Echoes from the stones

When I could travel I would grasp the walls...the halls of home,
or Roman stone, still standing beneath my fingers, the reasonance of centuries around.

When I could get out:

I sang to 42nd street
Tie and tails and sharp black shoes.

Or ancient melodies in naves or sanctuaries.

Hymms or choruses, new and old.

Painfully common or deep and old and true.

Those melodies are restless still, looking for an exit...

And so I hum at home when no one hears...
Or wonder if they've heard it true, and think me mad.
Outside in the hall, as they wonder what the poor woman's doing there.
Held inside, denied connection with the people or communion with the other singers, past and gone or present near....
It must subsist as working noise, or vocal prayer alone.

It is not time for requiem, or worse yet stillness...
The voice still sings.

Silent

She is silent.

And the list of advice grows long.

"She let this happen."

"She made that choice a long time ago."

"She is so stubborn."

Or,

"Someone has to."

"You have to allow it."

"I just don't know what to do."

All the contradictory advices,

She is still silent.

Even if I walked thirteen hundred miles on crutches. Or burned out several hundred scooter batteries just to arrive.

She would still be silent. Or terribly fearful. Or making things up.

So, I have to ask her as she was, not as she is.

Go back in time.

And ask *the person she was,* what I should do.

And as hazy as that answer is, the one thing came through clear:

"Do not sit silent and let this happen to me," she says, back in time, in the wayback machine.

"Do not sit silent and let this happen to me."

Confessor

Which I'm not.


Why was the laundry list of secrets mine to carry?

Whenever their lives hit the Dark Side.

The able came to me.

So I had to carry,

The wishes for love, brought to the feet of one who thought she'd never find it, old maid at twenty one.

The abusive boyfriends they ran from, or the hapless good men they played, both sides.

the "affairs" one parent brought to me with the demand that I remain silent to the other.

Fathers abusing their children...

The one I loved confiding about the one they loved.

Where were my *vestments.*

If I was real.

Human, flawed and 'sinful' by most theology.

I did not have Latin language sink in, in the night nor dwelt in a rectory.

I wore no wimple, cassock, collar.

If the idea of impairments as sin is gone from my country...

Then, neither should anyone in my tribe be counted among the saints and martyrs.

We wish for what *you* wish for...and have no need of your dark secrets.

With apologies to Venn

It's always so important to them.

To arrive.

To go

To transfer

To walk

To run

To fly

To drive.


It's important to me:

To watch

To gather information

To listen

To hold court

To discern, describe, delineate

Contemplate

Create

To sing.

To examine.

So....Where do we intersect?

The motion hungry

and me?

Decade old unanswered question

Will there be one?

Not dragged away by illness,

or held idiotic and angry by addiction,

or just driven backwards by complexity

That's why the question has no answer.

That's why I won't be asking.

Because, there is a deadline...long in the future or short...

Time's a wastin'

Don't wish. Do.

Don't pine. Move.

I haven't momentum or energy for anyone besides myself.

Still means...

thoughtful,

or clear observance,

Or objective view.

Or the smell of Canadian lakeside afternoons...and fearless critters slipping by.

or kneeling, holding the hand of the one who'll be gone tomorow...though you don't know it will be tomorow....silent,connected...

Or the joy of the Christmas tree in the 5 am dark....you see it before the others, lit and neat and orderly....before chaos, good gifts, bad wrapping.

Ipod,cell,blackberry,chimes.

Discouraging savoring

Still, and still time.

Nothing Like

The clothes dark,

The floods bright,

The subject grim,

The work, delight.

To reach inside, pull emotion up.

Joy or sorrow, laughter tears,

To unveil talent and provoke fears.

The amazement of the rest of them...

The undeniable proof.

Standing at the stage's edge...

Catching the wave.