Reflections
of Light
Quaker Poets of Today

In the restaurant today

I ordered tomato judgment

rather than tomato juice.

They don’t sound that different in Spanish.

My co-workers laughed, and I did, too,

but I felt embarrassed.

 

And it’s not as though this were an isolated incident.

 

All of a sudden, speaking Spanish is no longer a game,

a classroom drill, or a vocabulary list

to master for tomorrow’s quiz.

 

It’s life.

 

All those people walking down the street

buy, sell, play, work, write letters,

sing songs, read newspapers, flirt, curse,

and tell jokes in Spanish!

In perfect, effortless Spanish!

Even the kids

jabber away like linguistic experts.

I can conjugate “decir” better than they can,

and explain where in the mouth the “g” sound is formed,

but can I order a simple glass of tomato juice?

 

For friendship to happen,

 

I need to be warm and spontaneous.

Yet how is that possible

when I have to mentally coax every phrase

before it has the nerve to creep out of my mouth?

 

Patience, I’m told.

Just have patience, practice lots

and keep laughing at yourself.

 

Guess I’ll have to, Lord.

Everyone else is.

“All things wise and wonderful,

All creatures great and small,

All things Bright and beautiful,

The Lord God made them all.”

 

I like that song, Lord, really I do.

But the part about all creatures,

the great and the small—

is it true? All of them?

Did you, Lord, make amoeba?

And if so, why?

 

Neither wise, wonderful, bright nor beautiful,

they have burrowed themselves

into my son’s liver

and if you’re behind this—

what do you intend to do about it?

 

We’ve been through numerous rounds of Flagil,

tried some potent “natural” remedies,

all mixed with generous dosages of prayer,

and now I’m ready for some answers.

 

Are these particular little beasts

part of some vast incredible Plan,

hatched in the heavenly imagination

since before the foundations

of all that?

 

Do they have a role like Jonah’s feisty worm,

a place in the Great dance?

 

or are they jitterbugging in my son’s insides

just for the fun of it?

 

This is ridiculous, isn’t it Lord—

red-faced me shaking my fist

at the Creator of all creatures great and small.

 

Forgive me. I know I’m absurd.

But I’m also scared.

 

I have a feeling you can take my rage

and still go on loving me.

 

But please, if these things belong to you,

provide some other place for them

to make their beds and cook their soup

and do their dances

 

so David can stop doing his.

 

Can’t say I’m not open.

I meditate with Mennonites,

chant with Catholics,

and belt

out Baptist blues with the best of them.

I danced at my daughter’s wedding to a Nazarene,

and once I even rolled the aisle with a Pentecostal.

But with funerals I reach my limit.

When my time comes

I will insist on my homespun,

tried and true Quaker version.

I just wouldn’t feel dead

without it.

 

When mules pass stand quietly.

Don’t whisper, shuffle or sigh.

If the breeze is right

you might catch it

on the edge of memory—

mules humming the ancient song.

 

When mules pass stand quietly.

Avert your gaze.

It’s rude to stare

and dangerous too,

like looking into the sun

reflected in a beetle’s eye.

Focus on the far wall of the canyon,

on the inevitable rainbow,

the distant storm.

Pretend you don’t see.

 

When mules pass stand quietly

and follow the mule guide’s instructions—

the hand signals, the cryptic glances.

Be silent and sin not.

Mules are passing.

The moment is holy.

Here, in the place of promises,

as their juniors speak of faithfulness and trust,

they sit

with amazed eyes and quick smiles,

yet secure in joy as a boiled egg

in its china cup.

 

Before now,

each has known blissful days,

known also the long nights

when train signals

spelled out seldom comfort.

 

Their presence in the place of vows

says to the rest of us:

Look.

We chewed our meat, all of it,

even the gristle,

and are hungry for more.

It is all worthwhile.

Reach in there, take hold of this life,

pull it to you through pain,

eat the honey with the comb.

Twenty-six miles of thronging pines,

forty-one lame late-Sunday minutes

after the retreat,

even thunder mutes its kettle drum.

 

Despair did not descend,

heart-numbing –

yet no word, all weekend,

rose off the Scripture page

to hover briefly as a sign.

At night, the longer the prayer

the farther

God stole back

into the locust-shrill meadow.

 

Could not the message

come down even now, as

fleet electric needles

blur behind inscrutable clouds?

Would life and death

never struggle openly—

so a soul might

feel it

happen?

 

Now,

absent any miracle

of atmospheric stroke, Word snaps off;

silent branch

from the invisible fire tree,

lights that which smolders

within the homeward, Homeward-bound.

Now

if some evening

faint light greets from the window

I ask “Who’s home?”

then realize

I left the bedroom lamp on.

 

Used to be

a door stretched wide

into my narrow room;

one of them, any time,

could pop out through it,

wanting sandwiches,

needing listened to.

 

Seems to me

this way: when the music played

I always hurried to catch up.

Now I dance to silence

in balance.

My bare toes hear rhythms

through the bare floor.

 

Only,

if I wake at first light

 

I listen for the baby’s cry,

listen

just for a moment

for boys in the kitchen,

shifting cereal boxes,

opening and closing cabinets.

You who work day and evening, light a slow candle:

it will burn only at one end.

You who walk through the park, forget your destination:

watch for the high white dance of mockingbirds.

You who are told you sing off pitch, join the chorus:

sooner or later each singer finds his own key.

 

Or haven’t you heard? What teachers served up on your desk

was without flavor and thus untrue.

Whatever gaudy signs paraded before the moon,

if you looked closely, changed into tired smoke.

 

You who lost love rejoice greatly:

it is all around you.

You who lost your money, rejoice even more:

yours is the green of eager fields, gold of late sun.

You who lost your home, be at peace:

those live who never had a home.

 

Listen to me! These are no times for caution

desperate does not mean serious.

 

Don’t try to have a happy year, forget it,

for happiness will never look you in the eye,

but this is your only year this year

so live it up, down, sideways, live it new!