The Merry Month of May

If I were a poet, May would have been a busy month.

A poet, we know, is irresistibly moved by the mysterious muse

to express the inexpressible.
To find words for feelings that lie too deep for thought.

And the month of May often fills the heart.

If I were a poet my pen would have caught the transient,

fragile beauty of the flowering crab, “where the bee sucks,”

and whose pink-red petals dazzle my every May.

If I were a poet I would have celebrated in un-Hallmarkian verse

my brother’s birthday and all those days and ways

in which, as close friends, we spent time in gut-aching laughter,

serious thought, stimulating talk, and mutual affection.

If I were a poet I would have found on Mothers Day

true words of thanks for all the caring and sharing

and praying and self-giving of good mothers everywhere.

If I were a poet I would have captured through imagery

and sound and rhythm the many feelings of my heart and

my spirit’s prayer on our daughter’s birthday, who lives

her life more than 2000 miles away.

If I were a poet I would have composed a dozen sestinas

for all those who, capped and gowned, in pomp

and circumstance, celebrate a cerebral siesta after much

hard learning and weariness of the flesh. 

If I were a poet I would have exclaimed in psalms and hymns

and holy sonnets the glorious mystery, truth, and power

of Ascension, and Pentecost to follow. 

Even then, I doubt that I could have struck the human spirit

with the fullness of the awesome wonder those two events entail.

And if I were a poet I would memorialize the lives

sacrificed in too many wars.

I would in graphic detail depict the sins of slaughter,

the price of freedom, the specter of mass death. 

My conscious memory began with war, ironically

in the May time of the year. 

Those memories, mild as they are, still have the power to haunt. 

If I were a poet I would poignantly pen my pleas and prayers for peace.

But I’m not a poet. 

Still, May was busy anyway. 

And now, at Merry May’s end, I am content to sit

under pale moonlight and “let the sounds of music creep in my years:

soft stillness in the night…the touches of sweet harmony.”
For something as “full of the spirit as the month of May,”

we need a Shakespeare.

Now, there’s a poet!

Behind the Mask

We walk behind invisible masks.

It’s safer and therefore more comfortable that way.

Each of us has secrets we try to disguise.

Michael Jackson knew it well, even in addressing another:

            All along I knew you were

            a phony girl

            you sit behind the mask

            and you control your world

            So take off the mask so

            I can see your face.

But an honest face can tell the truth.

We need masks to disguise the truth.

The truth of our insecurities, pretenses, secrets of the heart, depression.

Maybe it’s especially the teenager who dons the masks,

tightly guarding what cannot safely be shared with others,

tightly protecting self from hurts, misunderstanding, taunts, humiliation.

There’s a wall in a local Christian high school that gives a glimpse of what’s often behind the mask.

It’s called the “Speak Wall.”

It started in a chapel service where 18 students volunteered as guinea pigs.

They shared with fellow students what they had not shared before:

the fear of ugliness

the fear of not being cool enough

the ongoing grief for a lost father

loneliness

worry about the future

and other preoccupations that disturb young lives.

A hallway wall was dedicated as an invitation to other students to drop their mask.

It soon began to fill up. 

Notes, signed and unsigned, about repeated suicide attempts. 

A note about scars, empty pill bottles, and a tear-soaked pillow. 

A note about missing the love of a good family. 

A note about the pain of lost childhood innocence. 

A note with the question: “Why did God give me diabetes?” 

Another: “I need to break my addictions.”

Another: “I’m pretentious.” 

Another: “I’m covered by a blanket of regret.”

Among these poignant and disturbing notes, student responses of understanding, encouragement, sharing, promising prayer.

Within the school, this hallway has become a kind of sacred ground. 

Students and staff approach it in silence, then stop to read.

Then they go on to classrooms, the gym, the locker room. 

But there’s a difference now. 

There’s more awareness of the other, a growing sensitivity, a greater readiness to reach out, an increasing feeling of acceptance.

Is it possible that school can become a safe place to drop the mask?

And home too?

And church?