<div class="line">Almost grasped what Grandmother Grace knew</div>
<div class="line">Last Sunday sitting in church, almost knew</div>
<div class="line">What Alexander Campbell grasped when, confronted</div>
<div class="line">With the desolate orphan, he told her, “You</div>
<div class="line">Are a child of God. Go claim your inheritance.”</div>
<div class="line">Almost got it. There it was in the sunlight,</div>
<div class="line">Squared in the clear glass windows, on the durable leaves</div>
<div class="line">Of the magnolia outside. Almost grasped the weather</div>
<div class="line">That turns clear and crystallized in Hans Küng’s brain.</div>
<div class="line">Almost held it in the ellipses and measure</div>
<div class="line">Of my almost understanding. I see the moment</div>
<div class="line">There in my notebook, then the next day’s anxiety</div>
<div class="line">Spilling like something wet across the ink.</div>
<div class="line">I almost put in my hand a vast acceptance</div>
<div class="line">And almost blessed myself, then it slipped away.</div>
<div class="line">All that colossal animal vivacity—smoke</div>
<div class="line">Of the distant horizon, most of it, haze.</div>
<div class="line">But to have known in any place or time</div>
<div class="line">What they knew is worth a record, a few notes.</div>
<div class="line">Almost knew what they knew. Almost got it.</div>


My Dad Loves the Smell of Asphalt

The Children I’ll Never Have Make an Appearance

Almost

<div class="body-text">      Confession is good for the soul. And suffering is good, as long as it ends. So is waiting. Toys, bread and circuses, are good. Alfresco meals with lovemaking afterwards, very good. Huge hangar-sized quiet is good, but only on paper, only there. Autobahns where fast, blinking cars blare you aside are good, very good for the soul, once you’re out of the way. Brinks and thresholds, balancing a dwindling glass for another’s thirst, these are good for the soul. And a night so dark and clear you can read by starlight is more than good. What else is good for the soul? Another soul coming close, another figment believing the stubborn illusion of time, is good. And every atom listening within a pebble where there is no time. Yes, no time, that will be good for the soul, like a long vacation. The entire void outside of space and time, where the soul is going when it retires, that will be good. So, is everything good for the soul? Yes. Everything and nothing.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/JarmanSoul.mp3"></audio></figure><p></p>

All of My Fathers

The Last Day of November

Good for the Soul

<div class="line">They were all white, passing through their stages</div>
<div class="line">In sheets and ladders, rivulets and falls,</div>
<div class="line">White—a dream of color or an aftermath</div>
<div class="line">Of color stripped to gauze and gossamer,</div>
<div class="line">A white electric squall in half the sky,</div>
<div class="line">Epiphany for the blind, and veils of tears.</div>
<div class="line">Magdalene’s tears. The tears that Jesus wept.</div>
<div class="line">What draws them forth? Mortality and laughter,</div>
<div class="line">The sad and funny fact that you will die</div>
<div class="line">And that you’ve made your children, they will die.</div>
<div class="line">Do they hold that against you? My parents made me.</div>
<div class="line">They went ahead and made me, child of love,</div>
<div class="line">Child of a loving union, which would end,</div>
<div class="line">But which I grew up thinking would not end.</div>
<div class="line">The northern lights remind me of their love,</div>
<div class="line">The drama of my growing up was love</div>
<div class="line">As they performed it, everyone noticing,</div>
<div class="line">The scintillating cosmic imagery</div>
<div class="line">Of two who seemed to be made for each other,</div>
<div class="line">As light is made for sheets of summer darkness,</div>
<div class="line">As darkness in high summer accepts light.</div>
<div class="line">Why did I ever think that they were gods?</div>
<div class="line">But I didn’t. I thought that they were people,</div>
<div class="line">And people love each other for a lifetime—</div>
<div class="line">Gods are as fickle as the northern lights.</div>
<div class="line">Don’t ever think of human beings you love</div>
<div class="line">And need as like those shifting shimmerings,</div>
<div class="line">No matter how liquescent memorable enduring</div>
<div class="line">Against the immortal darkness of the sky.</div>
<div class="line">The northern lights will break a heart and heal it</div>
<div class="line">In the same motion, raveling and unraveling.</div>
<div class="line">They are the background music of creation,</div>
<div class="line">The song God sang while sinking into rest,</div>
<div class="line">The song descended into, words and music,</div>
<div class="line">Oblivious and yet ready to break hearts,</div>
<div class="line">Heartbreaking and yet in the end oblivious.</div>
<div class="line">So I have thought about a years-ago night,</div>
<div class="line">The northern lights above a northern mountain,</div>
<div class="line">And how the tears came down and why, forgetting</div>
<div class="line">That there is nothing oblivion won’t forgive.</div>


Aphasia

Graffiti

Northern Lights

<div class="line">When, about to receive the Host for the first time,</div>
<div class="line">I cup my hands as I was never taught</div>
<div class="line">and listen to the priest describe the meaning</div>
<div class="line">of the translucent disc of holy starch,</div>
<div class="line">as I am lifting it, pinched, towards my mouth,</div>
<div class="line">ready too for the goblet of red liquor—</div>
<div class="line">a spirit speaks inside me, fiercer, stricter</div>
<div class="line">than an angry parent’s rote, an old man’s voice,</div>
<div class="line">outraged but with the weakness of the deathbed,</div>
<div class="line">gasping and rasping in a chamber of my heart,</div>
<div class="line">“What do you think you are doing? What <i>are</i> you doing?”</div>
<div class="line">And into that same chamber, I shout back—</div>
<div class="line">only I can hear this—I shout back</div>
<div class="line">a response never considered for this rite:</div>
<div class="line">“I’m doing this! To hell with you! I’m doing it!”</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/JarmanRail.mp3"></audio></figure>

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January 29, 2015At the Communion RailMark Jarman

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January 29, 2015At the Communion RailMark Jarman

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Good for the Soul by Mark Jarman

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