Donuts and Grace

     In 1985 I had just finished my first year of college in Pennsylvania and needed a job for the summer.  For some reason, jobs weren't all that plentiful, but when I'd been looking the summer before, the manager at Dunkin' Donuts had promised me one when I came back the following year.  My father really didn't want me to take the job.  Dunkin' Donuts in Woodbury, New Jersey was literally on "the other side of the tracks."  Actually, it was right on the other side, but it was on the edge of what we called the "black section" of town and not-so-pretty section.  We didn't go to Dunkin' Donuts to sit and drink coffee, we only went there to pick up a dozen to go because it really wasn't the classiest of establishments.  The manager himself sat on one of the stools in an old white T-shirt with cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve;  not the picture of a respectable businessman.  Usually he was surrounded by a dodgy crowd of people from all walks of life, not usually from our own.  My father confessed that he sometimes was worried about getting shot in the back if he stood with his back to the glass walls.  I don't know that he had made any enemies quite that intense, but needless to say, the place made him nervous.

         But this didn't keep us from stopping in and picking up a dozen deep-fried, sugary, empty-calorie but oh-so-delicious delicacies to eat with our coffee... at home. 

         My father groaned audibly when I told him where I was working.  He looked more than a little bit alarmed, too, when I told him I was working the 6 p.m to midnight shift. 

           It was not a high-paying job, mind you, but it was better than nothing at all.  I think I made $2.40 an hour, justified by the fact that we got "tips"-- although the regulars left just dimes and nickels for our tips.  I wasn't going to pay off my college tuition with that paycheck.  And yet the experience I gained was priceless.

          The crowd that was there in the evening was mostly the same, regular crowd.  Think "Cheers" with characters in white T-shirts, dirty jeans, and bloodshot eyes.  There was Jim, a truck driver who drove locally, apparently, because he was always there at the end of the day.  He was always flirting with me and asking me to run off to Atlantic City with him for the weekend.  There was Ralph, an old, dirty-necked guy who wheezed horribly when he laughed, but kept lighting another cigarette off the previous one in between sips of coffee.  He was always sitting by the payphone waiting for his "girlfriend" to call.  He was always talking about his "old bag" of a wife who "had no idea" about his little "dollface" on the side.  There was Pat, a very large man who took up two stools and wore the same shirt everyday.  His hair was long and greasy and he talked with a lisp, mostly because of his front crooked teeth, and didn't appear to have an education above the first grade, but when it came to me, he confessed he was "in love."  And then there was "Digger"-- no his real name, of course.  Digger was a short, red-eyed black man who wore a dirty Ford cap and called me "Sweetie" and "Honey" and thought we were a lot alike because we were both "preacher's kids."  No one knew Digger's real name, but once he found out that my "Daddy" was a preacher he said he was gonna tell me his real name. 

         "Ain't nobody here know my real name,"  he said, "but I'm-a gonna tell you now," and the others leaned in real close as Digger motioned me forward.  "My name is Hezekiah Wiggins after King Hezekiah in the Bible, because my mama was a good Christian woman!" 

         The others slapped the counter and laughed out loud.  "Hezekiah Wiggins! I'll be damned!  That's a pretty big name for such a scrawny little guy like you!"  exclaimed Ralph. 

          Digger looked at him very seriously.  "My mama was a good Christian woman, she raised me to love Jesus," he said, nodding his head very seriously. 

           When I first went to work there, my father had gotten me so worked up with fear that I wouldn't go anywhere near the customers at first.  I'd take their orders, give them what they wanted, take their money, and then plant myself back at the cash register.  Finally, my manager must have gotten complaints.

            "You gotta talk to the customers, darlin',"  he admonished me.  I sighed.  Ok. 

           I was a pretty sheltered preacher's kid.  My world was pretty small and clean.  Even the church parsonage was located in the rich part of the neighborhood, among the doctors' and lawyers' houses, far on the other side of town.  My father started driving me and picking me up, because he feared for my safety.  Two of the walls of the store were glass, so at the counter, I was on display for the whole world to see.  People driving by could see who was, in fact, hanging out at the local donut shop that was open 24 hours.  After  6:00 p.m. it was pretty much the same crowd.  The rest of the world did as the Michaels did-- they got their donuts to go. 

