Pieced Together

This is not a poem, 

nor does it pretend to be.

It just needed a shape 

other than

lines in neat, predictable rows,

more than letters

 following one another

meekly.

Today 

I colored a mandala

(inside the lines, of course)

but the colors that came to hand

were unexpected

and didn't match. 

The coloring book came with 3-D glasses

which I placed on my nose

only to find

that the colors still didn't match

(even if the lines did contain them).

Today I also

read a book to children

--just boys, actually, a gaggle of them--

eager to give up their lunch and recess,

their stint of freedom,

so I could read them into Middle Earth. 

I suppose they didn't give up their freedom after all.

Not really.

Not at all.

In addition, 

I chatted conversed on the phone 

(such a smug word, chatted)

with a friend

and talked about heavy things

heavy in my mind

heavy on my tongue

heavier after being said.

They were not about death,

at least not the death you think,

but rather about fading

about blurring 

about truths and half-truths
at war with one another.

I do not know how

to help her see through the fog
(or help her believe that she's standing in it).

Penultimately, 

I taught some young writers 

how to use transition words.

Penultimately was not one of them.

Finally,

I watched a ten-year old, 

long forgotten video 

full of Christmas trimming,

a dauntless paternal interrogator,

an exasperated maternal interrogatee, 

and a smattering of gawky teenagers

(myself among them).

We were not a family 

taken with home videos.

This one was unexpected,

it caught by surprise.

I am finding that there is

comfort as well as tears 

in the bottle even now

grasped in the hand of our Lord.