| What would I feel, what would I know, right now, |
| If somehow I could walk this road again? |
| If vision could have been untwisted--how? |
| What would the past have felt and shown, and when? |
| Because, enveloped in a load, you can |
| still live as if a little strange, okay-- |
| but inside you're always scared, and then |
| each feeling twists, and you can't chart a way. |
| You fight to be affected, every day, |
| but then emotions forced or sometimes prayed |
| turn upside down and backwards, whirl and stay |
| and underneath it all you're just afraid. |
| Without a load, with faith grown undelayed, |
| what memories were then, have scattered, strayed. |
| A buried longing adds to living's weight. |
| The weary fear--at last I understand. |
| A Stillness, silence, turns alone to fate-- |
| my heart is hidden by an untrained hand. |
| I am a wild thing perched on shifting sand. |
| Alive where efforts seem to just confuse-- |
| while never lighted love makes living bland-- |
| we still turn words to codes, still make a ruse, |
| I wonder what connections we all lose. |
| We've built a world where language bounces back. |
| We wonder if it wants us as we choose; |
| inside, we cling to what we know we lack. |
| It's why we try so hard to do what?s right, |
| but why we cry at Mass, why fleeting light. |
| If we could climb the clouds and fall straight up-- |
| ask questions that look simple when they're not, |
| just break our tired truths, our old clay cups-- |
| the Church first showed me how to fix life's plot. |
| Things I burned to say, with stigma's blot, |
| the cockiness in me that had to die, |
| I'm stubborn just because I'm scared.� I'm not |
| so used to being truly taught.� That's why, |
| remembering what was, was all a lie, |
| the language from the Church welds body, soul, |
| and makes it real now when I need to cry. |
| Free will is sacred here with God, and whole. |
| Love is solid, here, to grasp, a visible role. |
| It makes sense here: the path, the cloth and bowl. |
| Each time I come to be with you, my fear, |
| a burden tumbling into Jesus tomb, |
| you carried it for me this time, this year, |
| you let me grow, you gave me love and room. |
| We learned that life from death, hope born from doom |
| becomes our unstained light, eternal home. |
| My safety net, the dizzy spinning womb-- |
| the old that sometimes surfaces in foam-- |
| it's gone now, pushed outside the real world's dome, |
| but what's within is still enough to scare. |
| I couldn't see, that made me fear and roam, |
| a lot is awful when you over-care. |
| You've built a shelter, inside, where |
| this world looks possible to love and share. |
| --April 26, 2004 |