Friday, November 16, 2007

PSYCHIATRIST AND PRIEST

Her story was pockmarked with tears and fears,
pauses and becauses – lots of becauses,
some making me nervous. I never know what
to say. Listening is much easier.
Without knowing it, my fingernails
were scraping the accumulated dark sweat dirt
of the underneath of the wooden armrest
of the chair I was sitting on –
a chair that so many others have also sat in.
Once a month, as I listened to her story
on these Friday afternoons,
we slowly discovered the bottom of the why
she had come to see me in the first place.
She was a book and by the 10th chapter,
the 10th time I listened to her,
I got glimpses of my own story
and so many other’s stories in her story.
But there was one story, one chapter, missing.
This was the empty moment –
the coming to the edge of the cliff moment –
the “Okay, what’s next?” moment.
I am not a psychiatrist. I am a priest,
so Easter is the message of all this sitting
in this tiny talking room.
If she wanted to hear Good News,
she had to realize she couldn’t stop at Friday,
at the cross. None of 4 gospels end
at Calvary - the place of the skull.
There’s always the Easter Sunday Morning Moment
when she had to walk to the place of the cave,
the tomb, and meet the Gardener. (Cf. John 21)
She rose in awe, now having a glimpse
of what she had to do, whom she had to meet,
– and it was only then
that I felt the underneath of the armrest.
I had accidentally scraped a cross there
as I sat with her all these Friday afternoons.
I too needed to experience Easter.
I too needed an Upper Room experience.
Healing only happens when Christ
comes through the thick walls
of our fears, of our thick skull,
our upper room, and says,
“Shalom! Peace be with you!”



© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2007

NOVEMBER LEAVES

November leaves –
beautiful before their fall,
then down on the ground
like the dead
in so many silent cemeteries.
They had their time –
buds, blossoms, steady solid
green and then
their final splash of color –
death –
the November leaves
finally coming to their rest
in bushes, in corners,
some raked into piles,
then cremated, sending
sweet incense into the steel blue sky,
but most stuck somewhere
for the winter, as November
turns into December – and snow,
then the long cold time till spring,
resurrection.
It’s good to stop to see the leaves.
It’s good to have November
a time to remember those
who have fallen before us.




© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2007


THE SUN

The little girl kept reaching out
trying to grab the ball of sun,
but she couldn’t reach it and
nobody would bounce it to her.

In fact, it had disappeared
when she went to the window
after supper to look at it once again.

She began to cry,
fisting her hands into her eyes
and when she looked again,
it still wasn’t there
and all her life
she thought she had done it.


© Andy Costello, Poems, 2007

Thursday, November 15, 2007

PROPER BURIAL


She was out picking berries –
her leather satchel had
the hardened remains.
The anthropologists figured
it was a land slide and she
was buried down deep
under dirt and rock
what figures like 1400 years ago -
way up there
in the cold north country.
What did her family go through
when she didn’t return – when
she totally disappeared?
Now, she can be seen
even if it’s behind glass
in a proper tomb in a museum.
Visitors stand there
for a few moments reading
the laminated words
about her discovery
in a mining excavation.
No tears. No pain. No funeral.
At least now we know what
happened to one of our family
that day a long time ago.
Who else is out there?
Who else is missing?
How long does it take
to discover, to dig up,
to uncover another’s story,
another's disappearance
from our life?


© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2007

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

OLD PORCH CHAIR

The paint is peeling
off the old porch chair.
I guess choosing to sit
out here all the time
it never gets a chance
to see all those new
long lasting paints
they advertise on T.V.


© Andy Costello, Poems 2007

Monday, November 12, 2007

HANDICAPPED

He was handicapped;
she was half a person;
all they knew how to do
was complain. Let us pray....



© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2007

SEASONS

Autumn leaves,
some tan, some brown,
some rather unnoticed,
huddled and cornered
trying to keep warm
outside the red brick school,
parents and grandparents,
looking at their watches,
waiting for the afternoon
school bell to sound and
send out to them
hundreds of kids,
running out into the cold,
kids unaware of age and autumn,
kids in their long spring,
kids, a long time till
they are like their parents
and grandparents, autumn leaves,
some tan, some brown,
some rather unnoticed,
after a long hot summer of life,
now huddled and cornered,
trying to keep warm
outside red brick schools.


© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2007