What mystic can come from south Jersey<\/p>\n
where I was born in the 1960s<\/p>\n
the same day a circus clown was slain?<\/p>\n
Concrete realities have always intervened between me<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
& prophecy. I spent my summers<\/p>\n
at the shore buying trinkets on the boardwalk,<\/p>\n
eating my mother\u2019s pancakes & scrapple<\/p>\n
when we\u2019d arrive home encrusted in sand,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
smoldering from too much time in the sun.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve tried to be a mystic, believe me.<\/p>\n
When we were in the midst of a move,<\/p>\n
my sister, brother, & I slept at our grandmom\u2019s<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Delran apartment where one night I dreamt<\/p>\n
I saw a man at her sliding glass door, ready<\/p>\n
to rob the place, & I awoke to find<\/p>\n
yes, a man with forehead on the glass,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
peering in. I claimed ESP but my family,<\/p>\n
scientists all, refused to believe. I tried<\/p>\n
some more in the Poconos where we\u2019d go<\/p>\n
to see my greats, Uncle Herb & Granddad George,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
& I\u2019d wander off to the meadow\u2019s edge,<\/p>\n
stroll into the hollow where milkweed & white asters,<\/p>\n
Jack-in-the-Pulpit & Solomon\u2019s seal,<\/p>\n
broomsedge & bee balm & black-eyed Susans<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
congregated before my eyes, & my first poems<\/p>\n
rose in my throat. But I spoke no predictions,<\/p>\n
contacted no spirit inhabiting the woods<\/p>\n
beyond the bite of burs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I kept trying later on to extract<\/p>\n
ecstasies from my senses during prayer<\/p>\n
or perceive the face of Jesus in our garden-\u0002<\/p>\n
state but instead had to discover<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
ways to survive three hours of preaching<\/p>\n
on Good Fridays. Every now & then,<\/p>\n
a hymn or psalm could inspire me<\/p>\n
to reach for something beyond<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
pew or podium, but then my friend<\/p>\n
would pinch me, her fingernails<\/p>\n
reminders to be practical.<\/p>\n
Like the choice of a career.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mystic<\/em> just never entered into it.<\/p>\n Such were the suburbs I grew up in,<\/p>\n with my stay-at-home Mom, who read me<\/p>\n an illustrated Bible & marched<\/p>\n <\/p>\n with my father in D.C. demanding<\/p>\n not peace but Victory in Vietnam.<\/p>\n O, my political father, Bircher who took me<\/p>\n to canvas neighborhoods for Schmitz in \u201972.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (Everyone was a communist to him,<\/p>\n including Nixon, & when everything\u2019s<\/p>\n a harbinger of dangers yet to come,<\/p>\n nothing is prophetic.) That day, no signal<\/p>\n <\/p>\n warned that a German Shepherd would<\/p>\n lunge at me, barking madly behind its fence,<\/p>\n scaring every leaflet from my clasp, my scream<\/p>\n spurring my Dad to tear across the road<\/p>\n <\/p>\n to comfort me. What room was there for mystery<\/p>\n amid such certainty powered by the long-\u0002<\/p>\n drawn-out red scare & its gory corpses?<\/p>\n What room for ethereal signs when my body began<\/p>\n <\/p>\n its betrayals, my first surgery at 10, followed again<\/p>\n by more & more? I was just trying to stay alive.<\/p>\n Besides, I worshipped my Dad who held<\/p>\n my hand through all the pain & vomit,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n all the fear, who told me without hesitation<\/p>\n that he loved me. He was enough back then,<\/p>\n & so was Mom, who taught Sunday School<\/p>\n to kids with flannel graphs about Moses & Noah,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n men who took their orders straight from God,<\/p>\n whose voice\u2014was it too much to ask?\u2014<\/p>\n I wished I also could hear<\/p>\n with the Philly accents echoing in the air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What mystic can come from south Jersey where I was born in the 1960s the same day a circus clown was slain? Concrete realities have always intervened between me & prophecy. I spent my summers at the shore buying trinkets on the boardwalk, eating my mother\u2019s pancakes & scrapple when we\u2019d arrive home encrusted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":304,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"issue":[11],"coauthors":[251],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n