Thirst (2 page)

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
    still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
    uproar of mice—it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
    and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season
    when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
    while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
    in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
    come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
    that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

I think
    I could have
        built a little house
            to live in

with the single cord—
    half seasoned, half not—
        trucked into the
            driveway and

tumbled down. But, instead,
    friends came
        and together we stacked it
            for the long, cold days

that are—
    maybe the only sure thing in the world—
        coming soon.
            How to keep warm

is always a problem,
    isn’t it?
        Of course, there’s love.
            And there’s prayer.

I don’t belittle them,
    and they have warmed me,
        but differently,
            from the heart outwards.

Imagine
    what swirls of frost will cling
        to the windows, what white lawns
            I will look out on

as I rise from morning prayers,
    as I remember love, that leaves yet never leaves,
        as I go out into the yard
            and bring the wood in

with struggling steps,
    with struggling thoughts,
        bundle by bundle,
            to be burned.

I am trying to find the lesson
for tomorrow. Matthew something.
Which lectionary? I have not
forgotten the Way, but, a little,
the way to the Way. The trees keep whispering
peace, peace, and the birds
in the shallows are full of the
bodies of small fish and are
content. They open their wings
so easily, and fly. So. It is still
possible.

        I open the book
which the strange, difficult, beautiful church
has given me. To Matthew. Anywhere.

I went to church.
I walked on the beach
and played with Percy.

I answered the phone
and paid the bills.
I did the laundry.

I spoke her name
a hundred times.

I knelt in the dark
and said some holy words.

I went downstairs,
I watered the flowers,
I fed Percy.

All afternoon the sea was a muddle of birds
black and spiky,
long-necked, slippery.

Down they went
into the waters for the poor
blunt-headed silver
they live on, for a little while.

God, how did it ever come to you to
invent Time?

I dream at night
of the birds, of the beautiful, dark seas
they push through.

When we pray to love God
perfectly,
surely we do not mean
only.

(Lord, see how well I have done.)

There are these: the blue
skirts of the ocean walking in now, almost
to the edge of town,

and a thousand birds, in their incredible wings
which they think nothing of, crying out

that the day is long, the fish are plentiful.

And friends, being as kind as friends can be,
striving to lift the darkness.

Forgive me, Lord of honeysuckle, of trees,
of notebooks, of typewriters, of music,
that there are also these:

the lover, the singer, the poet
asleep in the shadows.

When I think of her I think of the long summer days
    she lay in the sun, how she loved the sun, how we
        spread our blanket, and friends came, and

the dogs played, and then I would get restless and
    get up and go off to the woods
        and the fields, and the afternoon would

soften gradually and finally I would come
    home, through the long shadows, and into the house
        where she would be

my glorious welcoming, tan and hungry and ready to tell
    the hurtless gossips of the day and how I
        listened leisurely while I put

around the room flowers in jars of water—
    daisies, butter-and-eggs, and everlasting—
        until like our lives they trembled and shimmered
            everywhere.

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

Lord, what shall I do that I
can’t quiet myself?
Here is the bread, and
here is the cup, and
I can’t quiet myself.

To enter the language of transformation!
To learn the importance of stillness,
    with one’s hands folded!

When will my eyes of rejoicing turn peaceful?
When will my joyful feet grow still?
When will my heart stop its prancing
    as over the summer grass?

Lord, I would run for you, loving the miles for your sake.
I would climb the highest tree
to be that much closer.

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down
into the world of the invisible,
    the inscrutable and the everlasting.
Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree
    on a day of no wind,
bathed in light,
like the wanderer who has come home at last
and kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary things;
every motion; even words.

Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.

They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward

to receive the gift
from the priest’s hand,
then the chalice.

They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.

I want
to see Jesus,
maybe in the clouds

or on the shore,
just walking,
beautiful man

and clearly
someone else
besides.

On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.

Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.

1.
I know a lot of fancy words.
I tear them from my heart and my tongue.
Then I pray.

2.
Lord God, mercy is in your hands, pour
me a little. And tenderness too. My
need is great. Beauty walks so freely
and with such gentleness. Impatience puts
a halter on my face and I run away over
the green fields wanting your voice, your
tenderness, but having to do with only
the sweet grasses of the fields against
my body. When I first found you I was
filled with light, now the darkness grows
and it is filled with crooked things, bitter
and weak, each one bearing my name.