           I nervously drew further away from the cash register and tried to make conversation with the clientele, but it was nerve-wracking.  The closer it got to midnight, the weirder the crowd.  But those same regulars that I named hung out my whole shift, nursing their one cup and free refills hour after hour.  There was one man who wanted to show me his key-chain of a little monkey, and kept coaxing me closer so I could see it better.  I didn't want to get too close because the guy was a little scary, but as soon as I got close enough,  he pressed the monkey's belly and out popped a penis that was much larger than its owner.  I backed off quickly and stayed away from that guy.

        "Oh, c'mon honey, get back over here, I wanna show you my monkey!" he said in a fake innocent voice.  I pretended to sort the donuts.  Donuts were never so organized at that establishment. 

         The baker on my shift was a short, young woman who looked like she'd done time and fought her way through.  She was small, but you didn't mess with her.  She'd seen things, and I could only imagine what she'd done.  She liked messing with me, too.  One night, close to midnight, a couple of older women came in, one very large, and the other had spent way too much time in the sun.  Her skin was leathery and dirty.  The bigger one had a mass of black curls covering her head and flowing down her back and she talked in a gruff voice.  They both ordered coffees and sat at the end of the counter away from everyone.  Every once in awhile, another customer would sidle up to one of them, strike up a conversation, and the two of them would leave together and disappear into a van parked at the edge of the parking lot.  After awhile, the woman would come back alone, get a refill of her coffee and just sit. 
          "You know what's going on, don't you?"  Lynn the baker asked me one night. 
          "What do you mean?" I asked innocently.
          "You know what those men are doing with those women out there in the van, don't you?"  she said, smiling.
          "You mean...?"
          "Yep, honey, they got quite the business going.  The boss knows about it, but he pretends he doesn't, because they bring in more customers,"  she said, winking, and walking back into the back room.

            One night at midnight, my father pulled into the parking lot and flashed his lights to pick me up.  All of my new friends turned around on their stools and faced him through the glass.  I started to untie my little pink donut-tree apron and gather my stuff to go.
            "Is that your Daddy?"  Digger asked excitedly.
            I smiled.  "Yes," I said, and before I knew it,  Digger had jumped off of his stool and was out of the store, knocking on my father's car window.  I stopped to watch as my father hesitantly and nervously rolled down his window and Hezekiah introduced himself as the local gravedigger in town.  He remembered seeing my father presiding over burials in the local graveyard and he just wanted to tell my father what a pleasure it was to meet him. 
            My father looked back at me through the glass, with a kind of deer-in-the-headlights look, imploring me to come out and save him.  
            He decided I could drive myself from that night on. 

            One night, I worked with Pat, a hard-living, trash-talking, bullying kind of woman who got very impatient with me and my pace.  She was not an attractive woman, but she flirted shamelessly with the men at the counter and often lifted her skirt and said some pretty crude things, egging them on.  She just plain did not like me, and often berated me as a "goody-two-shoes, fancy-pants preacher's girl."  As we went through a rush at the counter, she kept yelling at me, pressuring me and getting me all worked up and stressed, until at one point, I rushed to put on more coffee and somehow jammed the filter.  When I hurried back to see why the coffee wasn't dripping through, I thoughtlessly pulled out the filter that was full of boiling hot coffee that immediately rushed out over my hands.  I let out a piercing scream and within minutes,  Jim had jumped and swung his legs over the counter, grabbed my hands and immediately shoved them into the cooler full of ice.  The pain was excruciating.  He yelled at another of the customers to get on the phone and call the boss, while he kept my hands underneath the ice cubes.  I stood there and sobbed, shaken and in pain, while he talked gently to me, soothing me and calling the other woman all kinds of nasty names. 

          The boss arrived, asking "what the hell happened here??" and so the other woman got into a lot of trouble because all of the regular customers related how she'd been driving me hard all night till I was just a bundle of nerves.  She never messed with me again.  In fact, she was never scheduled to work the same shift as me again.  The boss took me to the emergency room, and by the time we got there, my right hand was covered in ugly large blisters.  They gave me some painkillers and wrapped it up in gauze after applying some salve on it.  They said I'd have the blisters for awhile, and the first night would be painful.  All night it felt like my hand was on fire and I didn't sleep much. 

