We used to speak of the thingification
of grace, which was a bad thing,
but now I think love,
to use its proper name,
is indeed a stuff,
weightless and invisible,
we can get our hands on.
It’s from where everything always is
and is flowing,
if we let it,
through us to all the rest
to give us and it
life.
Better this theology,
wrong as it may be,
than me and my will
manning up
to obey the law repeatedly.
And yes, you are
Tent of the world I pin down with
poems till wind lifts the first flap
and the pins pop and scatter,
the wind now all in all
Some years brown stands up, elbowing aside
the other colors, those
splashy failures of the papers still falling,
even here, even in this den of words.
Brown. Not yellow, not red, not gold. No,
don’t tell me you see them in me.
This time it’s brown:
Humble suitable reasonable plain old dependable
brown.
Not chestnut, not rust, not burnt sienna.
Brown.
