Faith is tangible
like mineral or light form,
a quality determined
by the flow of longing
to lift beyond the finite.
To bring down the wealth
of dawn from the mountain,
starlight as it follows the sea,
a magical something
within the spirit
that becomes the flesh
of compassion.
Stories housed within the soul
exact in every detail,
the deliberate forgetting
of a mind linked to survival
inoperable in the secret register
where every encounter’s sacred
despite the pain or tragedy;
the look on Bobby’s face telling me
our best friend Brendan’s dead,
my father’s eyes down
who should have borne the weight;
Brendan’s look the night before
his cigarettes in a rolled up sleeve,
a fierceness to his fate
I knew but could not fathom;
two moments of so many years
and more the stories of ancestral past
inherited through the blood
or some marvel of the life force
so who they were and all they suffered
would never be forgotten.
Years ago my father and I
walked upon Roscommon Road
and there we met an old woman
in peasant black and ruddy face
her bright eyes shining as she met
the man who should have been her son.
My father’s eyes were down of course,
he would not bear this weight
so I took it as I had learned to do
and looked into her tear filled face
with all the questions she’d never answer,
happy for the son alive she’d hoped to carry;
one chapter in a secret story,
the library of my soul to guide and witness
his coat and tie and shiny shoes
that kept him from the mud filled yard
where love was lost, one truth abandoned.
I haven’t forgotten to remember Mary
or Roscommon Road, and the place
within her empty womb
where nothing less than life itself
still waited to be born.
Sacred site and ancient temple
point to power
invisible and mysterious,
symbol and reality
not confused by older order.
We extract and concentrate
yet release and balance must follow.
The sand below the sphinx
was once a field of green,
the silence of the statue
a language of its own.
What appeared empty
may now guide us.
Challenged by the old fight
I hear another voice
miles from the road
along the basalt trail
to a creek that breaks
from her open mouth
with the grief of music
the knowledge of moss
and the part of me
broken like a branch
turned into dirt
falling with water
in a long drop
over smooth stone
into a canyon
with the deeper river
waiting.
Living a good life shouldn’t be so hard,
just a thought for what is right
despite the dreams and body’s calling,
yet wherever the iron bound imprint
loses control, soul trickles through,
concerned for its own hunger
as if tossed upon the shores of Eden
for the very first time; no books,
no laws, no convention, only stars
with everything green and wild.
