Maybe It Is a Prayer

There’s braille stamped on the handle

Of the hospital table

And on no other surface,

Which seems, well, inadequate

And wholly superfluous.

The Sunday School child in you

Feels homily coming on,

The wonderful way pastors

In the long-form tradition

Of weekly Baptist sermons

Could take any anecdote

Or random observation

And make of it a lesson

Illustrating biblical

Principles, sinner’s weakness—

This line of braille, for instance,

Could remind the Youth Pastor

Of all things mysterious,

Of love’s mysteriousness,

Cryptic, private messages

In the manner of romance—

What might seem like a guideline,

Like useful information,

But is so inscrutable

And simultaneously

Woefully inadequate

But also superfluous,

Unlike God’s love, radiant,

Unconfined and abundant,

And so forth. The point isn’t

A bit of braille as a source

For the rich target of love—

The point’s to take the random,

Tie a spiritual meaning

To it, then stretch the conceit

To the snapping point, weaving

In a Bible verse or two

From, say, First Corinthians,

Chapter 13, about love,

The greatness of divine love,

Which is at once both ample

And essential. Close with prayer.

No Vacancy

There’s no emptiness since there isn’t room.
There isn’t room for any emptiness
As emptiness would require all the room,
Any emptiness. Swallow everything.

That’s the source of fear in everything
That has fear. Should emptiness crack the door,
Nothing. And emptiness will crack the door,
And there is nothing on the other side,

Not even another side. Which is why
Insofar as you are, you’re on this side,
Where there’s no room for any emptiness,
As emptiness would require all the room.

Recognition Scene

The thick-felted piano hammer,
Freshly repaired, clamped down on the wire.
The listener leaned his head . . . Nothing.

If this were a fiction, you’d expect
The phrases to have been invented,
The whole scene to have never happened.

Scholarship would suggest the scene did,
But that the phrases weren’t plagiarized.
And, if a literary lyric,

Then, however inventively phrased,
Readers could safely expect the scene
Came from the poet’s experience.

So this bit’s fiction, except it lacks
Narrative structure, so far, nothing.
Wait. She recognized the listener.