Communion
Artist Statement
Good poems traffic in realities that are strange, ambiguous, and (at times) incommunicable. Since the spiritual realm (as I understand it) is strange, ambiguous, and incommunicable, maybe poems are our best windows into that place.
Communion
You call us to remember, and we reach back to find the picture. But time has scattered its fragments across our minds like a drunk farmer who danced as he planted. We take in so much. We keep almost nothing. What survives is a miracle. This bread, your body. This wine, your blood. Such kindness, Lord, to hide yourself in tiny fires. What survives must be art.
Baptism
We want to feel you, so you tell us to come to the river. We come to the river, and we do feel you. The problem is that time passes, and when it does, even the strongest feeling seems inadequate. What we want now is to see you. When we communicate this desire, you advise us to swim across the river to the other side. We obey. It is only after our arms and legs have lost their strength, and we are sinking down into the darkness, that you tell us the river's name.
The Anointing of the Sick
All healing begins and ends with You, but You tell us that when we pray for the sick, we must lay our hands on the body. Why is this? Is it because You never miss a chance to close the distance between Your people? That You would have those bodies who (this night) appear healthy press themselves against another body who (this night) appears sick, and that when we press into each other with the faith of children, we realize that we have only ever been one Body, which is Yours? Maybe. But it also seems like a lesson in humility. That You want us to feel beneath our hands a sickness we can't begin to fix, and to embrace how helpless we are, and to offer (finally) the only prayer that saves: Lord in Heaven, You must move.