Boxing It Up

In search of more storage,

I began to box up the books

I know I won’t get to for a few years.

I’ve kept out my Volokhonsky translation of

Brothers Karamazov.

I have no doubt it’s outstanding.

War and Peace (Constance Garnett translator)

Followed.

I put away Sailhamer, Chesterton, Lewis.

In went Wendell Berry,

Marilynne Robinson,

Annie Dillard.

And I had a moment

Just a moment

In which the memory of the person I wanted to be

At twenty—erudite, cosmopolitan, urbane—

Overwhelmed me.

Had I not taken that half decade detour into farming,

Spent all those hours learning, trying, failing—

Perhaps that would have been possible.

So I let the grief consume me,

Body wracked with sobs.

And then the moment passed

And I went down for lunch.

Real Life

No photo or picture

Given to gaze on

In remembrance.

No image or flat representation.

Rather, the bread and the wine

Literally become part of the

Partaker, an accurate

Demonstration of the real life

Given,

Received,

Swallowed,

Enlivened.

Straw

In prayer some years back,

I had a picture of me—

A small straw,

Flowing a small bit

Of Christ’s love

Around me.

When I told God I was angry,

That he should want me

To be a bigger

Conduit of his grace,

He said, You won't make it

Without more of me first.

I could hear that.

That I was, perhaps,

More tired and broken

Than I realized,

In need of some times of refreshing

That come from the Lord.

I wrote that note,

Soon buried in the detritus of life.

Finding it again at long last,

I have a new hope

That the time is coming

Soon.