The God Who Loves You
“The God Who Loves You” ~ Carl Dennis
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week –
Three fine houses sold to deserving families –
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.
Summer Pics, Part 1: Home
Speechless
It’s good to be home.
There are no words to explain all that is happening. I assume I will die before the school year begins as a result. Spending quality time with friends and family and friends who are family; sharing the good and the bad; having that face to face which is so much better than the electronic; reminding and being reminded of why the bonds are so strong regardless of time or distance apart.
The constant question: when are you coming home?
No good answer to that.
As life moves on for so many in so many ways, and I miss it, being so far away, mentally assenting to the idea that there is a reason for it all, possibly believing it from time to time, in moments which will be cherished and not passed up in a revisionist history, but still taking me away from all this.
My city. Sitting in the park just taking it in, trying not to smile for apparently no reason, because that is not how we roll out here.
Chilling on a park bench just watching people and feeling the differences in cultures and backgrounds. Intimately aware of who settled here from which countries, and how that pride and sense of history has never been lost from the faces of the people. Where Irish, Polish, Jamaican, Cape Verdian, Portuguese, and countless others still matters, on a day to day basis, more than being ‘white’ or ‘black,’ but everyone is united in wearing the colors that matter: green, blue, black and red.
Seeing building, parks, roads, and gardens which are as old as the colonies, literally, knowing that every corner marks a spot where educational textbooks draw inspiration, that the movie Glory documents a regiment that formed ten yards from my seat, or that the cemetery down the road holds some of the founding fathers, or that the tree shading me once provided refuge to a soldier, or that a couple of blocks away a Black civil war vet. made it very clear to some good ole white boys that this would be the last year they disrupted the street celebration commemorating freedom.
Having a sparrow watch me watch others, and hop over to my shoe, and stare at me, waiting, expecting me to feed him, like the squirrel who once jumped into my lap searching for a meal.
Streets where traffic moves bumper to bumper at 50mph and there are less accidents than where I currently live. That I have not experienced road rage once though I have driven more miles in these weeks than I do in a month living in Denver. That I feel safe when I step on the gas and head down 93 at 95mph, more so than driving 45mph on Federal, and that having nothing to do with the level of ghetto safety.
I’ve bought two hats since I was here and one shirt. Red Sox, black on black, and Celtics. I was home for this win. Watching the games with my family and best friends, and bought the memorabilia on streets I know and have walked down since I was five years old, not online.
This “is my skyline: this is my city lights high.”
A couple of days left. Making the most of it.
Celtics
nuff said
Heading Home!
Summer Itinerary:
East Coast (Boston, RI, CT, NH, et al)
West Coast (Seattle)
Cold White North (Minnesota, Wisconsin)
Back to Denver
West/South/whatever (New Mexico)
Back to Denver = Start school