           After that night, the guys were particularly tender toward me.  When I got off at midnight, they all turned around on their stools to watch me walk to my car, to make sure nothing happened to me.  Another night,  a small Hispanic man came running into the store late at night and accosted a larger, African-American man.  He started screaming at him in Spanish, shoving him off his chair, beating on him until his face was bloody, until the other guy turned on him and started beating back.  Lynn the baker ran out of the back room and jumped into between them, screaming and cussing at both of them as they tried to get around her at each other again.

            "Call the police!"  she yelled at me.  I ran back and did just that.  The police came quickly and broke up the fight, cuffing the little Hispanic guy after they discovered a very sharp knife and an impressive looking ice pick in his back pocket.  After they left,  the waitress for the next shift came in stepping over a puddle of blood and asked me, 

            "You gonna clean that up?"  I was horrified.  Really?  I told her what happened and she shook her head and laughed.  "Oh honey, that ain't nothin'.  That's regular business around here,"  she said.  I went home a bit shaken, and of course my father wanted me to quit right away.  But I only had a couple of weeks left, and I knew the guys at the store would continue to look out for me.  I was too old for him to actually forbid me, and so feeling a little rebellious, I went back.  And it was true, the guys did look out for me, to make sure nobody "messed" with me. 

            A couple of weeks later, I worked the Saturday afternoon shift on my last day.  The guys from the evening shift all showed up on Saturday afternoon to say goodbye.  I noticed Pat had on a new-to-him clean shirt.
           "I got this shirt just for you,"  he said proudly. 
            Hezekiah was wearing a shabby old tie.  Even the prostitutes showed up.  At the end of my shift that day, as I was untying my apron,  Hezekiah got off of his stool and stood up (he was the same height).  He held up his hand, cleared his throat and said,
            "I want everybody's attention now.  Miss Sue," he said, "we are awfully glad that you come to work here at our shop, and we are going to miss you a whole lot.  Now I want you to go back to school and study real hard, and make your daddy proud.  You keep on bein' a good Christian girl and don't let anybody make you do anythin' different, ya hear?"  He swallowed, and I noticed, his bloodshot eyes were suddenly full of tears.

            "I wanted to give you a little somethin', it ain't much, but I took a collection, and we all wanted to give you something to show you how much we like you,"  he said, and handed me a dirty envelope, smudged with fingerprints, but with my name sloppily written on the outside in what looked like a child's handwriting.  Inside was a card signed by all the regulars, and inside the card was a crisp new $10 bill.  I laughed self-consciously, but I was deeply touched.  Then, one by one, they all lined up and came by and shook my hand over the counter and wished me well.  I would've hugged Digger/Hezekiah, but the counter was between us.  He sniffled, tears running down out of his blood-red eyes. 
           "You listen to your Daddy, ok?  You be good,"  he said, wiping his nose on his sleeve and shuffling out the door.

            I never saw any of them again.  I got busy with my life and school, and a couple of years later when I went back to Woodbury, I noticed they'd closed it down, and by now, I have no doubt, there's something else in its place.  I always liked Dunkin' Donuts coffee and donuts, but I admit I have a special place in my heart for it precisely because of the guys at the Woodbury Dunkin' Donuts who opened my eyes just a little that summer of '85 and surprised me with their grace and kindness.  The Dunkin' Donuts I go to now are always much cleaner and nicer, much more well-kept, and no one has to wear those god-awful brown and pink uniforms with donut trees all over them.  But whenever I get to taste those sugary treats now, I always think of Digger and his eyes full of tears. 

Jubilee

 

"When we look back and say, 'those were halcyon days,

we're talking 'bout Jubilee..."

--mary-chapin carpenter

        As my birthday approaches tomorrow, June 22, people who know have asked me what age I will be turning.  When I say "49," they say, "Oh, so next year is the big 5-0, eh?" and chuckle.  Which confirmed my idea that 49 is kind of a boring number.  It's an almost-number.  I'm almost-50.  I "will be" 50.  It's the end of my 40s and the anticipation of a new decade.  No big deal.  You don't tend to get surprise parties or an open house for 49, though I'm not big on parties.

