Good Friday. Waning gibbous hangs in the trees, that lunar mood you loved.
You claimed to never stop believing in the resurrection. Surely the too-soon
deaths of your father and sister in that accident must have had something
to do with that. You were clear to say you didn’t have any explanations for it.
I don’t understand it either, but I still believe too that there’s a next place.
You worried some about Yesenin, that the rope didn’t break his neck but he
dangled strangling. I’ve worried about Jesus, that for all his not-my-will-but-thine
as he hung there fresh nailed he wondered what-have-I-gotten-myself-into?
Of course after a certain point there’s no going back, hand-to-the-plow and all.
This week a review board questioned an aspect of something I wrote, said it
wasn’t theologically accurate. Editor types. You hated them too, at least a few.
Whole brief episode made me so fuckin’ mad. It was textbook straining at gnats.
I self-medicated with smoked brisket tacos and an ice cold Corona. It helped.
Theology can the be opiate of some (m)asses—rules and rails, certainties instead
of this wild, expansive coming of the light, this bathing in the beauty of dawn.
The result is a mindlessness, a sad masquerade. Yeah, that’s judgmental, and I
probably shouldn’t rage about that so at my age. But the truth is I still do.
You eschewed rules. Bowden said Ed Abbey did too. Chuck Bowden, now there’s
an outlaw. I discovered him via you (many thanks). Border-dweller, brain-scouring
writer, red-wine drinker, worshipper of the mesquite tree whose lush, tangled
branches are almost impossible to kill. Based on Bowden’s Blues, and contrary to
sacred tradition, I’m convinced that mesquite, rather than cypress, was the wood
used to construct Christ’s cross. That’s much more poetic, fitting of the God, don’t
you think? Bowden wrote “I am trapped in the great age of caution, of watch out,
of fear. But I was blooded in the age of desire and lust and love.” There’s a sermon.
I’ve recommended Bowden to a select few but never heard back from them on him.
I’ve recommended you to nearly everyone I know. I sure wish we could have met.
"theology is the opiate..."
I remember I read one of your poems to my students. I think it was “Things Below.” One student asked if you were Christian. I told them Yes, but not the kind of Christian you’d want him to be. I think they fell in the category of “whispy holier-than-the-rest-of-us” and your words were a mirror, of sort, a challenge to who they believed themselves to be. I wonder if that’s what’s happening with the review board? It’s hard to look one’s self in the mirror. You invite us to do that. Thank you.