Seeing Things

in my daughter’s brain, no longer hidden:

Outside our house, a father, invisible

to others, walks toward her. And yet, the whole

night he sleeps beside me. Morning’s light

does nothing with such visions but name

them “crazy,” less than whole,

and yet all around me—dimmed

in the reality of every day—the hidden

angels and saints somehow still name

the invisible within the visible,

still break the shadows with light.

And can this make us whole?

When Merton spoke of such whole-

ness, did he know the mystery of our dim

lives that still serve as light

to others' visions, too often hidden

beneath a thousand bushels, until, visible

again, they shine a common name?

Today, the world’s chaos speaks name-

lessness, but not meekly, no holy

call to seek fecundity in the invisible.

Instead, the ancient revelations dim

beside the bright glare of what we hide

from each other. Take the truer light

of what binds these worlds and lightens

our heavy but shared epiphanies—boldly named

or meekly nameless, spirits hidden

and revealed, our hope for whole-

ness. Come, though our visions dim,

we trudge and trip together toward such light

where … in all visible things an invisible

fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek name-

lessness, a hidden wholeness.