To expand on the poetry I have published here over the last year or so, I thought it would be fun to record readings of some of my favorite pieces from The Cardinal Turns the Corner as well as to introduce newer pieces I have written.
In addition to these readings, I’d like to provide some commentary, background, and/or explanatory notes that situate each poem in whatever experience, memory, or mood inspired it. No writer writes in a vacuum; we are always influenced by something (usually a thousand somethings). 🙂 So, here is Poem Audio #1.
The two poems discussed in this recording are “Falling in Love” from TCTTC and a new piece “Paper Plates.” Each poem has been reprinted below the audio file for those who wish to read along. Enjoy!
“Falling in Love”
The other night I stood for half an hour
Between the night sky and the butterfly wings of sleep,
Trying to count how many times I’ve fallen in love with you.
The streetlights filled our window while you slept,
But all I could do was wander around the room, hands folded,
The wind stirring the leaves on the pavement outside.
For years I have looked beneath the rocks in the river,
Inspected the wrists of jazz drummers
And the breath of blue roses for the full moon.
I have unlaced the fog in the morning
And swept the brushstrokes of dew on the ground
To find the words for our love,
And the candles at every step of our memory,
Lighted by the words we’ve spoken,
They are becoming forest fires.
In my hands are a dozen marbles. When I hold them up to you
To show the colors of my love, the sound of their scattering
On the floor tells me to try again.
And I try again every time,
Finding you over and over in the corner of my eye,
Smiling like the day we first met.
So I stayed awake that night, wondering how
I might manage to hold all this love
When all along it lay quietly in the way our fingers touch when we watch movies,
Your knees bent beneath the blanket,
The hours drifting away like snow.
“Paper Plates”
I’m trying to remember how long we’ve eaten on paper plates,
Cheap napkins with printed lilacs,
Both of us bending the tines of plastic forks
As we slowly keep from speaking.
When did we become so still, so suddenly motionless,
Twin marble statues stuck beneath the weight of water,
Staring in the distance past each other’s ocean shadow?
How did the sunlight in our voices
Fade into the night, our fingers numb
As blackened matches, our gazes turned to separate walls?
There must have been a moment when we accidentally said our last words,
When the sugar in our breath slid deep into our memory,
When our kisses somehow grew stale and
Our styrofoam lips first chipped along the edges.
The day was cold, dark, and rainy, one of those days that all you want to do is snuggle up with the ones whom your heart adores, build a crackling fire, and press your lips to a hot mug with even hotter joe inside. See, it all seems so perfect, so picturesque, a moment with good friends, good family, beautiful places, and the best memories. You see it on social media all the time, and you desire nothing more than to experience the abundance that you see in others’ lives. All of this is perfect, but then you come to see you are alone. You are not sitting in the Colorado Mountains. You are not gathered around a warm, crackling fire. You do not have friends over, and your family seems more disconnected than ever. No, none of these things are happening. You just sit quietly alone, slowly and mindlessly scrolling through your phone, looking at everyone else’s “perfect” little lives. It hurts. You feel as though your life will never measure up to the standard of the latest Instagram celebrity. You will never go on an adventure quite like theirs. You will never be able to do yoga quite like that girl we all seem to know. And you certainly will never be as beautiful or handsome as that girl or boy who just received 100,000 likes on their latest post. What happens next? You look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself a lie. “I will never be any of these things; therefore, I will never be good.”
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of touring the Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas and discovered a beautiful painting by Botticelli titled Madonna of the Book. In the center of this piece sits Mary with the Christ child on her lap as they both read from a medieval book of hours, a sacred devotional text common to Botticelli’s generation. Noticeably, Mary is pensive, contemplative, and even mournful in her pose as she studies the book.
He was born to die. This is the will of God that “Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, [be] crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). Indeed, Christ came into this world to “give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). As Mark Lowry famously wrote in a 
Yet, Christ guides her hand with His. “Keep reading. Keep reading.” Notice His left hand holding hers and His right hand guiding her back to the story. We must keep reading. Christ must die on the cross so that we must not. His steady and victorious look to His mother tells us everything. “I must do this for you,” he says to her and to us. “I love you. You must keep reading.” For as we keep reading, we discover that the story does not end at His death. In the words of the Battle Hymn, “Let the hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel […] His truth is marching on.” He marches on. He marches on. Glory, glory, hallelujah.
Eden.Babel 