Six years, my God, almost to the day
since you pulled me from the world and to yourself.
Two and a half since that hot afternoon
I first drove my pastoral sedan—
firstborn-brother, first of many, wincing
at my every sudden stop and wobbly turn—
one hundred fifty miles from our birth-town
to the Tabor that seemed to me paradise!,
though not at first. But I could not confess then
to you and those who came to see me off
how, after the good-byes and introductions
and desultory day gave way to lonely night,
I sat again in silence at the helm
of my own car (thanked God that I had brought it)
and drove, until I got my bearings back.
That moonless night I knew not where I was going,
nor hardly where I was, in the dim squint
of headlights and the litany of names
that were then strangers, now old friends:
Marquam, Monitor, Silverton Road, and all the rest.
And in the silent downpour which obscured
even more my sight, the windshield-wipers
were no help at all—but in the end
I found my way back to a little store
where I bought hot chocolate and detergent,
and went home by the Way of the Cross.
How many times, those first months, I returned
to the driver’s seat!—to drive, or to sit
at the crossroads of my will and of thine.
No wonder, then, as I stood folding sheets
in the cold and utter solitude
of a little monastic linen-room
and saw the palm-trees of my Babylon
shudder beyond the window in the wind,
I gazed a long time down the winding hill-road—
so unlike another I once knew—
and my heart stirred for a car of my own
to drive me an infinity of miles
back to the damp green homeland of my heart!
“Do you know what time is?” scoffed my brother
in a way that couldn’t help but make me laugh.
Maybe six years sometimes feels like sixty
because everyone else thinks a decade
is what I think a year is—or a month,
a moment.
Have I been here a month now?
It might as easily be years or days
since I descended for the first time
the mountain where I knew you, O my God:
Engelberg’s daughter, and equally
Mount Tabor and Calvary to me!
White shirt and black suit stuck to me with sweat
that first day I arrived. I did not care.
It was what a seminarian wore,
and so I wore, with pride—til a brother
told me I needn’t wear it all the time.
When, January, monastery-bound,
I came to San Jose, I wore a sweatshirt,
not a sweaty suit and tie. And so it goes.
The life of grace is light that clarifies,
the flame of love a fire that refines.
How many brothers have I gained, O Lord,
and lost since then?—How many loves like sparks
flashed bright before my eyes and disappeared?
(Or burned too close, did they?—so that I blinked
and they were gone.) How many, many times
have I flung, not to the heart of the Host,
my heart, but down to another garden:
to bury my beating in the safer-
seeming soil of a familiar land.
Every “yes” came with a “but” or an “if,”
although I knew it not—I thought I gave
myself unreservedly, all at once,
when under the cross I knew your providence,
or if not then, when before your glory
I begged to love as freely as you love:
a prayer which you’ve been granting ever since.
It is no exile now nor accident
that you transplant me from my shallow soil
I loved as if it were th’ Elysian fields
to the vineyard you chose for me alone!
No wonder—it must hurt as tender roots,
plucked from one place, begin to root again.
I know myself only by reflection.
In one I recognize me as I was:
new convert, overzealous, touched by Love,
but still too full of self to love in truth.
Only six years—what miracle of grace!
Six years yet, and how far I have to go.
Once in impetuous youth, I denied
I was the same at twelve as I had been
at two: same-named, but a different person.
So I claimed.
Now I will have a new name,
“put on the new man,” yet I am the same:
the son beloved, the broken heart reclaimed,
the little one embraced and lifted high
from valley to mountain and open sky,
who loved you in the night when he was lost,
who searched for you in every heart he knew,
and found you more and more—now to find you
in spirit and in truth have you brought me
to be crucified, and to die and rise.
In Your Embrace 