I’ve eyed the inland surge of a heavy surf,
and shuddered at the thought of its undertow.

I’ve shivered in a late-summer prairie scene:
bronze waves of wheatgrass,
suddenly chromed by a charge of lightning.

But today I hear the thunder of edict and order,
the chilling spray of manifesto, as from a winter ocean;
and I’m driven to consider the particular valour
of .33 percent of our population—

the everyday resolve of people who’ve glimpsed
their freedom, felt a germinating joy,
in moving beyond the binary map—

not without turmoil, not without
a complexity of sorrows, most know little about:

and not without stepping into a firing-line of deadly phobias—
the Baptist preacher who wishes them “shot in the back,”
the Christian congressman crying, “demons,” “mutants,”
and the calmer, more efficient legislators,
who “only know of two genders.” All useful ammo
for a barrage of policies aiming to eliminate trans folk.

I claim to follow the light of the world,
but today I feel some excrescence in me
advancing to match the hate I see.

And when I say, “I follow the way of a shepherd,”
I find within, a brewing animosity to Christianity,
its use now, as an exclusionary force.

I read, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
after righteousness,” and I’m filled with indignation
at a so-called “…nation under God.”

I contemplate salt and light, a lamp on a hill,
…and then recall sitting in a coffee shop,
while at a table across the isle, whole communities
of the human family were whittled away
under the razor chatter of the willfully ignorant, and I,
throwing my stones of silence, became a lie.

All this talk and intention, and in moment,
I’m just a twin, hating, yet furtively wearing
the coordinate clothes of empire.

Shall I strike my own cheek? turn the other,
expose the slack mouth of my complicity?

How will I learn to lock arms with those who refuse to bow,
who stand in the light of their own right to be?
Will I wait until they come for me?

I know every brewing storm carries the seed of its own demise,
but what does one do in a series of storms?

I know, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” is not
for the faint of heart, “for they will see God,” not in
some future rapture, but in the here-now faces of the erased,
the locked-out, the deported.

I know every act of resistance carries no guarantee
other than the pain it invites. No guarantee,
other than the soul it ignites. No guarantee,
other than retaining our humanity.

 

 

The time has arrived to walk to the river,
twos and threes, with our tea candles cupped,
melted onto tiny boats of birch bark.

And beneath the bowed and grieving trees,
kneel at the edge, release our tenuous fires
to the water’s flow, watch our loose rosary
of lights, form a luminous line and sail
around the dawning bend.

 

 

I’ve heard the advice about learning to forgive yourself,
good advice, and indispensable as ibuprofen.
I’ve had occasion to forgive myself,
but I’ve not really had to learn.
A privilege of growing up loved. And a mixed blessing:
for when it comes to affection, I expect more
than I deserve.

Mom, you died before I thought to ask
about the clothes you gave me to wear,
and the patches sewn on:
like the comfortable orthodoxy of heaven,
or faith in the labour of unseen angels.

Or like silence—
being the best way to settle arguments.
I picked that up; used it as a sidearm,
carried it for too many years.

Or like the artful swerve in you,
your open yawn, meeting your sister’s gossip.

Or the unexpected fire beneath your serenity.
The way you slowly turned away from the pot,
your back to the stove, looked across the family table,
and the history of patriarchy—and much else—
withered in your gaze.
And though you turned back to stirring the gravy,
it was a flash—now featured in the halls of justice.

I could never find the right word,
for your kind of loneliness, or was that simply the sigh
between your 1000 tasks?

And while you had words for me—
for my ability to out-disappoint your other children,
every time I come to write the words tender,
understanding, there you are.

Thank you, for the security of your kitchen, where
I’ve secretly watched for your own hidden wings.
Thank you for the eternal grip of your smile,
which I’ve never doubted, which has spoiled me,
yet fitted me for the long haul: living
with the unresolved, finding sufficiency
in what’s incomplete, and how not having
everything I want is part of being happy.

Today, in the mortuary of Christianity,
where nations jockey for Jesus, arm themselves with God,
I thank you for your bannerless faith, where I remain
a believer in your kind of Christ—
a small kingdom of goodness and mercy, taking root,
and humming beneath the surfaces of the world.

 

 

Aging is an education in semiotics.
Every ache, a symbol, every pain, a sign,
the set, accumulating and advancing
toward some cliff-dive over the horizon.

But life can be lived in a day, says the Saint,
So does it matter when you die?
Here, now, later, all the same?

No, I do not go gentle, I rage, I rave, like Dylan Thomas,
and my culture backs me up, counsels: steady on,
hang in—and so death retains its subterranean edict,
instead of raising its stratospheric question.

But in the closing years of circumstance over will,
and in the fog of a near-forgotten faith, I changed course,
(which was grace, not achievement), and I sought out
that angel of death, wrestled the entire night.

And it was almost comforting, to limp like that;
to confirm the advertised secret of mystics,
that death could be a (contextual) companion.

“Contextual,” because I don’t want to sound morbid,
or selfish in this, as though my death
would not touch those close to me.

That’s the truer sorrow: losing someone
we care for more than ourselves.
The sorrow lucky people live with.

There’s weird-magic about these moments,
when faith merges with imagination,
and revelation dawns. 
It’s like shedding a skin.

There’s a matrix of Love behind all life,
including its shattering; yet how astonishing,
like a gleeful shriek from childhood,
this sudden knowing, against evidence and achievable knowledge,
that Love sustains all.

Still, none of this prevents relapse.
And here I have the image of a cicada casing
after its moulting; how my own shell, with its prisons of fear,
self-interests, and pettiness, is always waiting for my return:
and O, look, how well it fits, as though I’d never left!

But one blithe afternoon, believe me,
language melted away and I sunk
into the genesis of a rich bewilderment:
the denouement of an unfurling leaf,
the comprehension of a lengthening vine.