It will be something like this, I think.

This unbridled joy.

This wildness.

Every tongue, tribe, and nation.

Burn

There is something in me that yearns
no
burns

for the limelight

That longs for glory and renown

Something that gasps for air as it's suffocated and silenced

by better judgment

personality

and the weight of Eternity

Hunger

And then there are nights.

Nights when everything echoes in a sort of reverberating keen.

When the inner space is deeper, darker - a black hole that absorbs all.

When it's just too much.

And still there is nothing.

No rallying cry

No great resurgence

Nothing.

No one.

None.

didn't know I was lost

It looks cold out.

"So wake me up when it's all over..."

The stubborn Midwest temperatures have finally, slowly sunk into something resembling an October. But in here, it's easy to pretend the spicy tea is a ward against the thermometer and not a balm for a weary heart.

In here, the accents are all different.

The group in front, having politely borrowed my spare chair, cluster around a square meter table- after all there is always room for one more- their quiet voices and gestures signaling their home.

Their familiarity makes my same-sized table feel far too big and far too empty.

"All this time I was finding myself..."

The loud electronica blaring in my headphones provides a remixed soundtrack to the images playing through my mind.

Young and old treading familiar steps together, whirling around; The large room made small by their joy and exuberance. A man, quietly dancing around the outside circle, is unable to contain himself any longer and explodes into doubletime expression - his limbs coiled in energy and power.

"Hope I get the chance to travel the world..."

There's the table with seats too tall to touch the floor filled with the result of a melting pot nation. "Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" indeed. Having just come from work, it's easier to see what they share than to list their differences. One's husband shows up, and there's familiar greetings and embraces around the table.

"...not afraid to close my eyes."

He is startled. I wonder if he's doubting his English comprehension. We settle that, yes I did go celebrate and dance with his people group. And I did it because I thought it was interesting and important.
I find myself with a dinner invitation I'm not sure how seriously to take.

There are three ages of globalization, the script reads. Really I should be watching the videos, but I'm far too behind to take the time. Each age is the product of that which came before it and the current climate. But all - for better or worse - are birthed when something "shakes us forward and shakes us free," as Rich said all those years ago.

"All this time I was finding myself and I didn't know I was lost."

Untitled

Courage, Dear Heart.

You don't know the story I'm telling - breathed out in golden shimmers and the faint scent of sandalwood.
Can you hear it? The resonant whispers of something great to come?

I know it aches. 

I know it echoes from the emptiness.

I know.

And I see.

Oh, Dear Heart.

Courage.

Infestation

In retrospect, I should have known.

I should have been changing my tune the moment I saw him stroll across my living room floor, with his troglodytic face melted into an emotion approximating happiness.

 He was well-kept- nattily attired even - in a linen suit and straw derby. But it only made him appear more incongruous with his surroundings. There was no hope of him proving to be a fantasm once the odiferous stench that accompanied his promenade wafted over to the couch.

In retrospect, I really should have known.

The garden gnomes had returned.

SK

The snap of the tent seemed to echo louder in the lit-skin dark behind my eyes. It was met and matched with the opening, aching strains of Taps. 

It rose- the notes becoming the world all around - until there was only the wind, the bugle and grief.

Sorrow for a man who grew up on a farm with many siblings, became a man, served in the Korean War, came back and fell in love with a woman. Who married her, raised five strong sons and two beautiful daughters. Children who grew up straight and tall, a little rough, but a good sort. A man who did the right things, the hard things, because they were his to do. Who worked, and then worked some more. He applied his brilliance to his projects, his passions and his people. A man who unswervingly loved his wife with excellence and allowed her to shine. He provided the backbone and the muscle for those he loved to confidently explore and embrace who they were. 

And I wonder that I barely knew him. I knew him mostly as the quiet constant, the solid unchanging. He was the one who was always there, coffee cup in hand, making sure everyone and everything was ok. He waited for hours on back country roads somewhere in Kansas, with the windows rolled down in a truck who's birth predated air conditioning, and read the paper while he waited for his wife and nearly a dozen small ones to come trailing by like so many ducklings after their mother. He'd water and feed and air tires and bandage scrapes. Or more often than not, just be ready to in case he was needed. He was the one who'd smile a little and ask about school, having chosen to study fatherhood over a degree, and nod and encourage you to continue. He'd wink and pull out the penny jar so we could play our first clumsy attempts at poker, our hands just big enough to hold the cards.

Who even in his twilight years recognized that he and his resources were needed and opened his home to his aging aunt. Who shared his home, his strength and his fixed income with her for seven years, spreading his and Grandma's reserve for themselves thin.

He was the one who after a lifetime of working and supporting still had enough left to give to a whole collection of grandchildren; barely a year apart each. Who still had enough left to give to me.

He has my admiration for the man I knew by his actions, if not his words, and the man I always suspected him to be. And I grieved and grieve his passing.

The honor guard pushed the last fold into the crease and- ritual completed- turned on his heel and marched smartly to the front. He knelt by the woman who sat straight as her back would let her, pride and grief in equal measure on her face. 

"This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army as a token of appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."

"Thank you."

And I wonder that I barely knew him.

73 W0EKZ SK. 

Oh how we will miss you, Poppa.