The Game

And on certain nights,
maybe once or twice a year,
I’d carry the baby down
and all the kids would come
all nine of us together,
and we’d build a town in the basement

from boxes and blankets and overturned chairs.
And some lived under the pool table
or in the bathroom or the boiler room
or in the toy cupboard under the stairs,
and you could be a man or a woman
a husband or a wife or a child, and we bustled around
like a day in the village until

one of us turned off the lights, switch
by switch, and slowly it became night
and the people slept.

Our parents were upstairs with company or
not fighting, and one of us—it was usually
a boy—became the Town Crier,
and he walked around our little sleeping
population and tolled the hours with his voice,
and this was the game.

Nine o’clock and all is well, he’d say,
Walking like a constable we must have seen
in a movie. And what we called an hour passed.
Ten o’clock and all is well.
And maybe somebody stirred in her sleep
or a grown up baby cried and was comforted…
Eleven o’clock and all is well.
Twelve o’clock. One o’clock. Two o’clock…

and it went on like that through the night we made up
until we could pretend it was morning.

 

Marie Howe, What the Living Do (Norton, 1998)

Divorce

What God has joined together, let no one separate.
                         —Mark 10.9


Don't pick this up as a club to beat divorcees.
It's already caused enough harm.

Only men had the power to marry or divorce.
Jesus was protecting women from being used and discarded.

Jesus' accusers want to know what is lawful;
but he always seeks what is life-giving.

Sometimes when a couple has married
it's not God that has joined them.

What God has joined together is a whole person;
don't let a bad marriage break them.

Sometimes what keeps the “bent over woman” down
is a marriage from which Jesus would set her free.

Sometimes the paralyzed need to get up and walk away first;
only then can the healing begin.

Sometimes when Jesus says “Follow me”
there are things he wants one to leave behind.

Always and ever Jesus invites us
not toward what is lawful but what is life-giving.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net October 3, 2024

Good and Bad

            “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God,
            and not receive the bad?”
                         —Job 2.10


God is not a card dealer.
God is not a guy who distributes weal or woe
according to some inscrutable scheme.

God is the Love at the heart of all existence,
who is present with grace and blessing
in every moment, everything that happens.

God does not “send” us our experiences;
God experiences them with us, with love,
the “'good” and the “bad.”

Our judgments of “good” and “bad” experiences
are mostly a reflection of our pleasure or pain.
They all contain both difficulties and blessings.

Divine grace is present in all of them.
The Beloved imbues even our triumphs with challenges,
and even our disasters with possibility.

In both the good and the bad,
what we receive “at the hand of God”
is neither weal nor woe, but the hand of God.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net October 4, 2024

Free Breakfast

The Springhill Suites free breakfast area
was filling up fast when a man carrying his
disabled young son lowered him into his
chair, the same way an expert pilot’s airplane
kisses the runway when it lands. And all the
while, the man whispered into his boy’s ear,
perhaps telling him about the waffle maker
that was such a hit with the children gathered
around it, or sharing the family’s plans for the
day as they traveled to wherever they were
going. Whatever was said, the boy’s face was
alight with some anticipated happiness. And
the father, soon joined by the mother, seemed
intent on providing it. So beautiful they all
were, it was hard to concentrate on our eggs
and buttered toast, to look away when his
parents placed their hands on the little boy’s
shoulders and smiled at one another, as if
they were the luckiest people in the room.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson, A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53, 2020)

Never Too Late

I was off last week at my brother's wedding.
The bride is a young one,
but at 69 the groom is a certified geezer.
Sixty-nine is a great age for marriage.
It's a time of looking toward the future with hope,
because every time is, even when it seems late.
Now is the time, and not too late, to declare your heart.
Now is the time to make a commitment.
Now, no matter how much time is left,
is a time, the very best time,
to cast your lot with love and beauty and faithfulness.
Some choices are too late, too far gone.
But most of your choices still lie ahead of you.
Every day you choose love over cynicism,
wonder over smugness, generosity over fear.
Every day you choose to give yourself to the world
and not hold back, not wait for something.
Do you love this world?
Today, this very day, late as it may be,
life asks you for your hand, and today—
yes, now and evermore, is a good time to say
“I do.”

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net September 2, 2024

Dreams

in my younger years

before i learned

black people aren’t

suppose to dream

i wanted to be

a raelet

and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears”

or “tal kin bout tal kin bout”

or marjorie hendricks and grind   

all up against the mic

and scream

“baaaaaby nightandday   

baaaaaby nightandday”

then as i grew and matured

i became more sensible   

and decided i would   

settle down

and just become

a sweet inspiration

 

Nikki Giovanni, Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment (HarperCollins Publishers, 1968, 1970)

Graveyard Shift at Ace's Truck Stop

Speed popping, long haul truckers stretch, yak, and
drink coffee with locals searching for pancakes or bacon
and eggs after a night of drinking, dancing, gambling, and
making whoopee at nightspots like the Tower Ballroom,
Saddlehead Sam’s, the 69 Drive-In, Barto’s Idle Hour
and the VFW. The haggard and the high class together.
No place else open. Roy Orbison belts out Candy Man
from the neon and chrome Wurlitzer. Cigarette smoke
curls around the horseshoe bar beneath a large, stuffed
deer head. Three a.m., crowd gone, fry cook leans over a
newspaper. Waitress rolls a nickel from her tip pocket
into the juke, punches in her selection, slides wearily
into a booth, puts her feet up, and lights a Pall Mall. Elvis
begins to sing. She closes her eyes and mouths the words,
Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?

 

J. T. Knoll, Others Like Us (36 West Press, 2016)