After all this hurt and all this pain
(when would that be? After?
When does that happen?)
I choose silences.
I choose to let myself be haunted by words
rather than speak those rivers
that would erode fabricated realities.
Tonight the wind smells like memories…
oh nothing I can put my finger on,
mind you…just memories
blowing on winds fragrant
with nostalgia and neglect.
I am mindful in these memories
of the language of lilies
and I wonder if I have missed
some great and vital means and end
in their present beauty,
some antidote for anxiety,
some prescription for preoccupation,
some long term cure contained
in short-lived beauty born?
I am mindful of Mary
there in Bethany pouring out
perfume fragrant and pervading
with extravagance
permeating every pore present
and singing the liturgies of lilies
on the winds!
Sweetly, singly soaring over that rukus of disgust and anger
that puffed up, distracted religious men
righteously piled on in their
Canticle to Cacophony!
They hated her…but they hated Him more
for His blindness to her there,
clinging in tears and wild hair
sinner
whore
profligate waster
defiler and defiled!
They hated His stinky feet
smelling of humility and adoration,
perfumed in gratitude and broken beauty
and I think they would hate me, too
sitting silent and choosing
the haunting wind over the haughty story.
I imagine the language of lilies
that day divinely appointed
and here this night now,
I look, listen midst ashes all around me
to catch a glimpse of life
in risk and recognition,
of rising up, above
the toiling, turning,
spinning and weaving…
life lived
simple and poured out
in haunting perfumed
adoration and beauty…
life as a lily,
and how it grows fleeting
and haunted by memories in the wind
and eternity in my heart.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
This feels like 2 different poems to me, Sis. The break (for me) comes after:
“in short-lived beauty born?”
These are the words that were salient for me:
“…in risk and recognition,”
Always both.
Always.
I was attempting to have a connection between the lilies, and a person of devotion… Mary as a lily considered. Contrasted to unconsidering, lily ignoring people who prefer fabricated realities.
I wondered if that connection would be too hidden. Thanks for reading it.
Also I particularly liked the idea of His feet smelling so perfumed and yet stinking to the lily ignorers
My own favorite part, and the essential heart of this poem:
“They hated His stinky feet
smelling of humility and adoration,
perfumed in gratitude and broken beauty
and I think they would hate me, too
sitting silent and choosing
the haunting wind over the haughty story.”
haunting wind vs haughty story…i just really like that