He sounded like a prince.
But then like a beast alone with her.
His words sounded like a cracked mirror
each leaf a sliver of something dark,
like the casings of my father’s bullets
in the top dresser drawer.
We never spoke of it.
The curtain was over the doorway
but I knew.

Summoned by the Sabboth sun
I entered my church of habit,  
suspecting that Jesus came
to wake the world up.

But through the prism of life
religion was a hotchpot of refracted strains,
myth and motive, innocence and guilt,
forgiveness and condemnation,
not yet refined by real love.

The history of religion stormed through
my mind, and I was its foreigner
in my own church, a back-pew Presbyterian,
a circumstantial version of a final draft.

Yet a spirit within me was joyful.
Like a point in time
that wanted to last forever,
or like a universe contained in a shell.
And more than that, it seemed to remember God,
but only way before I attended church.

Waiting quietly in my back pew,
remembering something ancient and new,
the source of every question and answer.
I wasn’t sure what to expect,
but there was a hint,
                        a power there that could start
a revolution.
But it had little to do with the sermon.

She was manic before court that day.
I told her we only had five minute to wait,
but she said she had to leave.
That was before she used the bad bag.
At the mortuary they thought she had
a frown on her face.
Her family from out of town just came to see
that she was dead,
then they left.
Her teenage daughter couldn’t stay.
She left in a car full of friends.
I looked at the corpse.
It did frown.

You thought you wanted freedom,
so they took your children away
and gave them to your sister.
Your children forgot you
and found their own freedom.
All you found were closed doors
and too much time,
weighing you down
until a noose broke your neck.

The phone rings and it’s him.

  He’s in Colorado.

  I can’t forget the day he was born.

  It was at noon, and I had a final exam

  that morning.

  It didn’t matter, they held him up for us to see.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “How are you”, I ask.

  “Fine”, he answers.

           He wouldn’t remember that day.

The first man, the Bible says, had no mother
He’s the only exception to the rule
that everyone has a mom.
Not only the good daughter
who plans ahead,
but even the wandering, curious pup
the predator swallows,
and even millions of babies who die
of shadowy diseases in ignorance,
all have mothers

The dictator who sent millions
to gas showers had a mother,
someone to see and hear for him
when his eyes and ears could not,
to think before his small mind had a thought,
to tell him stories of the dark universe,
to turn on the light and open the world.

I’ve seen mothers in skirts and pants,
scrubs, fatigues and prison clothes.
I’ve seen them with cigarettes, *****,
crack and rosaries,
with and without rules,
smart, slow, some just children.
Then there’s Sarah, “beyond childbearing years.”

They’ll never unite since no two are alike
except in making men fathers, be they princes
or rogues, and giving everyone life.
But isn’t that the whole world?
Is there anything bigger than being a mother?

Who else can make a child special,
more a person than merely unique,
fully forgiven for the guilt of being born,
accepted as the essential child
by the responsible maker holding life
in her hands?  
Who else can be the face of the world first appearing?
Is cleaning your room the ultimate point,
or is it to love or not to love?
Ask any mother.

As I carried my jacket on a hot afternoon,
looking for relief from the heat,  
a thin woman I was walking past asked me for "food money".  
I wondered whether she was really poor,
or just a panhandler working the street.  
She was good at asking, really good.  
But I’m a skeptic where panhandling’s concerned,
because I work for a living, and always have.  
And I know a thing or two about conning,
so I’m not likely to be taken in.  
But I looked her in the eye and saw another universe.    
I put a dollar in her hand.
“God bless you, sir”, she said, as I walked away.  
I left her with that small investment to let it increase forever.  
But it felt like the increase was mine.