A Communion Prayer

Never far from my mind
oh Lord of my youth
to whom I gave my heart
and hope because it pleased
the ones I loved,
because I knew the sting
of punishment and would
not have it forever,
because I trusted everyone
I knew, believed all the things
they said were true,
because obedience
was life for me.

Not far in all the years
between those easy days
when obvious was obvious
and reason was a devil's dance
until latter days
when I began to ache
with your absence,
when I began to shake
with tears,
when I began to wonder
where you were
and if you were.

I've climbed whole mountain ranges
of thought, a reprobate goat,
a fool of God,
a clown.
I've plunged down wilderness ravines
where icy rivers snake unseen
far from contented eyes,
far from the happy flock.
I've combed shorelines,
sifted every grain,
filled the garage with seashells
I'll never gaze upon again.
I've swum to the galaxy's very edge
peered across the empty vast to where
billions more,
hundreds of billions,
glimmer like ice crystals
in moonlight.

I've kept a finger on the artery
pulsing in my neck,
pruned barren branches,
kept whole dungeons populated
with thoughts that ran astray,
truths shackled like idiots,
wonders bound like criminals.

I've plainly called,
laid bare every word,
every deed, every longing,
every weakness.
I've blamed myself
for these twenty years
these twenty-two
of silence.
I've said it was my sinfulness
that kept you away,
my lack of holiness
that made of me a stranger,
my thirst to know
to really know
to taste and see
that turned your steps from me
that hid you in the gloaming wood
where shadows veil your eyes.

If you exist
you know all this.
You've seen the stumbling steps
the shame-filled nakedness
heard ten-thousand earnest prayers
my shudders in the dark
the struggle not to weep with every hymn,
witnessed anger and despair
self-loathing
self-blame
now and then
self-pity.
You see the table set for you
three times a day,
the prime years sacrificed,
the moldy straw
spun into thread
not quite of gold.

You've seen me waiting in the dark for you,
every anxious fiber tense with readiness
to wrangle with you all night,
though you blanket cheats
with blessing.

You know a mere crumb
would suffice:
a vapor tips the scales
of nothingness.
If that five-word afterthought
He made the stars also
called a trillion trillion stars to life
then almost nothing
is a trifle
for your infinity:
a knock at the door
a little afternoon wine
an unleavened cracker
conversation in the backyard,
every sense engaged,
the same we trust
for all things else.
My loved ones
have no need of faith
to know I love them so:
each hour offers
freshest evidence.

You could teach me how to read,
to exchange thin words for fat
this pronoun for that,
this figure of speech
for Matthew's circus-ride into Jerusalem
astride both donkey and colt.
And I could show you how to write
without a surrogate.

Say hello
one day
one time,
unambiguously.
That's all I ask.
Even a frown would do.
No need to throw down Ba'al's devout
or through Reed marshes make way,
no need for comet guides by night
or funnel clouds by day.
A still voice
and small,
a nudge,
a laugh,
a call.

Speak once
and all these wretched poems
love's labor's lost at 3 a.m. will overflow
into something new,
a joy unspeakable and full of glory--
you know it, why delay?--
the only joy that's real,
a joy whose grounds are true.
False will not do.

Most Holy
Ghost, are you
most wholly
ghost?

This life has been your table,
laid out for truth,
laid out for what is real.
The elements await
as they have always done.
If you require an usher
raise your hand
that I may meet you
and clasp it in mine,
that we may commune.

Break silence with me
lest I for whom truth
is ultimate concern
give one last sigh
for what is less than ultimate.