These musings, these poems…

can I even call them that?  Poems?
Do they speak in pregnant words that
once swallowed go into labor
and convulse and contract
until they have birthed a living thing
within you
like a flame
that won’t go out no matter
how the winds blow…like a wolf, sleek and proud
until it is lassoed by some slaver
and thrown in a cage and starved
and forced to feed on its own howls
instead, and grows ever skinnier,
ever more vital and
there?

But here is another day,
and my head full 
of thoughts and fears
and feints and faints
and my heart singular
and immersed in Them,
Their Presence
with me

(this is what is called “faith”, actually
Their Presence everywhere…
faith is not some blind belief

like “it’s all good” or
“everything happens for a reason”
or “things teach you things until you learn things”)

Yeah…They are here
and they are here too,
those thoughts
and those feelings
and more…
these questions
about meaning
and value
and purpose
and significance.

When
I light a
bonfire of
branches and twigs too,
and I see the eager orange
hot tongues released from within
and licking those limbs and glowing
with their pleasure so hot and inviting,
I can hear the pop and crackle
of the disappearing of solidity,
the giving up of structure
in exchange for release
until all that is left
is ashes

and each branch, each twig
is indistinguishable and one at
last in its lost uniqueness.

I hear the pop and crackle all around me
and I feel the heat and tug
of straining release and the
chill of ghostly whispers
that nothing matters,

and I wonder
why I
write,

why I
sing these
notes of Grace?
Swallow, wipe my tears
bind up my bleeding broken heart
and rise to the day
reminding myself

unless a grain of wheat 
fall into the ground
and die
it remains

alone

but if it dies
it produces much grain
it brings forth much fruit