3.
I lounge on the grass, that’s all. So
simple. Then I lie back until I am
inside the cloud that is just above me
but very high, and shaped like a fish.
Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place
of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-
wanting. When the blue jay cries out his
riddle, in his carping voice, I return.
But I go back, the threshold is always
near. Over and back, over and back. Then
I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I
have been asleep. But I have not been
asleep. I have been, as I say, inside
the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating
on the water. Then I go back to town,
to my own house, my own life, which has
now become brighter and simpler, some-
where I have never been before.

4.
Of course I have always known you
are present in the clouds, and the
black oak I especially adore, and the
wings of birds. But you are present
too in the body, listening to the body,
teaching it to live, instead of all
that touching, with disembodied joy.
We do not do this easily. We have
lived so long in the heaven of touch,
and we maintain our mutability, our
physicality, even as we begin to
apprehend the other world. Slowly we
make our appreciative response.
Slowly appreciation swells to
astonishment. And we enter the dialogue
of our lives that is beyond all under-
standing or conclusion. It is mystery.
It is love of God. It is obedience.

5.
Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:
Follow me.

6.
Every summer the lilies rise
    and open their white hands until they almost
cover the black waters of the pond. And I give
    thanks but it does not seem like adequate thanks,
it doesn’t seem
    festive enough or constant enough, nor does the
name of the Lord or the words of thanksgiving come
    into it often enough. Everywhere I go I am
treated like royalty, which I am not. I thirst and
    am given water. My eyes thirst and I am given
the white lilies on the black water. My heart
    sings but the apparatus of singing doesn’t convey
half what it feels and means. In spring there’s hope,
    in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in
winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its
    leafy cave, but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
    the hospitality of the Lord and my
inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body
    through this water-lily world.

In the afternoons,
    in the almost empty fields,
        I hum the hymns
            I used to sing

in church.
    They could not tame me,
        so they would not keep me,
            alas,

and how that feels,
    the weight of it,
        I will not tell
            any of you,

not ever.
    Still, as they promised,
        God, once he is in your heart,
            is everywhere—

so even here
    among the weeds
        and the brisk trees.
            How long does it take

to hum a hymn? Strolling
    one or two acres
        of the sweetness
            of the world,

not counting
    a lapse, now and again,
        of sheer emptiness.
            Once a deer

stood quietly at my side.
    And sometimes the wind
        has touched my cheek
            like a spirit.

Am I lonely?
    The beautiful, striped sparrow,
        serenely, on the tallest weed in his kingdom,
            also sings without words.

1.

In the household of God, I have stumbled in recitation,
    and in my mind I have wandered.
I have interrupted worship with discussion.
Once I extinguished the Gospel candle after all the others.

But never held the cup to my mouth lagging in gratitude.

2.

The Lord forgives many things,
so I have heard.

3.

The deer came into the field.
I saw her peaceful face and heard the shuffle of her breath.
She was sweetened by merriment and not afraid,
    but bold to say
whose field she was crossing: spoke the tap of her foot:
“It is God’s, and mine.”

But only that she was born into the poem that God made, and
called the world.

4.

And the goldfinch too
And the black pond I named my little sister, since
    otherwise I had none.
And the muskrat, with his shy hands.
And the tiny life of the single pine needle,
    which nevertheless shines.

And the priest in her beautiful vestments,
    her hand over the chalice.

And clouds moving, over the valleys of Truro.

5.

All day I watch the sky changing from blue to blue.
For You are forever
and I am like a single day that passes.
All day I think thanks for this world,
for the rocks and the tips of the waves,
for the tupelos and the fading roses.
For the wind.
For You are forever
while I am like a single day that passes.
You are the heart of the cedars of Lebanon
    and the fir called Douglas,
the bristlecone, and the willow.

6.

It’s close to hopeless,
for what I want to say the red-bird
has said already, and better, in a thousand trees.

The white bear, lifting one enormous paw, has said it better.

You cannot cross one hummock or furrow but it is
    His holy ground.

7.

I had such a longing for virtue, for company.
I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear.
I wanted to read and serve, to touch the altar linen.
Instead I went back to the woods where not a single tree
    turns its face away.

Instead I prayed, oh Lord, let me be something
    useful and unpretentious.
Even the chimney swift sings.
Even the cobblestones have a task to do, and do it well.

Lord, let me be a flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.
Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone
    brave and kind, whose name I will never know.

Lord, when I sleep I feel you near.

When I wake, and you are already wiping the stars away,
I rise quickly, hoping to be like your wild child
the rose, the honey-maker the honey-vine;
a bird shouting its joy as it floats
through the gift you have given us: another day.