Order Up: A Moment's Eye Contact At the Cafe Counter

[Edit: I cleaned this up a bit since last week. Also, I should mention that this is an ideal I hope to meet. I feel that I was much better at it a year or two ago. I'm happiest when I am wasting myself for the person in front of me. As of late, I've been more of a whiner. So I wrote this in response to the sort of person I'd rather be. Ah, the perks of dreaming...]

I heard you say thank-you, I heard you.

Excuse my sweat, my smile that meets you and melts

like smelted stained glass once you're done looking at it. 

Your thank-you went, instead, to my chest,

to the generator that drives the machine.

You are feed--for the workhorse who lives for

that someone to pull. I manifest myself in deft hands

and obsession with pedantic efficiencies.

You will never know it, you will never see me;

I don't have a moment to tell you now

but you were worth it--my last drop of vitality,

a piece of me you will never know you have

on your plate and in your mouth and subject

to your teeth. Others wait, hungry, like me. 
And repeat.

Cartographer

This is an unnecessarily long way to talk about why I wanted to study theology. Why? Because it's fun. FYI: a cartographer is one who makes maps.

Cartographer

From sailboat to sea, neatly drowning,

to harbor, hanging off the dock

waiting for something--I didn't know what.

And now to dirt, to the land

to streets, rust, to chipped concrete:

Here I've been studying maps--all kinds

from different Lewises, Clarks, especially Magellans.

I look for the ones that smell of salt,

pages graced with sea stains: of mystics--

Athanasius, Bonhoeffer, Francis, Patrick--

who weathered the sea while on land--for us

now stuck in sand. I linger late nights, 

wide awake, to study maps with this at stake.

Awake late, I can't shake the burn in my throat--

and that craving. Now acquainted with splinters in my hands

broken ribs now fusing again--still in love with salty smells

the careless clatter of sea shells my soul remembers,

younger, when my Father took me sailing.

In searching for sea, I've been left to streets,

city, to dusty water an inch deep--enough 

for the antic bathing birds, then why,

why not deep enough for me? 

My Father, here, He takes care of me.

Here is the land, the broken guard rails

missing hubcaps, Christ plays in unlovely places.

I am waking to smells of dried sea on ancient maps 

at my desk during morning dusk after 

scanning through the night. I scan in hope

to gain life so graced with sight--eyes for this

sacramental, stop-sign, holy-rhythm life.

My eyes still long for deep sea;

I've threatened to leave, to find You in the far away

across oceans, fighting sea monsters bravely.

Years later now, I've learned to live on land--

I study maps in hopes to smell the sea again.

Even here, I find you in the near--in the provincial

the seemingly plain. In the simple joys of morning tea

reminding me a bit of the sea--the waves as I sip.

You are in both feasts and ordinary time

the rhythms of  birth and midlife, 

the cadence of sabbath and sweat

the song of sunrise and city sunset. 

In steps together--even here on land--

I can find what I wanted in childhood ecstasy 

a blinding glimpse of eternity—

as it was in the beginning, is, and always shall be

in this sacramental life. 

Drawing maps--I'll leave them in the streets

perchance they care to join me.

An Old One, but Hey...

I, for some reason, love the courier new font. What a wonderful nod to the sound of a type writer.

In the Balance

Life can seem obvious until we start to live it.

Most times it leaves us hanging,

And it’s in the hanging that we live,

Because the answer never stays

On a particular side, but is

Where we find the top

Spinning.