       And yet my 49th birthday seems like a beginning of good things.  For the last 6 months, strangely enough, I've felt a sense of anticipation, a mysterious stirring.  It's one of those sensations that is hard to put into words, but I've been in the midst of a lot of learning.  My 49th year was a very mixed bag.  The first half of it was very dark and difficult.  I learned things, however, that one can only learn by getting through and looking back.  At the time, I was sure I was learning nothing, that God had somehow lost my address, and the lights went out and I didn't know which direction I faced.  And then things changed.  Quietly, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first.  Like a little spark in the midst of a deep darkness that goes unnoticed until it catches flame and slowly grows.  Or a hint of sunrise at the very edge of the horizon, making the landscape glow in a deep orange, slowly rising, spreading, warming the earth in slow birth.  Little things happened.  A change here.  An email.  A new friend on Facebook.  A conversation started, seemingly inocuous, but then deepening rapidly;  a wave snatching me by the ankles, pulling me down and into the depths of the waters to swim in the cold, crisp, salty sea.  Everything begins to look differently. 

         I learned a lot this past year.  I learned that everything  is not completely as it seems.  That you can't always trust your first perception, and that you need to pay attention to what you're thinking.  I need to pay attention to my attitude;  do I think all is lost, or that I've got that person all figured out?  Do I feel like God truly doesn't care or that I don't deserve goodness in my life?  Then all that I see and experience will be colored by those thoughts and my premonitions will come true.  I've learned that sometimes you have to hunker down and lean into the wind.  Keep walking.  "Don't ever, ever, ever, ever ever... ever give up," as Winston Churchill is believed to have said.  Keep moving forward, trusting in the next step, trusting that there is relief and warmth and peace, even love ahead. 

          I've learned how important it truly is to take one day at a time.  Today, just for today, I can get through most anything.  I don't have to look ahead at the whole week, the whole month, the whole year and despair.  Take this day, this moment, and breathe.  Open your eyes and look for the beauty.  There is always beauty. 

           The other day I was visiting a patient in the nursing home who is nearly incommunicable.  She's around 100 years old, so who can blame her for being worn out?  Her pastor came at the same time that I was there, and he talked with her, held her hand, as if she was in the conversation.  He prepared communion for her, and invited me to partake.  In the awkwardness of a tiny nursing home room, he knelt on the hard floor and lined up the plastic "shot glasses" of grape juice on the floor.  He soaked a wafer in the grape juice and held it to her lips.  Without opening her eyes, she instinctfully-- like a newborn baby at her mother's breast-- started sucking on the wafer.  He dipped it again and held it to her lips.  It was a tender, intimate moment, and I might have been holding my breath, as he so patiently kept dipping the wafer in the tiny cup and letting her suck.  Finally, the wafer was soft enough that he gently pushed it between her lips and she moved her mouth and tongue around to further dissolve it and receive it into her body. 
      
        "'This is my body,' Jesus said,"  the pastor whispered.  It was a moment that you wonder if you ought to look away from because of the vulnerability and raw tenderness of it all.  Then he gently turned to each of us, still on his 60-some-year-old knees on the hard floor, and offered us the wafer, 'the body of Christ,' and the juice in a tiny cup, 'the blood of Christ...' Amen.  I was in awe of his ability to reach her, love her, and touch her with the sacrament as if she were fully functional, and in that moment she was-- able to receive the gift, able to partake of Christian community.  That is something they don't teach in seminary; rather, it comes from the soul.  It was the first time I had had communion in a very long time, and how fitting that it ought to be in such a humble, intimate setting.

         You've come a long way, baby, I imagined God saying with a wink.  I think God talks like that sometimes.  I think he gets tired of people accusing him of being so stuffy and formal.  After all, we are his children-- needing of sustenance, food, comfort, peace, inspiration, encouragement, and that most basic need-- basic, freely-given, gracious Love. 

       I've learned this year that life is not "all or nothing."  That's a biggie for me.  My husband Larry lovingly believes that Billy Joel wrote "Darlin', I don't know why I go to extremes!" for me personally.  I have been the All or Nothing Queen.  But no one is all good or all bad.  Some friends are closer than others, and no one person can fulfill all your needs.  Gathering Hurts is not a helpful hobby.  There is a lot of pain in this life, and I have finally given up on trying to explain why.  I do not believe that God gives us pain-- why would a loving parent DO that?  Pain happens.  It's the world we live in.  I'm ok, now, with not having all the answers, because no answers I come up with can fix everything anyway.  When a two-legged tornado wipes out half a town in my favorite state, there are no words that can explain that can bring back those who died or make it all less horrifyingly sad.  But in the midst of that destruction, God comes.  It doesn't matter why these things happen, the fact is, they do.  And in the rubble, loving people gather; send food, help the victims sort through the damage, collect clothes and food and water, give shelter, and help carry those people back to Life again.  And God is in the midst of all of that.  There is life after death, and new beginnings after devastation, and believing that will help us breathe.  There's no use, I've learned, in thinking 'what would I do?' and then worrying my pretty little head about it.  It may never happen to me.  Other things do happen, and when they do, you just keep getting up in the morning, ask for help from the heavens and from your neighbors, and trust that one day you'll breathe normally again.  I've had things happen in my life that I was sure I could never live through, and yet here I am.  Still walking, talking, breathing and loving.  The last one is the biggest miracle.

