WHEN GOD COMES TO YOU

WHEN GOD COMES TO YOU

     susan ambrosino

The sense of it is always with you.

How you feel yourself extending out

From the surface of your skin

Beyond the confines of the body

Into the realm of space and time

Into the realm of what you think is god.

But it's a miracle that you need

To feel fully present in your life

A pop ! that will show you what's under the tent

Making all your thoughts irrelevant.

A shaft of light to break through the roof

As you sit complacently knitting

In your favorite chair.

Hit you square between the eyes

Or smack in the solar plexus

Changing you

Until no one recognizes you and you look

Into the mirror and see someone else who you know is you

But isn't.

Perhaps an out of body

While spreading hummus on rye crisp toast.

Suddenly your hovering near the ceiling

Watching yourself in the kitchen.

God won't go away but it doesn't come close either.

You long for it to take over your life

In a dramatic way

Like it does for saints, the selfless, the innocent,

The suffering, the dying, those who

Take upon themselves the stigmata.

Or maybe a large white bird flying into

Your house when you open the front door

Making itself at home as if it always belonged there

With your things

In your life.

Perhaps if you become fierce

Let out a low growl, or a loud bellow

Or engage that scream therapy so popular in the 70's

You'll release the latent god so long sleeping

Beneath your soft manners.

Something you can call a small miracle

With special meaning

So you will know a force beyond your skin

Has sent you a wonderful clear omen.

But god comes when it's time

Through suffering and pain

Loneliness and sorrow

Loss and more loss.

That's how it works.

First the pain, the agony, the blood

The inability to walk

Someone sticks a catheter in you

You soil yourself

People visit and look at you

Hold your hand

Doctors come and go

Come and go

Then go

Slowly away

To whisper to your family.

That's when god comes

To pick up the piece of

Your scrap of body

Minus the needs, the desires, the money.

It's just you in your hospital robe

When the shaft of light drops down

And your lifted out of body

And the sound is so loud

A fierce bellow that only you hear.

It is the body tearing apart from you

You not wanting to let go

Until you do

And there it is

God

And god

And more god.

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID TO LOSE ?

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID TO LOSE ?

       susan ambrosino

All of it.

Don't you want to keep it all ?

Every last thing that life has to offer.

Your husband's broad grin as you

Drag him into a store to buy him clothes.

Every last bit you can take from the world.

You want to keep it all.

Your grown daughter's soft cheek

Her pensive look, her sudden smile.

You want to keep it.

Your grandbaby's fist clutching a red strawberry

Shoving it into his mouth so he can suck the juice.

You want it forever.

You son's proud stance, his loving glance toward

His wife and daughter.

No matter what you have, it's better than nothing.

Banana yellow floribunda roses.

The good, the not so good, the bad, and the awful.

Patchwork America seen from the air as you

Travel its expanse from coast to coast.

No matter what you don't have, it's still something.

That feeling that envelopes your soul while standing in

Moonlight, the stars, the vast nothingness.

The something that you know is there

Never seen.

You want life.

You want to live.

You want to continue.

What are you afraid to lose ?

Everything.

MORNING WALK

MORNING WALK

            susan ambrosino

The early morning mist seemed just a fog

   Until you wished

      You had worn more clothing

         Perhaps something plastic.

Doors suck open as you walk

   Car tires rustle the damp pavement

      Garbage truck metal crushes metal

         Your walk turns to frolic down the street.

Many people don’t think

   To stop their automatic lawn sprinklers

      Though all the morning weather reports

         Declare the inevitability of rain.

Vapor dripping from trees overhead

   Clouds your eyeglass vision

      Just enough

         To soften the suburban world you move through.

You're alone

   With the one who knows everything about you

      Your private pleasures and resentments

         Your secret loves.

The one who wants what you want

   Doesn't argue

      Follows quietly

         Listens and agrees.

You always suspected your dog's love of cheese

   Would send him off a cliff for a piece of it.

      You quicken your pace

         Hurry home.

Sometimes the spirit alone goes out for a walk

   Comes back for the cheese.

      Though you come from soil and seed

         the product is far from complete.

