On the Death of a Common Saint

For Mrs. Mary Dale Fontenot

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “sleep” is the right word--
a way to warm the chill death.

I'll be “here,”
and you'll be gone, You...
A slow sadness invades my soul,
because of your kind heart missing.

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “wake” is the right word--
a way to brighten dark grief

like the make-up the mortician
will put on your cheeks,
and everyone will talk
about how good you look,
how they keep thinking you'll just start speaking.

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “sleep” describes true Sight and Sound
first breaking upon the soul like eternal dawn:

You see All that is clear and bright and true.
And more than tears will darken these eyes
that see dimly as through a foggy glass—and dark—
mere shades and hints, shapes and shadows.

Tomorrow I will wake
while you're still sleeping,
if “wake” can express "in death, still dying,"
gasping for breath beneath the foaming waves,

But you in Life, living, now
alive, at last, to Him Who Is.
I still slumber in half-light
and but dream in phantom dimness.

Tomorrow I will sleep
while you're still waking,
If “waking” can contain ever-newness,
Free and Alive beyond our pale imagination.

Bartimaeus, Shout!

Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Mark 10:46-48

The Master nears:
Cry aloud, in your blindness,
Raise your voice still louder...
Shout through your darkness.
Shout, Shout, Shout!

Don't be silent, though they grumble.
Refuse the rebuke;
Ignore their propriety:
Yell and call, shriek and holler!
Beg light from the Son of David.

And plead for us,
the lame, the mute, and the blind,
too weak to rise,
too frail to ascend,
too darkened to find our way,
Lying on the roadside.

Call, "Mercy" upon these poor.
Rise and go, the Master calls.

Poems after Reading Jesus

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

John 13:34

Un-Depraved

Like a lightening-struck
swaying oak,
split down its trunk,
charred, broken, and burned,
misshapen, leaning, and bare:
So am I, before your grace,
toppled--
split to the core of my waywardness--
fallenness.

Something strange rumbles in
my depraved
soul,
like the streak and rumble from cloud to tree,
and I meet this strange newness alive
to another, and Another, and myself.