I believed in Santa Claus until I was 28, perhaps a little later than most people. But I wanted to believe in him. It’s such a lovely story, that jolly man in a sleigh flying around the world in one night, landing on rooftops and dropping gifts down each chimney. Okay, I knew it was me wrapping the presents. But still.

God’s been harder to maintain a belief in. Some years I’ve pulled it off, sometimes even for almost two decades, if my free will theory was working well (that’s the one that says it’s not his fault, it’s ours). This year, it’s not so good. Indonesia was the last straw. As I said to my husband, the tectonic plates that caused the latest earthquake there, at the same time as the volcano exploded, were not caused by human error, they were a design flaw. A design flaw by you know who, if you happen to buy that whole he-built-the-earth theory. Now, I’ve never been a creationist, even though I’ve sometimes thought it must be nice to park your brain cells like that. But what’s the point of believing in God if he can’t do anything about human suffering? If the world he put humans in is so damn unfair? Don’t get me wrong: geographically, I got lucky. But the ones who didn’t are never far from my mind and I’m pretty angry at God about it.

I have a new theory, which shows how impossible it is for me to just stop believing. That’s because I’ve had the odd experience of God, so there’s no point in my denying he exists. But his goodness? And his absolute power? Those two I’m finding it hard to swallow.

So here’s my new theory. We’re one of his early versions. I think there must be a planet out there where he got the whole design thing right: no tectonic plates colliding, no sinuses, no volcanoes, no cancer, no psychopaths, etc. But us? Oh, I think he kept our model around because he was kind of fond of us, even though we’re so badly flawed. Every now and then he looks back over his shoulder and says, ‘Um, sorry!’ to the world. And then ducks.

This week’s poem reflects my theological struggles.

Early Version:

Waiting For You

It’s dark out this month. Grey
is the sky and the tips
where the leaves hung are bare.
Beauty is black, outlines
of trees against windows
where light hangs less and less.
How can a cradle help
built in years we’ve never
known? How can a voice
centuries thin
speak? Trumpets and angels
shepherds by flocks:
how can our crashes be heard?

Yet light a candle and we fall
knee first again, throats thirsting
for an old story we can’t live
but long for. Empty words read
from an old book to the ones scattered
on the hard wood of pews.

You can tell, by looking at the difference between the versions, that it took me a while to sort out where I was going with this poem. Was I just going to describe the month at the beginning or was I going to say something of substance? And if the latter, how to do it without making an explicit, polemic statement? It’s fine to use a blog as a soapbox, but not a poem. A poem’s responsibility is to draw the reader in, to have them pause, create, reflect. If I give readers every detail, then I leave no space for their imaginations, their hearts to move in. So I worked patiently, line by line, taking out all the anger I kept explicitly putting in and replacing it with images others could work with.

I don’t think I have this poem quite right yet. But I’m getting there.

Current Version:

Waiting For You

It’s dark out this month. Grey
is the sky and the tips
where the leaves hung are bare.
Beauty is black, only
the read-about known, the outlines
of rocks heaving against
the earth under your ocean, where
plates move, sending a wave to toss
houses, crumble walls around
heads. How can a cradle
help, built in years we’ve never
known? How can a voice
centuries thin
speak? Trumpets and angels
shepherds by flocks: how can
the little ones be heard?

Yet light a candle and we fall
knee first again, throats thirsting
for an old story we can’t live
but long for. Empty words
from an ancient book read
to the ones scattered on the hard
pews alone in the city’s crowding
noise. Always the hunger pulls
us forward, always the hunger.
We wait, hearing the voices
of the ones drowned
by quake’s wave. Waiting for you.

.

Finally, here’s another of my theories. It’s time for a Third Testament. If you’re going to believe in God, why on earth would you think he stopped talking to us around 1900 years ago? It’s time to stop venerating the Old Testament with its sordid stories of child abuse, rape, and pillage, and put together a new collection which records the recent history and words of God’s people. After all, there has been quite a bit of new poetry written since the time of the Psalms and the Song of Songs.

Enough ranting. I hope you have a Merry Christmas with your loved ones. See you in January.

I’m in the midst of a heavy deadline for my copyediting job so today’s posting is simply a free poem, one requested by a dear friend. I know it’s winter out there so use this for a mental break when the snow gets to you:

Treat Yourself Like a Tree

Go outside, closing the door firmly
behind you. Consider the earth
underneath you as you walk, there are voices
living in darkness, voices you
won’t hear, to whom you are
a hill-tumbler, tunnel-collapser, a source
of crumbs and thunder.

