Someone
got into the special paints this morning.
(The ones kept on top of the fridge, behind the cereal and last week’s mail)
Stood on tippy-toes and
stretched her hand
up up up
til
she was impossibly tall.
As guilty fingers touched eternity – teetered, overbalanced –
light splattered
across the kitchen floor.
Everyone knows who did it;
The Creator’s fingertips are still stained
gold.
It seems while I was away
God took up a new hobby
leaving love letters I read while driving to work.
(Perhaps if I look under the bed, I’ll find a shoebox filled with them
and be shocked that He’s been doing it for years.
What a conversation that would be!)
I guess He was secretly spying on me
that time I sat on a bench in MOMA
captivated by iridescence.
So the Creator asked Monet to teach Him how to paint a sunrise.
I think He’s feeling quite pleased with His technique.
I.
I (*pause, inhale deeply, sigh it out*) am in love.
These words?
Ignited me.
Burned in me before I’d ever heard them uttered..
These words?
Isolated me.
Marooned me till I, woman, became an island, impossible and glorious.
Their cadence?
Tore through my soul and re-introduced me to myself.
Spoke my humanity.
Sung my desire.
Whispered my heartache.
Shouted my fury.
Caressed my soul.
These words breathed me into being.
From words I was formed and to words I return.
I love their all in all.
Power conveyed to nothing-me
to grasp the intangible,
to describe the invisible,
to fold into myself the inevitable,
and lay at your feet the indescribable.
Oh, but how I hate.
I hate that these immutable words preempt my every thought.
I hate that these interminable words spoke me before I ever uttered them.
I hate that these words were before me and before all time.
I hate how they have been spun and caressed,
wooed and seduced,
breathed out and breathed in a billion times before my first.
Every word.
Every line.
Every intimation of intimacy
Sucked out of them til I.
I am left breathless,
Speechless.
Wordless.
Powerless.
Each expansive, enigmatic, enticing utterance leaves me
envious, embittered, and empty
Words, promised me, cheated on me, failed me
Words, leave me panting, anticlimatic
As all the passion seeps from my soul, my marrow, my lips
Until I am silent and still.
Mellifluous and cacophonous.
Ellipses to the eternal noise
of words, words, words
…
Why do cherry blossoms in this neighborhood surprise me?
As if grace is insufficient
As if hope is impotent
As if love is insipient
As if mercy cannot triumph over judgment
As if dancers cannot dance upon injustice
As if redemption is a lie; restoration a myth
As if the dividing wall of hostility were never torn down
As if sorrow will last beyond the night
and joy is stifled by the morning
As if we are not truly being changed from glory to Glory
As if only some things are brought together under Him
As if the rocks do not shout out
and the trees no longer clap their hands
As if death never lost its sting
As if the grave was victorious
As if darkness dispels light
As if the oil of gladness slips over and past these rivers of mourning
As if the fullness of Him who fills all things, leaves these streets dry and empty
As if there is no freedom for these oppressions
and the cords of these yokes cannot be loosened
As if these chains cannot be broken
As if there is no reconciliation for these divides
As if there is no provision for these griefs
As if there is no garment to cloak these despairs
As if beauty cannot replace even these ashes
As if roots cannot push their way up through this concrete
As if life cannot break forth unexpectedly
And be magnificantly, phenomenally, shockingly unsurprising
All the words that come afterwards are a feeble attempt to recapture that initial fleeting take-you-by-surprise gasp, that raw emotion that wells up unexpectedly, that catch-in-your-throat gone-to-soon breathtaking moment of first awareness. That slipped-from-grasp, awestruck millisecond of sheer wonder. This cannot be recaptured. This profound magnificent laid-out-at-my-feet, this before me now. This certainty, this age-old beauty. This shifting and reshaping, this steadfast landscape. This eternity is no less awe-inspiring and majestic than in that first sigh of wonderment. But the effortless startling passion of it must now be gently seduced back into my awareness. I must look and look at it. Take intimate note of its curves and nuance. Pay attention to its every shadow-of-turning. In these fleeting after-moments it has lost none of its glory; it is only that I have lost my sense of it. How easily and quickly our senses dull. And all that’s left is for us to patiently resharpen them, nurture this keen sensitivity, coax and caress our sensibilities, reignite our consciousness. Reawaken our spirits. Stand silent before infinity and marvel, MARVEL, at the sheer unadulterated wonder of it.
On Afternoons and Coffeespoons 