i could hit you in the
head, Turner, and it would only
hurt you, not me at all,' and the other
boys laughed, their faces
turned to see if i would say
anything: mount a defense

that was the defenseless summer
when matty's boys looked at
me and laughed most days
and i did not tell my own father how
i hated baseball, my father who stood
apart, on the first base side, away from
what he called the smoking drunks.
i sat in the dugout ashamed at myself
too much to look at him

'how come he doesn't play
you?' he once asked and i
shrugged. 'would you like
me to say something?'
no
no
god no

at the vfw
i did not say anything and matty
said 'pff' and dismissed me with the
casted arm and the
boys laughed, goaded by
a bloating sun

i walked the mile and a half
home alone in my Norway
Cardinals baseball jersey so that my father
did not have to wait with my mother
in the heat while i had ice cream

and as i walked i wished
i had a harder face turned toward life,
hard as a smoking drunk or a boy
with the bravura of a fearless bull

i wished i had a broken arm in a cast
and not such a broken head

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