REMAINDERED

What are you holding

On to?

What are you keeping

Warehoused

In your heart,

Your soul

That you’d be better off

Without?

To continue to store

This surplus in any part

Of your being

Is too much overhead

For your one precious life

To carry

When no one, not even yourself,

Is buying

What you are selling

anymore.

THE TUMBLERS

The answers—

that is what I am looking for,

like a safe-cracker trying 

to suss out the right sequence,

the perfect combination that will

unlock the machinery that's in my way.

And I am listening, listening,

with every part of myself,

for the sound, the whispered music,

of the tumblers turning,

and for the moment when

everything clicks into place.

And when it does, and it will, 

that's when the mighty door opens

and there they are

stacked high like gold bullion,

the answers, which I recognize

straightaway as a fortune

I actually already had

but didn’t know I did,

because the way I was listening

kept the truth hidden

right where I couldn’t see it:

in plain sight.

THE CHAPEL

Crow made the cupola 
with their flight.

The oak were the arches.

The meadow, the high altar.

Train whistles, dog barks, children

laughing, were the voices of the choir.

The sunlight was the sermon.

Experience, strength and hope,

the chalice and the wafer,

offered with humility,

and with humor, by those

brave enough to speak.

Faith was in the fellowship

that blew through the circle of us

like a breeze climbing 

the steps of a secret steeple.

THE SURVIVALIST

It is not Fort Knox

or the lost city of Tanis,

where legend had it

the Ark of the Covenant

was once buried. It is more

like a fallout shelter.

But there is no gold bullion,

lost treasure, food rations,

or medical supplies to speak of

in this underground bunker of mine.

What I have squirreled away

are the essentials

a different kind of survivalist

would stockpile:

anger, shame, grief.

I store them here, in this place,

to keep myself safe.

Little do I know though

that I have the makings

of a pressure cooker,

not a safe house, on my hands.

A land mind you might even say.

The only way to uncover the gold

or any kind of covenant

that may actually be hidden here

is to allow the anger,

the shame, the grief out,

to let them rise to surface, 

to daylight them, making sure, 

of course, no collateral damage 

or external fallout occurs 

along the way.

If I can do this then

there is nothing to survive,

there is no threat of a Doomsday,

and no dark cellar lurking in my soul.