          I've also learned that there is no one way to live this life.  That one was a biggie!  You have a sense of how things ought to go.  You give birth, you raise your child, they do child-y things, they grow up, graduate, go to college, are successful in life, get married and give you adorable grandchildren.  But it doesn't always go so neatly, and doesn't always cover all those bases.  They zig and zag through life, like I did.  There's no one straight path.  Sometimes to find our way, we have to take a lot of turns, U-turns, "re-calculating!" as Mrs. Garmin tells me all the time, re-group, look at a different map.  I see that children aren't always born healthy or they bring something that wasn't anticipated in the neat plan.  Then I see the unique gifts those detours, or alternate routes bring to lives, including my own. 

         This moment is important.  Right now.  I'm learning to see the simple goodness of each moment.  A look across the room during a boring meeting.  A smile.  A particularly fat squirrel outside that my cats are eyeing with drool coming out of their tiny little mouths.  A bird with colors and patterns on it that I'd never seen before flying across my vision.  Even a person I thought I had all figured out, doing something or saying something that I never dreamed they could or would and I suddenly feel grace toward someone I didn't particularly like.  Life is never what it seems in any given moment, but it's like a toddler always resisting your grasp, your summation, and therefore your staleness-- inviting you to come and play.

             And so, I begin my Jubilee year with eyes wide open, and most importantly, my heart wide open.  I want to learn all that I can learn, feel everything I'm supposed to feel even if it hurts, and write, write, write, because that's one thing I've always known about myself for sure.  The only thing, it turns out.   I am a writer.  I will write.  And I will let life happen in me, through me, and to me.  And in the midst of it all, I will savor the sweetness of it, like grape juice on a styrofoam wafer, sucking on it till I get all the sweetness out of it that I can, and then let that goodness grow in me. 

            Peace, my friends.  Have wings!

the day the wind changed

days with you

were like
magic

from sad, bookworm days

shy, stumbling
writing dark poetry

your house was a kingdom

of sorts
like jumping into Bert’s chalk pictures

going on a jolly holiday

riding merry-go-round horses
and winning a race

crossing your threshold

I was scooped up
into dancing, laughing

bright colors

twirling, fun games
where everybody won

you even tucked me in

at night
with a face-full of kisses

your bright eyes

hands on my face
in an ordination of beauty

love

that’s what it was
unlimited, musical, a feast

a grab of the hand

into spontaneous dance
a linking of arms dancing down the midway

you never hid

that there were demons lurking
in your heart too

but you chose me

as your partner
for the dance of grace

we danced on rooftops

got dirt on our faces
and giggled

but of course

though your heart was torn
and it pained you to know

we couldn't have tea 

on the ceiling

forever

you had to leave

leaving me on a damp dark street
with a torn kite

on the day

the wind changed.

 

 

change

be the Change, Gandhi said
and yet we hate it
we resist it 
we scream and shake our fists at it

we say we want it
but then it hurts
it's different, it's not
what we've always known

we nourish our fears
we kindle our anger
we kick and scream
we believe the lies

of those who say
we don't need

to change

when i was a child
i spoke like a child
i reasoned like a child
but

when I became an adult
i put away childish things

i got taller
my limbs longer
my hips rounder
my feet bigger

and i had to act like an adult

i am different today
than i was yesterday
and tomorrow
yet again

yesterday it was warm
today the leaves are gone
and it is bitter cold
yet soon

everything will be green
again

why do i resist
what is natural?

why am i afraid
of the marvel of
recreation? 

would i keep my child
in the womb?
would i keep that stick in the ground
from becoming majestic and strong?