Watch the bushes as you pass, see
the berries hanging white
in the deep summer green, each one
bearing a little spot, each one longing
for a beak to carry it to the sky
it’s only ever seen from down. Stop and roll
the roundness between your fingers.
The skin is tight.

Keep going down the block until you find
the tree that knows your name. Its spine is yours,
it understands the years you’ve paced, watching
the little ones grow. Touch your fingers
to its bark, trace the paths squirrels follow, speaking
wisdom to the air. If you lay your ear
where ants crawl, you’ll hear
the throbbing of the veins, bird-hum. You can
rest here. Sleep even, while spiders spin
their thousand webs in your hair.

And then go home. Back
to your plastered walls, the house’s bones
hidden from your sight. Turn on
a tap. It’s the closest
you’ll get to a stream. Living water. Remember
the crabs waving as they crawl
toward the tide. They remember you.

When it’s time, climb stairs, reaching up
for what the night holds. It waits
while you brush dinner
from your mouth, knowing you’ll meet
the pillow as an equal. Don’t be afraid
of what follows. Your body knows
how to breathe without you. If you close
your eyes, what comes next
is only a dream. Go there.

As I said in a previous post, I think I’m working on a memoir in poetry form. I’m not sure yet; I have to see where this series of poems ends up going.

Here’s one of my new ones. It’s been through Don’s eyes once in a version partway between the two below. I warned him in advance that I didn’t think it was good enough. I was right.

Here’s its original version:

Longing to Let Go

Where to bury you? I look at my dresser
drawer, wood sides dovetailed to hold
a week’s worth of life, the necessaries
laundry takes for granted and eyes
barely see. I could slide memory, a flat
blank envelope under my winter socks, thick cables
to weigh it down, keep it out
of sight, better yet, buy liner, pink chrysanthemums
on thick paper that won’t show
the thinnest bulge so I can forget.

Earth would be better, a dark spade under
a city’s stars, except grass cries when its ripped
and a flower bed will know the hoe. I don’t want
you coming back, stained with more
dirt. I need a building site, the hole
dug, forms laid, waiting for the white chute
of concrete to thunder down and me
a shadow first slipping you under a veil
of fresh earth. But how could I allow
another house to stand on your lies, how could
I allow children to sleep where you
wait. I walk streets, carrying
my knowledge of you in a splitting
head and cannot lay you down.

When I went to edit this, I found I automatically switched it to the second person, which is what I’m now mostly writing in. This voice allows a certain distance, one I am more comfortable with. And it matches a certain distance in myself, an observer stance I have had since my childhood.

Don had told me the language needed more work, more deepening; criticisms I agreed with. I briefly used the wordplay exercise he’d given me to reimagine the beginning of the poem. I cut and rearranged, rephrased the ‘pink chrysanthemums’ to better contrast what it is my narrator is hiding. And I tightened everywhere, so the images I use can sing better.

I also slipped in a time reference: ‘before the fall’, that I don’t expect some readers to catch. But that’s all right. Finally, I changed the trite ‘splitting head’ to ‘a head of cracking porcelain’, which for me evokes the line ‘things fall apart’ from Yeats’ The Second Coming.

Longing to Let Go

You need a burial place. Search your bedroom as if it were
a flat green space studded with the uprights of rock. A dovetail
joint catches your eye, a drawer holding a week’s worth
of life, what a washing machine knows
by heart and eyes ignore. You could slide memory
as a fat envelope under the thick cables of winter’s
socks. Or better, buy liner, summer’s pattern on a thickness
of paper to hide pain’s bulge. You know earth
would be best, a dark spade under the city’s stars, but grass cries
when it’s cut and a flower bed remembers the hoe’s sharp
edge. You don’t want them coming back, stained with more dirt.
So you search out the dug depth of a building
site, forms laid, waiting for the white chute to thunder
down and you, a shadow slipping them under a veil
before the fall. But how could you allow
another house to stand on their lies, how could you allow
the little ones to sleep where they lie waiting. You can’t.
You walk streets carrying your knowledge in a head
of cracking porcelain and cannot lay it down.

I think this poem will need another revision or two. But it’s getting there.