I sit in a café in the early hours.
I have no agenda, no manifesto, no religion that needs defending.

The morning sky is tangerine and tousled by clouds.
People are friendly.
No one has come here with that quote by Sartre.
No one is reading the principles of Sun Tzu.

Little Wing is playing through the overhead speakers.
Hints of frost on the large eastern window.
I’m warm in my Merino.
It’s February on the island. Snowdrops are up.

At a table beside me there’s a woman who is beautiful and plain.
I see the eyes of my mother — then I hear the voice of my father.
The woman glances up over her coffee, toward her partner,
a dark strand of hair, like a rush of love, falls across her cheek.

My memories are strands of wool, dropped and scattered over the earth.
I sit. Voices around me, like blessed water running over polished rock.

At a table near the back, I hear the glad cries of my sisters and brothers.
They are playing Rook, past midnight.
They are in me like piers in a port.

A trans woman enters who has the face of the Black Madonna.
Behind her, a mother, with a daughter whose midriff is exposed
and pierced with a jewel.
An old man in a wheelchair is sitting alone, with news.
A waiter is clearing and wiping a table and speaking softly
to a child, using the language of a child.
The nation’s flag is sewn on the brown jacket of a young man,
waiting for his Americano.
A business person, wearing straight lines and severe lipstick,
is waiting for some form of kindness.
An angel stands outside with his shopping cart and paper cup.
All of us here, like salt in a sea.
One in all, like coral; all in one, like the bride of Christ.

Before there were fists, there were open palms.
Even a gun was once an oak, and ore, gleaming from a cliff.

Tears of happiness well up in me,
the way brooks form on mountains after a day of rain,
the way a drop of love gathers more love.

Afterward, my eyes dry, I sit before my table.
It is built low and circular, like a bay prepared for boats
in some divine unfolding dream.

Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?   -Thomas Merton

What a short span you have, here
in your flesh and blood body.

Who will blame you, even at your age, especially
at your age, if you take your nerve and sinew
and set out to recover your soul?

Who’ll chide you for getting up, throwing on your coat, leaving
behind the screens of abstraction, the acid of acedia, the sucking ruts
of restlessness, to reach for the latch and step outside?

What’s stopping you from shaking off that persistent
darkness, that moon-shaped blankness, to turn,
again, and face the big canvas of your life?

There’s still time. Why not go to the meadow
and sit quietly with your paints?

Let the observer in you fade away,
let stillness soften the ridges of the judging mind,
let it melt your laminate shell, let
any slime of shame burn away
under a blazing sun,
let the growing tribe of losses run their wild course,
and give yourself to the tender arms of grace,
unfolding in the bear-hug of self-forgiveness.

Paint the motions of the meadow, enter the holy grass, the
keening willows, the kneeling trees, the fearless, dying, leaves,
the divine mystery, that abiding presence
you first saw in a puddle after a rain,
your child-eyes looking back at you,
with fierce curiosity.

You have no paintbrush?
Use your sprouting hands,
your raging gut and ragged spirit,
your greying, still pulsing, marrow,
your whole water and fire body.

There was a time when you were almost content
with what you were taught;

a time you could almost believe
the popular deception
of creating your own unfading haven;

a time you were almost persuaded, through Sunday’s
cheerful affirmations, to claim a helium hope,
blaming any leakage on the weakness
of your faith.

But when that which is precious  
is leaving,
and you stand at midnight’s window,
watching, listening,

there is nothing to do but be,
in the weight, breadth, and depth,
of your emotion;
there is nothing to do but suffer that love

to pierce you, to
let the harsh sorrows of the world defeat you,
courageously shape you,
mysteriously prepare you —

for this is what it means to be still and alive
and be true.

Here’s what I remember: it wasn’t at first sight,
owing to the burdens of loss we both carried,
and owing to the complications (me, already a father,
her, already a mother), instead it was the last sight,
or rather, the sight after many sights;

which came after our first talks, like tiptoeing over stones,
and after the ecclesiastical courts (the occasional unblessing),
and after some counsellor’s warning: how could we, how would we,
weave our history, our disparity, into the already formed
but frayed garments of our lives?

…yet, soon, the ballooning phone bills,
the relief of shared grief, the once-withering hope
fireworks-ing into flights of affection,
the pouring into each other, the releasing
of our own conditioning and trusting
the reception of friends,
the understanding of sisters and brothers;

and suddenly, the many sights became the first sight,
and I saw her,
standing like a fountain,
a crystal tree, backlit in blue and green,
and shimmering;

and I saw her in that red dress, in her Buick Skylark,
window down, her head, a half turn,
a smile, a wave, a certainty;

our hands, palms touching and fingers twined, grew happy,
our gaze, spanning country and city, built a home,
our eyes — now reflecting thousands of sunsets —
not always synchronous, but willing;

now we hike with walking sticks, we watch,
give each other space, but don’t wander too far up the shore
without the other;
we use electric bikes, we travel smooth, broad, trails,
we round tight, difficult, bends,
one leads, now the other;

she texts me from the far end of Super Store,
we meet at the checkout counter like secret lovers,
we forget the almond milk, but not each other;

our quarrels are mellow now, we fight with the assurance
of knowing we’ll stick around, pick it up another day,
we seldom do;

we’re on our way to become a toddling old couple,
we’ll make quaint appearances at family reunions,
recall, for each other, the names of children;

we sit silently on driftwood …longer,
we pause under cedar and coastal fir …longer,
we get slightly lost hiking above the Koksilah river,
we could overnight, she’s thought ahead, brought snacks;

our lives have taken on a compressed, mystical, quality,
each morning she asks, Sweetheart, what’s important today?
so now every day is her birthday, every day, our anniversary;

our hearts beat on, they beat softer,
but the rhythm is stronger,
chances are they won’t stop together,
but however that goes,
of course, they will.