I’m with burn survivors today. Fire has disfigured them. Changed them forever. Unlike the rest of us, their wounds can’t be hidden. One has come for some wafer of hope. She is the same beautiful girl under all her taut scars. How she wants to go back to the day before the fire. Her pain is so great that she asks why God keeps her alive. What can you say to someone who feels the press of life that severely? She seems a ruined Atlas holding up a world on fire. I bow to her by not lying. We’re not equipped to answer why or to venture that things will be better. Though they might. We can only bear witness to what it takes to still be here and to the mystical fact that nothing stays the same. These raw souls are tired and intense. Broken angels seared by falling too near the hot gears of existence. Fair? We drop below the human obsession with fairness and listen to each other’s pain and talk about how to go on.

Another Chance

ANOTHER CHANCE

It’s harder to hold onto things.

I’ve broken several bowls while

drying them, including the one of

a kind Nick gave my wife Susan.

Another chance to practice frailty.

I need to take more care in how I

lift, to let things settle in my palm

where I can feel them more than

carry them. And lately when our

dog eats too fast, she gets sick. So

now we squat beside her and make

her wait. She stops and chews and

we look at each other. These tender

moments opened by limits make

me stop in the market, watching

everyone handle fruit. I aspire

to stay tender. The softness of

light is everywhere.

Nesting

NESTING

Last week, I was on a pier in Charleston.

There was a pelican, very close. I remembered

that pelicans make their nest by plucking

feathers from their chest. The water kept

lapping and I felt illumined, for a moment.

Aware that you were home, medicating Mira.

Aware my father was on his side, unable to get

out of bed. Aware your brother, unable to choose

life, was again in jail. Aware that you are nesting

like a pelican in the middle of all this. Last night,

in the concert, as the guitars softened our worry,

I watched the light of the theatre quiet your face,

as I have for years, and thought, I know we will lose

things dear to us and it will seem impossible to go on.

And though the weight of grief we fear and master

looms like a dark god, I will be there when words

fail, to rub your feet and stir the soup, to

sweep up the slivers of pain that will come

from us. I know each thing we lose will cut

a string, but life is learning to play music