Lekshe's Mistake

BB

God’s best designs are uncomplicated

but perfect in the simple fact of working well.

An open heart, generous,

kind. Alive to the magnificent detail of life

you

are among the best examples of why

we bow down to His good sense.

Hands in your pockets, flannel shirt, lanky,

wandering down the hall, pensive,

thinking books

and some song whose name I can’t remember,

(can’t ever remember)

you never forget anything important.

It’s written in your bones how to be good–

that’s what I think.

You have not forgotten what it means to

be a human being

and it’s true that I love you for this,

like I love all finely tuned existence–

babies and the autumn sky and the silvery face

of a full moon in winter.

In the same way that the ocean is mysterious,

in the same way that wind is moving

in the same way that every plant

growing exactly where it needs to grow,

you are a deep delight and deliciously perfect

just by being yourself.

God did us a favor when, on one of his better days

He made you. Feeling good, I suppose,

about His miracles and His humor and His

indisputable power, He,

however gods do it,

waved His hand or spoke some incantation

and your life was set in motion,

a blessing to your parents,

your wife and children and

all the lucky wanderers who call ourselves

your friends.

Missippi River

Even if I waded out to the middle, I could not belong to this river. Even if I nestled down against the muddy bottom sands, it would not own me. I am the wrong colour. I come from the wrong direction. My people belong to the sky and the thicket-clothed, steep sides of viridescent, green mountains, with trickling streams and light-footed deer.

Even if I sang, I could not make the music of this place. I do not have enough sadness for enough lifetimes to find the voice of this time-smoothed landscape. My people moved west and gasped for air until they felt the salty wind of the sea press itself against the Grey basalt slopes of the Cascades, and breathed at last. They were not sad, they were stubborn.

Even if I slow down to the pace of the sun moving across the winter pressed sky, I will not be slow enough, spacious enough, wide open enough to belong to this place. I am filled with the kind of busyness that comes from living in a place where rain ruins everything that does not dart, sparrow-like, between the rivulets of water.

I do not belong. I skim along the surface and make bad translations of a language who nuances I cannot hear. I meet people and cannot see them. I eat food and cannot taste it. I know this. I do not belong.