AT THE NATURALIZATION CEREMONY

 

The families begin arriving early, the men in freshly

pressed suits, pocket squares, the women in bold patterned

dresses and colors that defy the gray drizzling skies,

their faces without exception beaming with light,

young children at their sides looking up,

knowing this day to be something extraordinary.

"There are people who live here who hate this country,"

the young woman from Colombia explains

to a local newscaster, shaking her head, "but to us,

this is still The Promised Land. It's everything."

I can't help but think of my own ancestors, who, too,

arrived with nothing, learned to speak this strange, unruly

language, drive cars, fight this nation's many wars.

It's hard to imagine my steely-eyed great-grandfather,

never caught smiling in a photo, wearing a face of

such unabashed joy. But what do I know of another's heart?

I know only this moment, this day, this swell of pride

as these new citizens make their way up Kellogg Boulevard,

their small flags waving in the chilly damp air.

It is as though a hundred or more makeshift boats were

setting out, each on a separate but similar course.

Even when they have all but vanished from view,

their voices can still be heard singing, laughing,

proclaiming -- so many different dialects, different

songs, so many different ways to say Home.

MOTHER AND CHILD

 

Just across the street, where yet another

sleek, modern apartment complex has risen,

seemingly overnight, I can spy the figure

of a woman in one window, many stories up,

gently swaying, her baby blanketed and held closely,

moving perhaps to a music which only they

can hear, or to the silence they share between

them, framed within this moment, far above

the winter groans of traffic below, a maddening

wind rushing the clouds along, rattling the

tiny metal doors of street lamps and flagpoles,

bending the trees one way, then another.

I look away, only for a moment, and of course

they are gone, the window glass shimmering with

winter blues, an amber-tinted lightbulb

reflected like a distant star, slowly receding

from view on such a cold and bitter morning,

just now beginning to stir, just now

beginning to wake into the story of itself.

DENOMINATION BLUES

 

When my mother found Jesus again,

after narrowly surviving death by her own hand,

she began opening doors to seemingly every

church which may have housed him there.

She refused to recognize the Catholic church,

which placed a pope between oneself and the Lord,

praying to people and statues, while Lutherans

were simply too formal and reserved.

The Primitive Baptists believed that to enter

into the Kingdom you must also wash the feet

of others, as the Lord himself had done,

become a servant to the servant among us.

But there was no music there, and didn't

the psalms themselves command us to make

a joyful noise unto the Lord, loud enough

to be heard out there among the stars?

The Seventh Day Adventists seemed kind and

welcoming enough, but my brother and I protested

missing our Saturday morning cartoons.

What my mother truly loved, and where she felt

at home, was listening in earnest to those

fire and brimstone sermons, what she called

the old time religion, which threatened continually

the burning, lashing, and gnashing of teeth.

She would nod in agreement, strangely

comforted by the litany of righteous violence,

of Jesus returning next time with a sword.

She was happy to not be amongst those left,

waking on Judgement Day to find a world strange

and unwelcoming, hovering between life and

death, with no way then of repentance

or altering the course of all that was to come.