38th Meditation: Five Random Confessions

I First Confession, 1956

If I were a song singing,
better-believe-it
Pentecostal,
my prayers would have wings.
In my hands black beads
would blaze white as the sun.

I'd be so slippery
with the oils of salvation
sin would slide off me
like water off a duck's back.
But I'm an ordinary believer.
Sin clings to me like a sandbur
on a prairie dog's back.

I want to be a chalice,
a place where red sparks
pour into a mystery.
I want to be a place where praise
is washed in the embrace of words.
I want to be like Mary and the moon -
to reflect light not my own.

I want to lift my arms in exaltation
and shout wonderful Amens each time
the priests and nuns, hands open in prayer,
tell how the bones of the saints
inspire them with little tunes
and small doves that collect them.

But I'm a wind whistling
through salvation's window.
I'm life caught picking its toes.
I'm a wick for the blue fire.
I'm what always happens
when the soul's smile
is no proof of innocence.

II Second Confession, 1965

It's the uneasy dreams
the scare me,
those that tighten
both breath and sinews
back to things
born of wind and sea.

The mind wakes
to a single bruise,
the meaning sticks
and stones,
broken bones,
words that spread like fire.

It's the silence
that moves me most.
Who knows what's aroused
when the mind is caught
off guard, suspended
in its strange desires

to run nude
through the sacristy,
the theater of the skull,
the polite smile
eavesdropping on its own
logical explanations?

III Third Confession, 1975

I've guilt enough
for this whole side of town!
I'm transparent as a window.
Sometimes my only friend
is the dead moon rising.

Lately I've tried to become
addicted to huge piles of grace
and lumps of heavenly hope,
but the wonderful magic
of all my real obsessions
shouts louder than any angel
sent to corral me.
I wish I could pity
the little instincts
that enclose me. Shame

seems a fit garment
for a man like me.
But every time I try to feel it,
I find some bright thing
blooming in the darkness

IV Fourth Confession, 1985

I'm a thing caught between
time and eternity.
I'm half Buddha, half Bo Peep.
I take the shape of the unwell

to keep from being noticed.
I was the boy who lost his kite
on a young and perfect day.
My greatest sin is being clumsy.

I'm colorless as music
and sometimes just as complex.
Lately I've taken on the orange
pain of arthritis.
It's a flat little woe,
not unlike certain of my prayers.
I've been an observer here all my life.
Nuns are drawn to me

and sometimes the thirsty.
I tell them there are times when
applause can be subtle
as an axe.

I saw an avocado angel from outer
space once. He was standing
in the old meadow entertaining
himself with prayers of bad humor.

When I told him I had no idea
who or what I was, he informed me
that where he came from things were
that they might have joy.

V Fifth Confession, 1995

I have come to rebuke
the breast of the reeds,
the dancing cranes
gathering spice from the garden,
the stuff that smolders
inside me like a blindness.

My guilt ticks itself silly.
In this condition
no one is young for long.
The sweaty seams of temptation
trickle to the back of my name
until the bones sag.

And I come to this place
more a maniac than a man.
I feel eternity chewing away
at my atoms, laughing
at my ice mediocrity,
my bland compassions.

How will my sins behave
without me? I'm full of pits
from the forbidden fruit -
spent the whole year fondling them
as though they were
the surest things about me.

And now I must give them up
like family secrets.
Set them like little ships
to waltz out on the silver sea -
and return to my life
chaste, renewed and empty.

copyright 2003 Fredrick Zydek