The Freckles Run Together

“The truth of the business” is how my grandmother
opens every opinion that she’s ever had.
It could never sound the same from my pink lips—
that confidence she breathes that only comes
with ninety-two-plus years of experience.
Hers are pale with cracks grooved into them

that look something like trenches in a battlefield.
They remind me of the boy who could not support the war
that killed his brother and the girl who disagreed
because it kept her mother alive. It may not go far
in politics, but when I heard their stories they both
seemed right somehow—kind of like when

my baby sister whines about our brother and he’s
minding his own business in the corner, reading books
at a level twice his age and laughing that
her R’s are always backwards. They both need me
to tell them that they’re right so they can know
that truth exists and they can find it. But I’m not quite sure

just where it could be. My high school English teacher
said that God is in the gray and black and white
are of our making. We make the contrast scream as loudly
as orange freckles on pale skin. But I stopped listening to it
a long time ago. Now I sit on the floor with Ani using every rainbow color
to help write stories for Joseph. And I know there will be truth in every word.

Over my Mother's Shoulder

((A rough work-in-progress, but I need this to commemorate my last night home for awhile before I lose the feel of it.))

I read her Bible in the church service.
I decipher one-word prayers
along the margins and I see
where I must get it.
Over my mother's shoulder

I watch the old man
who used to sit with me
on Sunday mornings. The walker
rests against him as delicately
as his head sinking into grainy hands.

He seems to be in pain and I am grateful
for his sake that we're
about to take communion. They call it
the Lord's Supper and it strikes me
how strange that sounds against my

now liturgical ears. I stayed at home
an extra night because I hadn't been
to a Baptist Eucharist in years.
The time had come to be reminded what I left.
I want to ask my father

why he let the wafer pass this time, but
the silence seems to bring us closer.
A sudden interlude on the piano
chimes out "O precious is the flow" and
I watch the man who's hurting.

Perhaps his bones are breaking
like the way Christ broke the bread.
My old Sunday School teacher consecrates
the body with his incessant "Dear God" refrain
I've been smirking at since middle school.

I now hear it as a rhythm no less crucial
to the mystery before me than
the young man leaning against the older
to keep him from falling out of his seat.
And I weep because it hits me,

"Nothing but the blood of Jesus"
runs through each and every moment.
My born-and-bred-in-Hobart pastor
dismisses us for fellowship and
in his own country-boy way

describes communion as just beginning.
He said it a little differently than the priest
down in New Orleans but it pierced my heart
more tenderly than the others have before.
And now I see just why I stayed.

Waking Old Tyger that Sleeps.

Upon perusing the budding pages of a good friend of mine, I unearthed my old Blogger profile and discovered "Burning Away the Chaff." It was the blog that kept me sane in the summer after my high school graduation, though it has little to show for it (that would probably explain the low degree of sanity in that summer). Inspired by my friend, I decided I need a new space that Tumblr can't provide as fully as I would like to be what the world tends to call a "writer" without really knowing what that means.

I don't claim to, either. But I'd like to take another step toward finding out, and this seems as good a way as any.

So it begins. Again.