In the Winter 2007 edition of Rock & Sling (Vol 4, Issue 2) are 3 new poems: Some Prayers Are Better Unanswered; The Soles of My Feet are Bourne Upon the Earth; The Foot Washing Ceremony. Rock & Sling is a great journal of "Literature, Art, and Faith" with poetry, essays, fiction and reviews that "bump up against" spirituality and western religion in some way.
The Soles of My Feet Are Bourne Upon the Earth
Having turned fifty,
I trek to Gravely Ford in the Sierra mountains,
stoke a small orange flame with tinder
till it leaps, engulfs a fallen tree trunk
laid across a sturdy circle of stones.
The Big Dipper so low in the sky
it appears to be scooping earth
from the horizon. Last night,
before driving to the trailhead,
I slept in a hexagon my father built
in the woods, and in my dream,
a deer entered the kitchen through an open door.
In the morning, my mother woke me
saying Aunt Opal is dying in Oklahoma,
that the doctor recommends moving her
to a larger hospital to prolong her ninety-two years.
But we know that Opal—one good leg,
a mind already straying—has waited for years
to leave the body’s insults, to join her husband
beyond twilight, beyond mystery.
So we tell the doctor no, she wants to go,
hear relief in his voice despite years of indoctrination
in medicine’s stubborn refusal to let the body go
when it is ready. Now,
staring at the sky above the campfire’s burgundy embers,
fifty years of memory weight me so low
that the soles of my feet are finally bourne upon the earth,
closer than the heaven I have envied all my life—
its desperate beauty, its dark bowl of brilliant lights.
Some Prayers Are Better Unanswered
Back from college, lying beneath the body-length ceiling poster in the little room over the garage, I stared at the burgundy robe still shaped by the torso just ascended—doves escaping the collar. It was my first longing for death, to leave the body—truculent, misfit—behind. Praying to the poster, I reached toward its clouds, angelic light, wind—but found nothing I could drink, eat, sleep with. So I rose, passing instead into these long years of kissing the earth’s stained body, her fickle hands, her dark ruby lips.
The Foot Washing Ceremony
It was dark, the deep purple carpet leading from aisle to altar at the Methodist church, candles rimming the circular wooden border I crossed to the raised dais. There, removing shoes, socks, embarrassments, I sat in a simple chair, placed feet in the ritual bowl of clear water, allowed the person in front of me to gently wash each foot, then towel dry, then bow. Folding into the kneeling posture after, I turned, took the next two luminous, bashful feet like shy animals, stroked them till they splashed like happy, holy puppies.