December 22

CHANGE IN MENU

If God is drunk we pray for spiritual sobriety and strong sponsorship.  If God is sober we ask for these things on God’s behalf and glory in answered prayer.  It is amazing that the rain comes down if I dance for it or not.  I can get this wonderful recovery just like the rest of ‘we agnostics’, I don’t have to shake your hand, wink my eye or say some special bit of poetry to have it.  Just the same way that weather is and changes and deepens so too is my spiritual condition.  It is there as I tread this path.  I don’t have to mark the rows in my garden for the plants to grow.  I wish for God a salad with two forks, we no longer need to share a bottle.

Dance with your skeletons.

*

Harriet Powers

Like a creature with a long tale

told in a hushed voice.

The whispers tell the story

with inflection and innuendo.

I slink away from the mirror

and the disembodied voices it engenders.

Thirty versions of my past spin away from me

in the eddies of time gone and misremembered.

I gather my fragments and tatters;

I thread my needle

and sit to quilt me into the present.

The odd assortment left from all which has worn out

or been pulled apart fit in a pinwheel pattern

and turn toward a better day.

The night is warmer for now I have it covered,

settled and safe, perhaps now I might even sleep.