I stepped out by the back door
Standing still in the setting sun
Dust and pollen dancing like fairies
And the day, the years- nearer to done,
Nearer to interred in the wet earth,
Than they’ve ever been-
Whispered of a childhood
That will never be again
And will never pass away.
I smiled at who I’ve been
Still inside, still a part
Of who I am.
Today is the day.
How grateful am I
For every cloud of gray
Every drop of rain or icy flake,
Every breath that flew away
In dirge, or praise, or revelry.
Intricately, my wings unfurled,
My story unfolded against the air
In ascension and dive, song and twirl:
Before my Maker, I migrated
Searching this world
For Providence
Finding it from cavern to summit
In my Maker’s hand-
Taking wing to the wind of trumpets
To soar through blue
Or else to plummet
And sleep though winter
One day, to finish my flight,
To be in the ground
Is no less than working the sky
All things complete, as they should be.
After all, You alone made me to fly;
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,
Even one such as I.
I’m so grateful for my life,
My every day, the ins and outs,
The tiny occurrences
Becoming what I’m about
They flood back to me now
In joy, I’m drenched
Rewritten in laughter
After my jaw unclenched
My story returns in blossoms
Suddenly complete
And the little appearing morsels
Surprise with forgotten sweetness:
Pumping the pedals of my bike
In my brother’s hot pursuit.
Piling into a Christmas Mall
to buy my father a real suit.
Passing off my sister’s homemade cookies
As my own baking, to impress a boy-
Moment after moment,
Joy after joy,
And they were almost lost
All these wandering years
But kindness on kindness
Brings them near again-
Oh, the delight they give!
I’m so grateful for the life I’ve lived.
Curled in comfortless covers
Echoes of fracture imbued my frangible state
But I trembled to You
You delivered my fate
Into kindnesses untold
Take back the foolish words
Like wiping the tear that cannot fall
But evaporates into a new substance
And You wiped them all
Did You keep them?
How I desired family, and now
What a tremendous tree
Into which You’ve grafted
The tiny acorn of me
You as my root.
We wear our brokenness
Scars exposed, unheard-
Our sin leads the conversation
But doesn’t say the final word
You do.
I don’t see how someone so small
Fractured as I have been
Could have the audacity to
Stand before the men
Who make the world move.
How could the weakest member
Born from broken community
Reach through these last ages
Bringing grateful unity
To people better than I am
But what a gift to give!
Those growing new within Your tree
Could avoid the comfortless covers
Of our disunity
And feel the forever warmth
Adoption brings.
I forgot to turn on the light.
It’s too dark to read,
Much too dark to see,
And the switch unclicked so far away…
I enjoyed what I got.
Many an epitaph in those words:
I enjoyed what I got,
And got absurd-
But I’ve been a woman
Of many words,
And there’s a kind of toil the life compels-
Not the calloused-hand groans,
The sore, stretched joints
That in lying still
Is its own reward
But the discontent review,
The scouring, sieving, searching moans
Looking to see
If new exists,
And if the old is home
Or may ever be.
The wanderer, clutching a pen
Instead of a penny
Aware of the broken harbors
No soul repairs-
Alive on a dare,
A daring, wild-faced hope
That runs into the dinner party,
Fully in-swing and halfway through,
In bare feet and foreign tongue,
Cognizant of the madness,
And surveys the crowd
Looking for the One worth attending-
Alive on a dare-
Some amateur experiment
In Truth and the limitless potential
Of the Infinite.
While weeping, grateful-
Desperately grateful
Like the finger-ribbed mongrels
Hip bones as hinges
Whimpering and licking the earth
After a morsel of kindness
Grateful
For the sudden beauty
Breaking new over wasted ages:
The stumbling amnesia
The pitching rages and refusals
And then something beautiful
Washes the world clean again.
Persistent tides
Pounding down the rough-hewn edges
Lifting into dancing vapors,
Raining onto meadows,
Washing out the earth-
Which is where I spent the night.
If wishing for something
could make it true,
what a horror in which we’d abide
Yet I yearn for You
and the Kingdom that can’t divide.
Most wretched am I,
among all men
if You aren’t who You are.
Here I pursue these disciplines,
but my hope is fixed afar.
My resolve and my delight
nailed to the sticking point
of Your blood-stained cross
The wood you worked anointed
by the profoundest, grievous loss
and my redemption.
Every iota of who I’ve been or will be
is leaning on who You are now
How sorrowful I’d be, how silly,
if You fell through somehow
but You haven’t yet.
When I travail, when I ache,
when the brokenness of man,
and the rebellion, shake me
You take my hand, You stand
How blessed am I
above all mankind,
that You lead me into the vast unknown
You whisper ideas beyond my mind,
ways above my own,
You elevate me,
and You expose my sin
Dirty veils that hide my face,
until You clean, You defend,
and wrap me again in Your grace
and Your love,
tangible as a hen’s wings
stretched over her offspring
Solid as concrete
under my foolish, and sometimes faithful feet.
viewingcamelot 