16 ounces to bolster Br. Ass preparing to journey with those who have gone before the Militant with the Triumphant for the Suffering in friendship being perfected so I find myself this forgotten evening after six weeks of opposition & stress sweat purging a measure of mercy enough to stand in the face of a rare case like the other without the full body slamming against the unmovable institution by which I am employed I, the resettled Quaker being balanced without consent between peace & necessity

when I was a little boy voiceless & pale I dreamt most nights that I could fly off of chairs out of windows no Superman cape or rocket pack just me & my boy arms flapping over oak limbs & power lines all around Fairmount Heights I flew above the rooftops of houses I knew where people I wanted to like me slept real places with real people not fairytale castles built & rebuilt by poor bumbling Giant John did I? sometimes still I wonder I mean, was it more than my wounded soul’s attempt to escape the world of never good enough & afraid of everything? or did I know something that got lost in the memory shuffle into adulthood? even now my beard well beyond gray as I lay me down I pray the Lord Come fly with me! and then with a little boy smile I give myself once again to the winds that blow only in my dreams

down the monk’s pack path to the tap house the wayside grotto of Our Lady of Grace though eroding still planted on the Serpent’s head bolstered by a holy trippel liquid grace for the pilgrim suffering in the school of fiat blistered feet limp lighter into the faltering town hunting for duct tape a thin layer of hope for the journey home drawn by Umqua flashing closed sign spotted as I shift to cross from somewhere behind sudden grace chimes the melody all children know gangly preteens peddling ice cream & oversized bicycles Cookie dipped, I order both their hands out to receive twice the price & I, twice the grace

what is this hole? local history bulldozed a brick wall at a time down to the pillars a pothole bottom filled with oil slicked New Year rain tripping in the half light over fissures buckled sidewalk blocks pushed up by restless roots my soul not quite whole staring witless into the crevice left by her whispered passing the holidays holy always but now a celebration ever incomplete

rock ’n roll hair & purple Chucks that’s how I got things done when I was handsome now it’s the beard I call it the kindly old gentleman factor it’s a perception to which I gladly conform fist bumps man shakes & grooming questions Have you ever? Will you? it’s not what they think for me a holy habit for them a sign directing the restless from in between halos and bones to perfect union

California Rain topping the playlist poetry ambling over banjo & synth unlikely hymnody for the first Sunday in Advent popping semisweet chocolate chips simulating joy mislaid in the midst of this sifting season endless unpacking one last boxful of paper framed portraits signed With Love to Joey & prayers for the bachelor son filling several green spirals my childhood stocking jingles hanging on a door even older one dimensional angels posed as though proclaiming with the heavenly host Peace on earth good will toward men! this man a boy again before the need to worry before Mother’s journal entries & the crocheted baby blanket never to be delivered the chalkware saint perched atop the bookend woodblock keeps watch over my lost cause wreath & candles reused & reversed saving five for a half slice of solemnity cake in a marked clamshell waiting on Jerry Frank’s otherwise highbrow dessert shop countertop

2020 the worst year ever Paul’s email began Yet another family member dead please pray & we can we all know the litany of disasters before the virus there was the president making America great again some still claim already divided the virus gave us physical distancing & masks as a political statement on one side the spectrum of skin tones masked & uniformed black if not for the boy in the pink ruffled tutu chalk art names & slogans on the sidewalk beneath the gold man under whose watch they take their stand chanting the now familiar Black - lives - matter! on the other? monocultural & mostly maskless decked out In the colors of Old Glory which waves above once complacent blue eyed faces suddenly awake & angry shouting back as if at a pep rally All - lives - matter! not content with God’s own footstool the wildfires push westward red hot tongues licking at the evergreen valley staining the autumn blue sky lethal orange sender sleet burns our ever upturned eyes as COVID looks on & chuckles Fly on home Chicken Little strap that mask back on your face & shelter in place 14 more days of the same this endless joke played & replayed on us again & again my thinning skin worn down to the cynical bone I unmask & join in What next? I ask my mustache hiding a grin Tsunami! someone guesses Flood! an easy take Zombies! I say setting up my punchline It’s the election whoever wins then silence broken by my wrap up & after November? will we the people bend our backs to the task of forming a more perfect union or take to the streets & tweets adding yet one more stanza to this already brutally long litany of disasters?

Cash hidden beneath my vespers ready button down piety over grit the way of the creative soul pining for the eternal inclined toward the beautiful now recalling crosses on the backroads I, the celibate he, the young betrothed return to abbey hill to honor a promise Dark Night in hand brewed for the day we two salute our shared prayer made public Salud! I say Cheers! overlaid while from the hilltop prayer bells beckon in vain

Hey! don’t you know that I’m thirsty he cried arms wide to an all but empty street with me the lone pedestrian unable to see past my lack I smile my regrets & walk on the word of God open in my glove warmed hands this is what a virus does it steals my rhythm then shouts out the Savior’s 5th last words from the cross I thirst! & I walk on & on no smiles no words mine or anyone else’s only vacant shops with apologies posted & promises to come again at the end of the age this age of saving lives via isolation Ha! I reply I’m never alone! until that night I awoke with cancer in my dreams & stayed awake keeping company with all the angst once brushed aside Ha! no joy in that puff from my presumably healthy lungs I laugh at the fool who dropped his keys in the most unlikely place my screaming green REI rosary bag the keeper of my prayers reader of my soul string mouth open Ha! it mocks my flim-flam shelter made up of bootstraps & passcodes & I cry I cry with the others O Father, Mother you holy souls all who suffer I thirst!

I’d like to go where the people march & chant those last gasp words I - can’t - breathe like the 4th of July at Waterfront Park the sirens blare the tear gas bombs burst in air as I pray Compline & prepare for bed don’t black lives matter? I’ve cared for more than a few I recall the morning I was late when Marla exclaimed Sherman’s on CP time! & they all laughed am I? when I pray for peace then justice only as a guilty afterthought & what about the rest? will they take their day in the streets? the Chinatown merchants their shops burned down in the name of health & morals & those still enslaved doing the work that Americans won’t then, almost forgotten the mother of all acts of American oppression the indigenous systematically erased from our collective social memory even the angry white kids swarm without aim around this righteous flame maybe I should go & keep on going all the way back through England to Germany where I’d still be white but not quite as privileged an immigrant marked as other not by color but by my papers & speech & so join my voice with those who cry out How long? Lord, how long?