on loss

So many questions this past week.

No we are not the exception. Somehow we have lived so much of life untouched; suddenly, now it all hits.

What I know now: nothing is constant. Pillars in life have shifted.

The seasons have turned. With the coming of the cold comes ripeness; then, too quickly, death, ruin, spoil. The fruit falls and trees unleave themselves. The wind blows through you as if you were not there. The cold heralds weariness yet sleeplessness, brings a deepness forgotten in the heat of summer.

Loss hovers like the morning fog: you wait all day for it to burn off. In places, sunlight, filtered, works its way through the oppressive mass. Here and there, hopeful attempts at creating relationship trickle through. Lately, I have been cynical; who knows if they will last?

There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

What happens when you can’t decide whether it’s time to weep or laugh, to mourn or dance? What happens when it is time to rejoice but only tears come?

We are discussing life and death, and not in the abstract, either; we are discussing my life and my death…Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness.

My mind cannot wrap itself around void. The concept is too large for me: to think that a person who is here one moment can be taken away the next. Something that reeks of unreality is now the sole new reality. What has been lost can never be regained entire, only renewed, transformed into something similar but never exactly the same.

What next? Are we in exile, left to wander the wilderness with no land to call our own?
How meaningless the words that fall from my mouth. How weary my feet as they carry me from place to place, my fingers as, again and again, they cover familiar black and white territory. How silly the inner workings of my mind.

The seasons shift from brokenness to healing to brokenness to healing, a little deeper, a little more honestly each time.

Loss rushes in and washes out, making the rough edges smooth.


Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.




dona nobis pacem

wisher

can I just be five and live my life over?

nothing out of the ordinary really

little pattern in my life these days


the days surprise me by the end
when I look back

so much unreality these days


[I'm thinking of jail time, engagements, babies]



where is my promised land?
how many more years of wishing, of wilderness wandering?

the seasons of brokenness then healing then brokenness then healing then brokenness
where is the moving forward?

after the revelation, always this pulling back, always the hiddenness again



maybe I should graduate early and just get all this over with.


[who knows if the moon's a balloon?]
so much unreality these days

for the time being

on the one hand there is so much to say.
on the other hand there is nothing:
only life to be lived which pulls either way.