Job Poems

Some poems based on the book of Job.

The First Wife

I had heard the admonitions against

charm and beauty. Thankfully having no great surplus

of either, I could settle for fear instead.

Of the Lord, yes, but also of my betrothed,

impending marriage, childbirth.

I must have been doing something right.

For years, we had goats and sheep,

tents and wine and servants. My husband

said he spoke with the Lord, which suited me well.

He left me alone after those lengthy conversations.

Then, inexorably, I suppose, things went awry.

First the cattle died, and then my husband's illness.

We lost everything in some bet I did not understand.

When our last child died,

a daughter I loved

and her father did not notice,

I asked him. What is the point

of speaking with the Lord

if he will not listen?

He could not answer.

The Second Wife.

There was gossip, of course.

Afterall, he had been married before,

and wife number one was gone in a flash.

All the kids too, which is a little creepy

when you stop to think about it.

Miriam said his wife was that pillar of salt,

way out in the wilderness.

She's so stupid.

Everyone knows it's way older than that.

Deborah said he smothered her.

Judith, that she died in childbirth.

I think she left. Just one day,

put out the cookfire and walked away.

Mother objects, of course.

Father tries to act pleased, but isn't.

Me? Well, he isn't as old as some I've seen.

He was wealthy once, and may be again.

And, anyway, Benjamin is with Miriam now.

So what does it really matter anyway?

The Response

I hate this story. One of those that takes on

a life of its own. Like when you were young

and accidentally knocked your friend off her bicycle.

And she had some bad injuries, and was in the hospital for a time.

Now, among friends, it’s always retold. And somehow,

you’ve become the antagonist of the whole piece.

Or, worse, you’re some idiot bumbling along, making messes

without realizing what you’re doing. All I can say

is that there was no bet. I wouldn’t do that,

and that other guy wasn’t even around that day.

Look, I could have stopped it, I know.

But in situations like this, my approach

has always been non-involvement.

Unpopular, I know, but people have to learn

that I’m not just here to make everything easy for them.

And sure, that second girl didn’t know what she was getting into.

But I’ve always said, the young need to learn from their own mistakes.

I’ve been trying to teach them that forever.

Ever since that first pair climbed the fence into my backyard

and started stealing apples from my favorite tree.

Insomnia

Insomnia

It began when I was six and wandered into a room where my father was up late, watching The Exorcist. I wanted a glass of water and he didn't realize I was there until I had seen more than I should have. Days later, when I asked my Sunday school teacher if the devil really could live inside of you she said "sometimes." Terrified, I slept in the hallway next to my parents' bedroom every night for two years. I never told anyone why I was so frightened and Mom and Dad--busy working and raising three children--were so tired they never asked. Years later, a Sunday school teacher myself and still sleepless, I finally confessed why I had been so frightened. My mother wrapped her arms around me and stroked my hair. "Oh, Kel," she said. "We never knew."

House of Prayer

House of Prayer

I would like to build a palace for the Lord

made of marble and gold. Brilliant,

and intimidating in the morning sun.

But I have neither the money

nor the knowledge to build such a home.

I do have some rope and these branches

I gathered. This place beneath the pines.

Here is canvas from our tent,

some wool blankets and a pile

of soft, sweet-scented grass.

Together we will tie and lash and drape,

dig a pit for a fire, sing hymns from childhood,

drag over an old stump for the table where

we will say simple words of thanks over soup and bread.

All the time hoping that the light from the fire,

the smell of soup bubbling, the sound of our voices,

and the warmth of our live will be enough

to lead the Lord home.

Absence

Two words to describe my spiritual life right now:

Hot mess.

Non-existent might also be apt.

***

Absence

(A Psalm, of sorts.)

I searched for you in church and temple

looked for you in the falling leaves

and white-tailed deer outside my window.

You were in neither music nor in art,

the wails of the sick or of the newly born.

I sought you in my neighbors

and the corners of myself.

I want to learn to love you, Lord.

But how can I love

what I cannot find?

Rest

When I was no older than six, I overheard my mother talking about the movie The Exorcist. I was raised in a Roman Catholic household, where the idea of demonic possession was more than fodder for a scary move. It was a real possibility, and you had no control over whether or not it happened to you.

The thought of your body being inhabited by a demon is terrifying at any age. At six, unable to even comprehend Satan or God (or for that matter, mental illness), the thought was enough to make me sleepless for well over a year.

I could fall asleep easily enough, thanks to a Strawberry Shortcake bedside lamp complete with nightlight. I'd curl up with my Rainbow Bright doll and fall fast asleep.

But every night I woke up in the early hours of the morning, long after my parents had fallen asleep convinced that the devil was in my room and was trying to find a way inside of me. I'd drag my pillow, blankets, and Rainbow Bright into the hallway and fall asleep between the bedrooms, in the comforting glow of the bathroom light. And every morning my mother would get up to make lunches and have a cup of coffee before waking us only to have to step over me in the hallway, sound asleep.

I never told my parents what scared me so badly.

***

Sleep disorders are part and parcel of my family. Everyone has, at some point, had issues sleeping. I don't think my father has slept more than five hours a night in my lifetime, and I'm convinced he has sleep apnea. If nothing else, he snores fit to beat the band. Mom talks in her sleep, as did my older brother when he was a child. I sleepwalk and have dreams I can't differentiate from reality upon waking (this happens at least once a week). My younger brother also had issues sleepwalking though much of his childhood. More frightening, he had night terrors (different from simple nightmares) from which he could not be woken. My mother would wake in the middle of the night to her youngest child shrieking and crying and couldn't do anything to help him. When she asked our pediatrician about it, he responded with typical Midwestern blandness.

"He'll grow out of them."

I've never asked if he has.