would i insist
a caterpillar
remain earthbound?

be the change
comes the whisper
from the past
embrace the change

says the music of the wind

release your grip
breathe through your fears
ride the life of creation
metamorphasis

becoming
releasing
emerging
empowering

the breath of life
keeps breathing
the winds of creation
make new

do not be afraid
it is as it should be
as it was meant
to be

all along.

poem

People are walking around
texting, googling, facebooking
eyes to the screen
in an unreal world

while that tree over there
is on fire
brilliant orange, red, yellow
lighting up the sky

wild turkeys are waddling around
the rest stop
picking at each other
wondering where to hide in November

deer wandering the shaven cornfields
vulnerable, delicate
unaware, perhaps, that the calendar
creeps frighteningly toward hunting season

an old man holds the shriveled hand
of an old woman
sitting by the lake
bundled up against November chill

savoring each day
knowing that winter comes
bones ache, hearts beat irregularly
and every moment now is a gift

a squirrel stops and stares at me
wondering whether to run
hoping I will not approach
goes this way and that

and I laugh

as a child
I stood at my window
looking at the light across the way
my first longing, my first heartache

loving, dreaming
that he would wait for me
to grow up
and our names would share a line

the only way to survive
was to write my childish passion
my truest feelings
that seemed silly out loud

or to live in a world
so achingly beautiful
so tender and astonishing
not understanding why so many others

didn't notice

the only way I survived
was to write
to fashion words around
my soul

lest it be consumed

and then that first time
that first loss
that shattered the very ground
on which I stood

when my heart was mere
fragments laying broken
in so many irreconcilable pieces
around me

cancer and death
the first disillusioning blow
to my dreams
and hopes

oh god

i wouldn't be here
if i couldn't put one word
in front of the other
pouring out my heart

like blood on paper

my prayers
my keening
my fists shaken at
a silent sky

all on paper

an offering

given
so that i may be redeemed. 

Love Poem To October

wind blows
pushing leaves
off the branches
orange trembling to hold on

half-naked trunks
shivering in the coming winter
or are they afraid
of a tempestuous lashing?

it's your last day
we say farewell
to the oranges and reds
yellows and browns

litttering the canvas
of our days
wood smoke lacing the air
as a warning of cold descending

i will miss you
the carefree days
of In-Between Time
remembering and anticipating

crisp air
that doesn't bite
combines in the fields
bringing the harvest home

the darkness at dawn
is coming with dread
empty creation
huddled in for snow

this year must be
different
i will not give in
to winter

"think of the happiest
memory, Harry"
cover yourself
with joy and warmth

be fierce with
resolve
not to let the darkness
consume

before spring. 

Pegasus

(inspired by the Sunday Scribblings' weekly prompt: Bio)

born on the tip
of New Jersey

only girl in a
house of boys --

(an elderly woman from Brooklyn
asked me once "was that a blessing
or a coise?")--

how did she know?

watered by words
from the Jordan Valley
and Nazareth

my father a flying
giant
with black academic
wings

delievering a Word
a disturbing mixture
of Freud and Jesus

in a British accent
laced with a tinge
of Empire
and Entitlement

my mother a
misplaced Southerner
always homesick
for the Simple
and the Real

blossoming on visits
Home
amidst southern-fried
chicken and okra
watermelon eaten
in a liturgical circle

outside among the lightning bugs
and cicadas 

cholesterol-soaked casseroles
and syrupy-sweet pecan pie
on Homecoming Sunday
on the edge of the cemetary

where I learned
who I was
a member of a vast
family forest

connected
loved because I occupied
a branch

words were my salvation
up North
amid the noise and confusion
rebellious brothers
shedding their Church Skins
with great drama

I wrote
I bathed my soul
in the nicotine-charred voice
of Neil Diamond

lost between Places
seeking my own "I Am"
in the lonely years
of high school

disillusioning years
among Fundamentalists
finding
losing
finding

in the Never Dull
Circle of Life
doing battle
binding wounds
wearing the Black Robe
like Dad's

delivering a Word
shaken
grounded
wounded

by that Word

of Life and Death

finally
coming home
to a place
I'd never been before

right in the Middle

finding Love
to settle me
and open me

my heart torn open
and healed
by a child

shedding the Robe
walking out
of the musty sanctuary
taking some of
the Old
and looking for

the New.