This world is not his own...
he wanders through bookstore after bookstore,
and lives inside his words.
He knows that deep down inside are the answers.
We must merely learn the language.
With a fire seeping from his eyes where there ought to be tears,
he watches the young men die,
while they raise the flag that bears the name of
some other country; some other people; some other universe.
His hat is broad, the brim shades his face.
With eyes that are dark and deep and full of betrayed hope,
he sees through so many things...
he doesn't hear the wind in the sky,
he doesn't hear the whispering of the leaves in the trees.
But he hears the sound of his ancient friends,
who might just one day emerge from that age-old cemetery,
and greet him in the park. (He doesn't go there to feed the birds.)
He hears the rain outside his window...
he can't see the drops because it's night, and it's dark.
But he feels each one as it soaks into the ground,
and reminds him of how much his bones ache.
For why must it be night, when he hears the rain?
Why must there be darkness, when the stars hold so much light?
Why must we follow God, when we have already escaped from heaven?
(We didn't like it there.)
And he hears the spirits in the air of the chimney,
who whisper, "Help, help us. Please, build a fire."
And he hears the scream inside of himself, that he keeps down
by never uttering a word;
that scream that is yelling, "Get me out of here, I'm suffocating!"
And he hears his ceiling fan,
and he notes that creaking it always makes...that creaking noise.
People used to ask him to fix it, because the noise annoyed them.
But why? he wants to ask.
Why, when something is making a sound, do we have to silence it?
Why, when our wheels creak and our bones ache,
must we stop the pain; must we end the despair?
Why must he fix his gate, that shrieks so offensively
when he opens it, and clangs shut when he is inside the fence?
Why not learn to speak the
words of the ceiling fan, the words of our creaking wheels,
the words of our aching bones, the words of our shrieking gates?
Surely, they must be trying to tell us something.
And he hears the sound of his pocketknife,
how years of grit, and sand, and soil, have found their
way into that place where the blade rests...
and have made it hiss when drawn...he looks at the dulled,
rusted blade, and wonders... why must blades shine?
Shining never brought a knife respect. Shining is a sign of
having never been needed. Shining meant that it had never been used.
But to be dulled, and grit-filled, and rusted,
that is the sign of having found a use...and the fact that he
still carries it, the token of appreciation for what it has done.
Poem © 2000 Russell Moore, all rights reserved
