Maskless Dirt
MAY 31, 2025
The Lily and the Bird taught me how to eat dirt
and how the stars fall at night;
only to be caught in the hands
of a broken heart and an aching mind.
If only it were that all poets might feel this way
at least once in their short lives:
to catch a star falling from the night
and how it holds the hands just right.
One day I found myself hugging a tree
almost to say, in the naivety of N. Stair
If I had to live my life over, I would start barefoot
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.
But picking daisies or lilies is not what the bird nor the lily
or the daisy had in mind when God asked
us for obedient love in the way one gives
unto a creator, or a creation; it does not get to start over.
And it is not a loveless fool that picks the flowers from the dirt;
it is a lover, not yet grown sour by the ways of the owned land
not yet born of the thought that makes one run naked
through the forest, not yet shown the care of a Divine Creator;
completely unaware of the tormented life so gallantly expressed
galloping at a will so detached from God
not yet stormed by the brokenness; because this is
where true Joy is birthed, this is the obedient creation
turned maskless in the eyes of God. 