David Michael Lippman

as steam rises in white curls like fog greeting shore, a subtle moment stilled, calming voices unimportant, unneeded, uninvited. in this silent hour i can be myself. i don’t have to be anyone else. here with my history on my shoulder  and beliefs stuffed like a lover’s note in my back pocket. a slow fire of dawn sneaks-in through words.  r ising behind my eyes,  beholding unseen secrets even the world keeps , shining as a spider’s web on a frosty morning  as touching seams gleam and reveal a secret shared in love. what we share when we really share is the most important thing about us. with friends, enmity becomes transparency:  in a world of made-up faces,  faux-embraces,  where voices curl like irons, and looks can shatter like vases;  it matters more than anything else who you share your mornings with.

as steam rises in curling white pirouettes, holding hands they rise, bend and rise, bend and rise, always lifting, always lilting, as a prayer murmured on a quiet morning; turning me from daily tasks to rise as they rise before a morning i cannot comprehend or control. my soul rests thin, transparent as vapor. a breath breathed over water still as glass. this quiet dance, where ordinary things like cookware, coffee, sipping; just another task to begin, but if s l o w e d, and touched just-so, with light illumined from places unknown, without a word, could open the deadlocks of the soul. on such days a soul begins to see things like coffee like cookware, like morning, like quiet words shared in heartfelt prayer; words that rise as souls in waltz, moving higher as unseen eyes grasp wider, more clearly than ever a beauty wrapped, intimate, becoming a welcomed reception, a communion where child

and i’ll be sitting with you until our tea grows cold, until the world settles down around us and all the untold stories share dearly like old friends, telling of holes made of faces soft touches, warm embraces, the kind where the world bends in to listen and wonder with us what has been and what its ending is, you and i had thought we were pretending all the while love crept in unnoticed and unbidden, like the shadowy reflection in our mirror light reflects light until all things are clear.

as the seam rises from my mug i breathe and sip what this world is so afraid of... a quiet moment before a universe-size God, who spoke with Moses, walked with Adam and whispers still to men who listen with hearts content and broken to be able in a quiet  morning to speak  words unsaid over coffee with the One who wrote down their days and speaks still in not-so-insignificant ways, weighing and marking my soul like gold and dross, i guess these are the moments where i count it all, every single shard of shattered glass, as loss...

when i consider who You are within little me and how full You are containing little me. i must bow to the heir of all things to the Maker who made me  and to Whom i am returning. now, You are the Final Word speaking through vocal cords saying things like “count the cost; is it worth it to gain the world when your soul is lost? store up treasure where moth and rust will not destroy and they will not be stolen value things like i do only i can take you (home). even the spheres, spinning like records around a star, their time, place, near and far is according to Me. for should I choose, I could wear them like jewelry and dangle Jupiter, Mars, Neptune on a string, letting their vibrating beauty extol Me. (as it should be!) but the lonely worlds I chose rather to give them names and treat them like sheep that I lead in and out again can you number them? can you tell if one is missing? I lead them to quie