Burning Bushes

love
O.K. I admit it. I wrote the bulk of this poem during church this morning. Some of it has been brewing in me for a few months - really for a lifetime - and some of it emerged, unapolagetically, right between the sermon (sorry Jeff) and the postlude. Parts of the thing are autobiographical. Some are not; and I'll never tell which are which.

I know, on the surface, the piece may sound a bit sacrilegious. That's not the point at all, though. The poem is meant to be about standing at the burning bushes of our lives and becoming real, albeit bruised, human beings. And, subtopically, it's about Christ's willingness to put on skin, walk the earth, become an everyday humble hurting one of us.

Enough explaining . . . here's the piece.


Burning Bushes

I am the ancient gray-haired woman pushing
love one plastic bag of groceries in a Jewel cart
love with errant, shaky, stubborn-minded wheel
love down the cracked sidewalk

I am the grade school child
love duped by nasty neighborhood girls
love to stick a soft warm tongue on the
love swing set's metal bar in winter
love stuck in frozen trickery
love then ripping, blood dripping
love running up the hill to Mother

I am the middle-aged wife
love longing for a child as the moon
love cycles and blood smeared Kotex
love marks another month of cramps
love instead of kicks in a dark, empty
love God-forsaken womb

I am the sixteen-year-old
love smitten by a blond piano playing
love older man, starving for glances, calls,
love and affirmations, "Hey, You!"
love melting beneath the warmth and weight
love of his arm rounding slender shoulders
love believing, "This is the girl
love I'm going to marry," to his friends
love until I see him holding a red purse
love in the vacuous, vaulted, vibrating
love church lobby while he waits for her

I am the fifty-year-old writer
love butt in chair, hands on keyboard
love (Carpal Tunnel and achy back from
love birthing both babies and books)
love head stuck somewhere between
love fledgling family, years of writing,
love research, love-making, rejections and
love crashed book contracts listening for
love a literary lineage that, like the last note
love of a wordy opus, is fading into silence

love If anyone asks what my name is, tell them,
I AM


Exodus 3:1-15