INSTEAD

INSTEAD

   susan ambrosino

Instead,

hear the bell ringing bird song.

See the sun shine in grass blades

from deepest dark to the sunniest open spot.

Notice butterfly bush leaves hanging in every direction,

360 degrees covered in the space of one small bush.

Watch roses carouse flamboyant,

the trumpet vine relentlessly climbing your arbor

summer after summer

dripping orange amazements at your feet.

It was all there before you looked,

will remain when you turn away

to dream your life is a great sea,

you a wave moving across it,

the boats of each day passing

as they cut through the swell of you,

and are gone,

to dream you're a hurricane,

a big, heaving wind,

balancing over your head everyone you love,

everything you own,

on an eight foot square section of stockade fence

your wind blowing, your rain lashing.

You still have a 1960’s cylindrical metal box

with bright neon daisy flowers.

You continue to keep it.

It continues to survive your need

to throw out the old

bring in the new.

There’s always something that remains.

EMPTY POT

ALMOST EMPTY POT

susan ambrosino

The drip, drip, drip of the kitchen faucet

is a calming, fluid, many sided drip

seeming to run along the musical scale, up and down

and you imagine sharps and flats in there as well

with an occasional mournful sound as in a minor key

but it's just a stainless steel pot left in the sink

with maybe a half inch of forgotten water in it

and you think how easy it would be to fall asleep

to this sound of dripping

especially on one of those nights when the mind won't quit

when you wish to be like the one single atom

you imagine never moves

at the very center

of a spinning wheel

then to rise and go about your day

feeling a happiness that makes you laugh out loud

to look out your window and notice the beauty

so incredible you want nothing more

then to die some distant day

almost empty like your pot

with the drip, drip, drip of all your wonderful memories

slowly falling away.

BALANCING ACT

BALANCING ACT

  susan ambrosino

The storm comes, pulled by something

beyond its control.

The tree grows, though it doesn't even know

it's alive.

The lion keeps its cubs close, it has no word

for love.

Life is a tearing apart, then a binding together,

broken dishes and holding hands,

out on a limb and hiding behind a bush.

Floral gifts fool you. Wrong turns lead you.

A blank face is no face at all.

It's a balancing act,

take your pick, one toe or two feet.

You know happiness,

the indefinable condition you think you want

can be achieved,

concentrate, concentrate, concentrate

by letting go,

relax the shoulders, the mind, find the soul.

From the ladder, to the mountain, to the sky so purple and pink,

you finally stop to blink.

Creativity needs flaws or you're just a technician.

A touch of madness is a gift.

Most wouldn't know what to do with it. You must have

freedom first,

no one to check up on you.

Chickweed in the garden is a problem the whole town

is having, not just you.

Animals say nothing when they suffer, they go off

on their own, hide behind a rock, lick themselves.

You've had it good, makes you wonder, what

you're gonna get when it all comes home.

You celebrate your birthday, but what

about your death day ?

The wind just blows and blows, the rain

comes down and down.

You always have a splendid supply of candles.

If you become mellow enough will you rot ?

The expressionless face as seen from the outside,

is only a face,

evoking what ?

A STEP FORWARD

A STEP FORWARD

  susan ambrosino

You find yourself looking through the church doors

of your kitchen window many times each day, watching

for saints in the altar of your garden,

and each time you look

you enter from your own state of mind.

You always knew the footprints in the sand

were really your own,

perhaps they belonged to the 'future you' walking backwards.

What is time anyway ?

perhaps just rain sliding down the window glass.

You've turned your back on the sadness

of your mother's unmade bed in the late afternoon,

the trash television and sourdough pretzels with lots of salt,

knowing 'muffintop' was just colloquial denial for

not doing anything about it.

Then your desire of 15 years ago is fulfilled by your

daughter asking you to come to church with her,

except it's too late, you don't want that anymore,

you'd rather she walked through the trees with you,

yet,

it feels so nice to think she's entering that place where you were

when you went to church,

and that's good,

so you go

and you smile,

you sing Sanctus! Agnus Dei ! Gloria !

the whole falling down on your knees thing.

Funny thing, time !

you take a step backwards to pull your darling

forward

and you take a step forward

yourself.