the treatment worked

I once had a wart on my hand
Between my thumb and index finger
The doctor froze it first until I was numb
Then burned so deeply
Into the crease of my palm
I could smell my skin smoking

You did the same
When you were so cold
I could not bear to feel for you
Then in a shocking but predictable twist
You burned me so successfully
I doubt you would recognize me anymore
Only a scar of the blemish you removed

The wart
By the way
Never came back

i thought about the beating of my heart

I thought about the beating of my heart
Until it became almost voluntary
Until I felt the need to tighten my chest
To push the blood through
Again
And again
And again
As though the mind could ever have
The strength and endurance
Of the heart

And I thought about
The spinning of the earth
And the ravenous, relentless
Center of the solar system
As it forcefully and without effort
Drags our world around itself
Again
And again
And again

And I thought lastly
About how I am as helpless to say to my heart, "beat"
As I am to say to the sun, "burn"
And I'm surprised I was not so humbled by this sooner

welcome distraction

It was an ordinary night
I could say of every time
The sun slipped behind the hills
And the sky draped its holy blanket
Over the towering evergreens
Letting in light where the fires burned through
And I often barely notice

If I didn't have you
I would spend more time looking at stars
I would be more familiar with the moon
As she takes her monthly breaths
I would pray to the spheres
And the satellites and the towers
That pulse with a red glow on the highway
And anything that would listen
That I could find precisely you

I almost missed you
In a million different ways but one

I owe everything
To that one way
In which we failed to drift
Obliviously past each other

backhanded compliment

Every cathedral
And temple
And shelter we build
To try to contain the Creator
Tells her that we must draw her
Away from something less
To the something better we have made

That we must harvest the trees
And pave the fields
And lay the foundation
And destroy her sanctuary
In an effort to hold her
And protect her
From the very elements she has made

We have
Since the beginning
Been gathering in our boxes
Bidding her in
While she
Since the beginning
Has been waiting in her sanctuary
Calling us out

an unnecessary coat

Sometimes I think about my years as a teenager
And I'm incredibly happy
Happy to no longer be under the thumb
Of a cult leader
Who called himself a pastor

I left at seventeen
But found myself in a similarly controlling situation
Shortly thereafter
It really wasn't until a few years later
That I broke out of that pattern

My parents say that when I was a toddler
There was a period when
I refused to take my winter coat off
Even indoors
Even after it got warm outside

There is a weight to the controlled life
When lifted, the freedom is so unfamilar
That it is uncomfortable
So much so that the oppression becomes
A missed warmth when attempting to remove it
Until ripped away
And one realizes the world is warm enough
Without the weight of an unnecessary coat

what we remember

A dying winter today spread
What would have been a heavy blanket in January
Now a worn sheet in March
Ripped and fraying
Showing both the fervent resolve
And weakening grip of an ending season

You seem a little desperate

The song sparrows brushed it off
Stubbornly singing through the flurry
While I stared out the antique window
Vignetted by condensation
I did not sing

It is not in my nature to negotiate
With the falling snow
To plead my case to the howling wind
But there are times I want to say

You're being ridiculous

The way the temperature drops
After the morning drinks in its sunlight
Until satisfied
And the day suddenly wants to start showing off
Pressing in on some idea
Like a child clumsily learning to dance
Humming its own melodramatic soundtrack
As if to say, "Remember me" to the world

But I would have remembered you as the January blanket
The five foot snow drifts
If only on those couple of days
If you had not reminded me
With your last exhausted breath
What a gentle, uneventful winter this has been

did i lie

There was that day
A few months after the big ice storm
I was alone in the woods
Walking from one tree to another
By means of a trunk that lay horizontal
Suspended twenty feet above the ground
Held by the limbs of surrounding brethren
Like someone who's been slain in the Spirit
Falling into the arms of another

I remember the force of his hand
On my forehead

Pushing

And the pressure to perform
The Spirit was moving
And I had to react
To be still was to be cold
Or worse
Lukewarm
So I had to faint
Like that tree in the woods
I lay there
(did I lie?)
For a little while
Suspended
While someone crossed me
Stronger in his Pentecostal reputation
A little more legitimate

I was one more domino in some larger arrangement
Knocked over for the thrill of the observed effect
More so than for the end result