​
Anchorhold 
for, and inspired by, José Angel Araguz

I am confined
with time on my hands — 
my anchorhold
is the kitchen.
This door is the peek
through which I
receive the host, not
from a priest
but from the grocery,
husband bringing in
a twenty-two kilo
sack of flour,
double-ott, a bushel
basket of tomatoes,
a piece of yellow
notebook paper
crumpled on
the table, remains
of a wishlist
and one short receipt
in purple ink.
Apronless, I unpack
ingredients
for the sacrament.
But first,
my confession:
I never wanted
to follow Jesus,
I wanted to be
Jesus, to learn
the alchemy
of compassion,
that love which
blazes, roaring
furnace, within
the mild smoothness
of the kiln’s
clay surface. All
I wanted was
to have the touch,
not of Midas
but of Jesus,
to pass my hands
across these
loaves and fishes
and encourage them
to be enough.





Ghazal in response to Tobi Alfier’s “The Cobbler” 


Ancient warriors had to tie up and cinch straps on ligature shoes.
Necessary preparatory – can’t win in insecure shoes.

Leather footwear’s unbecoming when remembering Lost Eden.
The righteous choice is likely tennies, canvas for Yom Kippur shoes.

In the city bars, cowboy boots are often viewed as cocksure shoes,
but out on the range, they’re practical protection-from-manure shoes.

Young women often dress up in high heels, sharp pointed skewer shoes,
but older ones tend to look for stability, more mature shoes.

Ballet dancers may wear through as many as one hundred eighty
pairs a year. Imagine the expense! Theirs are not amateur shoes.

Olympic gold medal? Endorsement for cereal. But athletes
must be MVPs before their names appear on signature shoes.

Outside of every holy doorway, the empty shoes are waiting.
The essence of compassion – the Beloved steps into your shoes.

He is magical, riveting, a mystic hidden in a poem.
Now Halima is dancing in the wings of Tobi’s Cobbler’s shoes.

​



Reserve: poem ending with a line from Rumi
for Neil Creighton, after his poem "Mother"


They only seem to bloom when the spring's
been overcast with mist and gloom, when clouds
have kept the lifting light of the sun at bay
and it is difficult from dawn to dusk
to tell the hour from the sky. 

Held in reserve, a balm that keeps too 
much of the gloom from seeping into the heart
and water-logging it until it sinks. It is
a gift, how years like this, the honeysuckle
vines appear from wherever they've

been hidden, climb along all the field fence
that lines the single lanes of farm-to-market
road until I feel smaller and smaller, become
a tiny spider finding my way delicately
along the inner circumference of a wreath.

Say nothing of the paintbrush dipped in
cream and pale gold that somehow swept its
tip across this thick green surface while
I slept. Say nothing of why these vines
stay hidden other warmer, brighter springs.

Say only that the fragrance resonates like
bird-song, only audible when we take it deep
into our lungs. Say only: There are a thousand
ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are
a thousand ways to go home again.