Monthly Archives: December 2019
A perfect storm is howling
In the ocean’s upraised fists
Bellowing forth her furies
Spewing drenching mists
Clouds surround in crowds
Concealing the desperate fight
Of a tiny ship in tempest,
A pitiful, puny sight
And my little fingers cling
To the groaning, creaking mast
As we’re tossed about by waves
I fight to keep my grasp
The rain shows no discretion
In pelting my burning skin
And the sea, she shows no quarter
To the broken vessel that I am
My ears are full and ringing
My strength feels almost gone,
But I trust I must keep singing,
Keep on keeping on
To the sudden break of dawn.
Leave a comment | tags: illness, ocean, Pain, sea, sick, storm, Trust, waves | posted in Passion
These migraines
Drive me insane
There’s so much pain
I could nearly drain
My brain
Through a straw…
But that’s ridiculous.
Leave a comment | tags: migraine, Pain, rudest alarm clock | posted in Passion
He pulled close to us
In creation, forming by delicate hand,
So close His breath filled our lungs.
Mankind learned to stand
Inside His tender proximity.
He pulled close to us
In manger hay and baby skin,
Walking in unbreakable love
Not counting our sin
But for the payment He would make.
He pulls close to us,
The day is nearly here!
As a ship approaches the harbor,
With His Father at the steer,
He stands giddy in the prow.
He is so close,
Radiating joy through all alarms
If I lived ninety years
It would only be falling forward into His arms.
3 Comments | tags: Adopted, Anticipation, Beauty from ashes, Birthday, Christian, christianity, Eternity, heaven, it's always Christmas morning, Jesus, Joy | posted in Passion, Praise
He’s in his truck while they lay sleeping,
Hard at work before the sunrise
Hammering out the tools he needs
To build their Christmas joys.
By the time he gets back home,
We’ll have tucked the sun back into bed
Then we’ll eat and laugh and love each other
Before laying down our heads.
I get up in hazy mornings,
Blend my flour and my eggs
Whisking together my ingredients
To bake their fragrant memories,
Now the hours go by harder
But the joys grow deeper by the mile
I’m storing away the things we’ll need
To build their Christmas smiles.
We’re working Christmas to the bone this year
Because the best things in life deserve it,
And the love and joy and peace we feel-
Well, all of those were free.
We’re eager for the wide-eyed wonder,
The northern lights inside their eyes,
And for the moment we recline together
To watch them dance in their surprise.
And I think about our Savior,
Coming down from His delights
To work amongst the splinters,
The stubble and the wheat,
He worked Christmas to the bone each year
Building us a mystery
And I, in wide-eyed wonder,
Dance in all I see.
.
.
.
..
Leave a comment | tags: Birthday, children, Christmas, Family, food, gifts, homemade, husband, John, Savior | posted in Passion
Unhinged again by pain, the spins
Around my ears keep me queasy,
Exhausted, broken, hyper-aware:
Loving me is never easy.
Pulsing ache and fevered throes
Cluttered breaths over shattered shards
Wracked up, wrung out, run down
I fight my own worst regards
Only one friend who writes,
Only one who values me
In the stumbling, tumbling turmoil
Of the worst that I can be-
These whispers hiss and spit
Inside my throbbing ears:
Wasted! Worthless! Naught to show
For all these tarried years.
Oh the physical weakness,
Whenever I assume
I may stand and work and run
On the thin fumes I have presumed
Were the common breaths of man.
How can I run my race
When I can barely stand?
Yet I live, and breath, and move
Inside Your pierced hand
And that’s enough for me.
.
.
.
.
Leave a comment | tags: broken, cross, damaged goods, fail, illness, Pain, Poetry, redemption, saved, secure in Christ, sick, sick thoughts, the damaged good | posted in Pallor, Passion, Praise
I’ve always rather looked down on me
for the varied metaphors I stir-
the barrage of dissimilar images,
a busy collage beyond absurd.
If only I were educated, I assumed,
or possessed the natural bent,
I might have the talent to condense
the fairies of perception into cement-
Sitting in straight lines and right angles
and as monochrome as I desired
Instead of skipping, sailing, soaring
through spring petals and autumnal fires.
Drawing heavy lines, like coloring pages,
filed with simple, solid shades-
Digestible activities,
Soothing for every age.
Yet the more years I observe,
Life falls in chaotic lines,
Seeming contradictions
Live together peacefully all the time,
And the metaphor stew I serve
May have less to do with how I write,
Than the detailed complexities
Inherent in my sight.
Not that it makes it right.
Leave a comment | tags: metaphor, perception, poems, Poetry, writing | posted in Passion
A lifetime past, he spoke,
though these syllables, preserved
have never faded, nor broken,
nor is dust or rust observed:
“Be the sun, not the moon.”
and like molten rock
runs downhill, absorbs, consumes,
it imbued with sudden shock
a missing piece, a missing trust.
I am not a lifeless entity
Dull but for the daylight.
The living Power living in me
is a wondrous, flaming sight
and we are one, as He is one
Why add layers of varnish?
It is futile work to be done
while He burns off every tarnish
to shine in the authenticity
of His work inside me.
Leave a comment | tags: Adopted, brilliance, God, Love, moon, nick, sun | posted in Passion, Praise
I miss the airports
the foreign elbows and tongues
making gestures of intonations
the bells of language unrung
slipping by on the socked toes
of non-verbal nods and smiles
of being isolated in a crowd
of traveling a thousand miles
to share what I received for free
luggage tumbling in waterfalls
inspected, measured, taped, and tossed
unnecessary to fulfill the call
their contents scanned, likewise my gut,
but I smuggle in treasure from afar
in quiet ways machines can’t see:
I carry wildfires in glass jars,
and when the time is right,
I set them free.
Leave a comment | tags: airports, feet, foreign lands, Go, missions, native truth, the gospel, tongues | posted in Passion, Praise
Sometimes
… lately…
this heavy, hazy feeling
crowding my chest
this lazy, lumbering
never at rest
wheezing when I laugh
shuddering to shout
I have an unwell ache
skin shivers as I call out
rumbles when I am still
inhaling the silence
translating the gentle air
into an invasion of violence
marching inwards mundanely
with no respite to save it
and this recalls the ghosts of a life in smoke;
In the memory, how I crave it
… lately…
Sometimes
Leave a comment | tags: cigarettes, craving, Memory, quit, sick, Smoke, smoking | posted in Pallor
And that my sense of red
may be wholly different than your own
while Red, in its being, its flesh,
exists outside what our perceptions hone
as an unseen creature, by and large
filtered by eyes and adored
for its intangible qualities.
By effect, endeared or abhorred,
but never known from the inside
by the masses in transit
along the rainbow’s slide.
In these short gestational days
we see in part, in reflections,
murmurs and heartbeats
fledgling inspections
through incomparable lenses
That your sense of red
may be tied with a thousand tethers
in loops of ideas left unsaid…
Leave a comment | tags: idea, in part, perception, point of view, POV, reality, red | posted in Passion
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