Ripples frozen
In an otherwise still lake
Light refracting
In undulating waves
Like Aurora Borealis
Captured on an ice canvas
By a Celestial Painter.

The eagles are back.
I watch them soar
And these days of waiting
Mean so much more
Thank You, God
For bringing me through
Hours too painful to breathe in
Betrayals and untruths
The raptors stately perch
Their keen eye trained
I’ve seen these seasons change
Die away, but what remains

Is Your steadfast love.

And those who watch for their Groom

Soar.

I am Yours
I yield to Your hand,
To Your plan, to all
I can’t know or understand
But to my capacity,
I know You.

It’s all Yours,
But for my part,
If I can offer it,
Have my hands, my heart,

My hope, my trust, how I live
My days and years and collisions:
Whatever is mine to give

Is Yours.

I see You better again,
And eight-twenty-eight
All things work for good.
Your plan is worth the wait.

I’m sorry I lost patience
And the delights of faith.

I don’t need it all here, and
These might be my last days
Still mottled with sin
Grief drenching in waves

But beyond how darkness feels,
What can be broken or destroyed,
Is the perpetual light and joy
Of the land I cannot avoid

At the end of this passage
The destination of You:

The Father of Lights.

Forgive my anger
All this past year.
I wasn’t that well
Shaken by fear
Though you assured
I stopped coming to serve
But to be served
In ways I don’t deserve.

In both affection
And dire need
I clenched knuckles
Too white to bleed
Around a people
And a place
That were Yours, not mine.
I didn’t seek Your face

I sought Your benefits.

Help me start again
Wherever that may be,
Remembering what I am
In modest humility.

Deliver us from evil.

Something strange is happening
Here inside, unseen
Among the rolling fields
While the corn is high and green
And the deep tectonic plates
Are shifting again.

(Off-Site: Written 7/14/2024)

Change had not come yet.
The fingers of time still set
Our hours in the quiver
I begged You to deliver
Us all
From the slavery I saw
To prodigal life
And as a wife
I begged my husband
To let us stand
And he acquiesced to me
For a change of scenery
And pace, perhaps
But the years between lapsed

I forgot who I am

Somewhere along my road
My luggage stowed,
I bowed to inflections
I believed funhouse reflections
In ether and slumber
I became too encumbered
To dance
And I loved to dance
Even by myself in the dark
And some costly, brutal spark

Resuscitated my comatose soul
I finally saw the ghastly toll
Twenty-odd years late.

(Held off-site: Created July 12, 2024)

Lights pierce this darkness
One by one, I pursue
Or drop to bended knee
Weeping to You

But I follow the little stars I see.

I tend my sheep in the night
Unsure what their tomorrow will be
Lying in the open with predators
And the elements, too exposed to sleep

What hope could pierce this night?

I approach the manger
Where everyone gathers at the sight
Of the Wonderful Illumination,
Peace, the Author of Light

In tiny baby fingers and toes.

They all bring costly gifts;
I have none of those.
I’ve wasted my friends
And fed my foes

I have nothing to bring

No gold, no beauty,
Nothing of worth to a king
I can’t bang a drum;
I no longer sing

I’m not qualified to speak aloud.

I’ve no right or reason to be here.
I stay back from the crowd
I should turn and leave, but
As long as I’m allowed

There’s nowhere else in the world.

The darkness beyond this baby
Covers the whole globe
And the only chance for us all
Is born between swaddle and robe:

A single disruption of light
To unravel a universe of darkness.

A beatific view.

The Godhead, Three-In-One
But He took on flesh alone
To bear our burden
And between the manger and the throne

We are found in Him,
Because He made Himself
Found in us.

Grief is a stake
Driven into the core of earth
And pulled out again
Like a second wound, giving birth
To the splaying mess of
Death and the decay
Of what will never be.
It drains away.
Everything that filled the world,
You feel it slowly drain
Until the dry husk, the empty shell,
Is all that remains

Has anyone else felt this way?
Has everyone?

Grief is the wolf white,
Gray, black, who consumes
Your love, and when he’s full
He follows you room to room
Sitting deep in his haunches
With lowered eye
Crouched by the perimeter
Unseen by those standing by
Sometimes his fur is clean,
Sometimes brown, matted down his throat
Sometimes fresh blood darkens teeth
And drools from his grin as gloat
All the time he follows you
No one sees him there
Until you pretend he isn’t real
That you do not watch him stare
You share your empty laughter
Because you have found
There’s safety in numbers,
Safer to have strangers around
Than your intimate wolf.

You know if you allow him,
He will eat you bone by bone
But you cannot know if you will ever again
Stand in any room alone.