***

I pull off my eye mask and struggle to sit upright. The red clock on the microwave reads 1:43. For the past four nights I've woken at 1:43 to get up and wander around the apartment for an hour or two. I read, a little, but mainly I just pace until I'm tired enough to return to the recliner to which I'm banished while I wait for my broken ribs to heal.

The insomnia, I think, is preferable to the nightmares and relentless sleepwalking of the week before.

I think.

***

When describing my sleepwalking to friends, I keep the tone light. I tell them the funny sleepwalking episodes--the time I thought I was the grand empress of Prussia and was being attacked by an army of trebuchets. Or the time I thought my roommates had smeared canned tuna all over my room and spent forty minutes hunting high and low for a non-existent can of tuna. They make light of the sleepwalking, mainly because none of them have ever seen me do it.

I do not tell them that--even a few years ago--I would let myself out of the house or my dorm room and wake up outside, totally unaware of how long I had been there or what had persuaded me to rise in the middle of the night. I rarely remember the dreams that drive me
from my bed, and when I do, I wish I hadn't.

The nightmares are almost always they same. A post-apocolyptic vision of the world that would put Cormac McCarthy to shame. I almost always wake up with a shriek dying on my lips, drenched in sweat, with my heart racing. I've woken from these dreams tangled in bedclothes, huddled in a corner of the bedroom with my arms above my face, locked in the bathroom with
 my back pressed against the door.

When I do finally wake up, it takes awhile for my heart to slow down. I turn on all the lights in the house, take the blankets from the bed, wrap myself up, and sit on the couch for long minutes.

I'm not so far from fears of demonic possession afterall.

***

When my bed is an option (as I hope it will be again very soon), my routine rarely changes. I am tucked in among the covers, computer, alarm clock, and any other light-emitting object banished to another room by 10:15. The sheets always smell like lavender, I always read until 10:30 or 10:45, and I always keep a glass of water next to the bed. I wear practical pajamas of the same style every night. After reading, I pull my eye mask over my eyes and curl around my body pillow hoping that, tonight at least, I'll be able to rest.

In Praise of Sleeping Alone

In Praise of Sleeping Alone

Everyone talks about sharing a bed

as if it were the greatest thing for sleep

since the invention of the down comforter.

I prefer sleeping alone,

stretching out diagonally on my firm,

but not too firm mattress.

Wrapping myself in a cocoon

of all the blankets on the bed

only to kick them to the floor

in the middle of the night.

I delight in pajamas that are comfortable,

utilitarian, and utterly uninviting.

I boldly leave the bedside lamp burning

until three or four in the morning

when I'm reading a new detective novel

gloriously unburdened by care for another's rest.

Even on the nights when I rise

plagued by nightmares or common anxiety

I do not wish for the calm, steady breath of another

or his warm sturdy presence under the quilt next to me.

Soundtrack

At fifteen, my friends and I liked to compile "The Soundtrack to My Life" lists and post them on our livejournals.

I am utterly embarrassed to admit both that I had a livejournal and that the following list belonged to me.

1. Dashboard Confessionals: Screaming Infidelities
2. Nirvana: Come As You Are.
3. Thursday: Standing on the Edge of Summer
4. Jimmy Eat World: Chase These Lights
5. The Alkaline Trio: Radio

No one could fake sadness quite like 15-year-old Kelly.

***

Lauren and I are driving home after stopping in to see two of my good friends in Minneapolis. They're in a relationship that just seems to work. I love going to see the two of them together because they compliment one another so well. I'm feeling more effusive than normal and am, in Betsy's words sharing my feelings.

"I'm just frustrated." I say, probably more than a little petulantly. "I don't second-guess myself. But Lauren, I'll be damned if I don't miss him. And it's not as though I'd ever want to date him again and it's not terribly bad. There are other men who make my stomach fluttery now. It's just...sometimes it takes me by surprise. When I'm writing a letter to someone, or come across a passage in a book I love and I think "Oh, he'd appreciate this." I'm brought up short by the fact that I don't get to have him in my life anymore."

"Oh, honey," she says. "I know."

***

If I were writing The Soundtrack to My Life for this part of my adulthood, I honestly don't know what I would put on it. My fifteen year old self would be struck dumb by that admission (thank God. Much to her chagrin, despite all of her Emo-kid clothes and time spent rereading The Catcher in the Rye she wasn't terribly interesting.) I've stopped thinking that way. Springsteen, I think, would make an appearance. So would Old Crow Medicine Show and probably some Patsy Cline.

There is one song that I can say, definitively, would make it onto the list. It's an Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong duet: "They Can't Take That Away From Me." It is perhaps one of the most bittersweet songs I've ever heard. Normally, jazz is my "I'm-falling-for-someone" music. I reserve heartbreak exclusively for Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and a bottle of Maker's Mark, but something in the way Ella sings: "The way you hold your knife/the way we danced 'til three/the way you changed my life/no they can't take that away from me" catches my heart every time. It reminds me of the little things I always savor at the beginning and conclusion of any relationship.

When I fell for the last guy I dated (and fall I did, ridiculously hard and very, very fast) I fell for the most insane things. The way he fidgeted with the ring he wore. His dorky, contagious enthusiasm for woodcuts. The way he laughed at my exuberance over a new pair of rainboots. They were sweetly, unexpectedly endearing. They are things I miss.

I still can't look at Dore woodcut without feeling a tug.

***

At 15 I liked my sadness straight. Perhaps mixed with a little self-loathing or teenage angst. I prefer joy to sadness these days, the same way I prefer music where you don't need the liner notes to understand the lyrics. Sadness has lost its sharp tang, perhaps I lack the energy to mix in all that anger and frustration.

Perhaps I've just learned to savor the bittersweetness.