My whispers collect here.
Have I been in the cold
Wandering all these years?
Hope is the old man
Singing through his tears
To the child in my soul
I can’t, but I know
God can.
Caught between the crashing waves
My desires wash out to sea
Slipped between fingers that could not save
I drop to my knees in sand.
At least the child was brave;
What is left to make of me?
I can’t, but I believe
God can.
Tender, timid, untouched petals
huddled side by side
Fearful of the unfurl
Or falling under stride
Growing stronger silently
under the sun’s gentle hand
Braving a peek, a stretching forth:
Petals trust before they expand.
A moment of gray
tents the sky, west to east,
A tiny moment alone
with an unknown beast:
The wind stampedes
Pounding his chest
Grabbing the throat
Of the flower at rest
“Bloom!” he thunders, “Bloom now!
Your bloom creates your space!”
Shaking her petals open
to expose her childish face
Endlessly the wind chides
To bloom a different way
So she stretches back and forth
Bending against the sway
Lost and fallen petals
blown apart, out of vision,
crushed spaces and voices-
“Why?” she asks the wind
and he replies,
“The fault here lies
entirely on your stem.”
I sing to You
Though sweat may roll across my brow
Pain dancing along me in waves
No cure for now
But I have already been saved
In my helplessness, and in my helplessness
You’ll see me through
And what is a little turmoil against eternity?
I sing to You
In withered state,
Onlookers guessing at my loss
Perhaps a well-earned fate
But I have always thrown this on the cross
Regardless of who may accuse;
Even when I accuse, You defend with authority.
I sing to You
Not to appease, nor to procure
Some relief or resolution
But because Your worth is sure,
Incapable of any iota of diminution.
How unworthy am I to be pursued,
Yet You overtook me with Your grace.
Even if these were my last breaths
You are worthy of every song I have left
And eternally more.
Illness lands fast
Successive blows like boxers’ gloves
Looking for the last
Unconquered territory
But the true damage is past:
I’m steady now.
I kept spinning twirls
For my last sensei
Fearful and unfurled
In the murky depths
But it’s a solid world:
I’m standing planted
I’m grateful for these bouts
Pain and exhaustion wracking me
Weakening me, starving my doubts,
Stripping my abilities,
Until I am left without:
Sore, but light on my feet.
My fragile shell breaks down
Unknown, in silence and seclusion,
Draining away the ounce
In which the multitude imbibes,
And in their drunkenness, drowns:
That space in front of our hands.
Even so, I caused neither illness, nor ground,
Reduced instead to essential being
The innate truth of His strength resounds
Here, in my broken uselessness,
My eternal worth is found.
Soft morning, the gentle rain
Plucks the earth
As falling breathy notes
Harmonizing rebirth
Sighing, soothing melodies
Drenching the earth in song
Yielding to the sonata of sun:
Warm, vibrant, strong
And the music calls forth life
Bursting choirs of green
Accompaniments of blooms
Singing to the known and unseen
Maestro of song.
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.
In You, I am complete
While ever in deconstruction
I swallowed defeat
But not destruction
You have lavished mercy-
I search Your instruction.
You’ve inscrutably chosen me,
And written my introduction;
I eagerly read on.
You surrounded
My petty despair,
My fears unfounded,
With others who care-
To Your glory redound
The unity we share.
May the world be astounded
By the work You’ve declared
And expounded
Accomplished by fiat,
and kneeling intervention.
Grace beyond grace-
Love beyond comprehension!
When the steady, monochrome rain
turned the often choppy bay
into a barren plain
and the ducks and geese lay low
drifting, ruffling, dripping
in some abandoned cove
while the deer wandered, sipping heavenward
Time brushed by me in passing,
and this, his indiscretion, stirred
a presentiment of trespassing here-
tuned to an unknown, irregular frequency
lost when the world runs clear-
but for one moment stolen between eternity
and now.
I’ve read our memories are best plucked
By specific scents, the sense of time
Bends and folds in sudden agreement
To retrieve a moment from where it’s tucked.
Forgotten years may be retrieved
By a single sniff: A whiff of aroma
Translating ancient hieroglyphs
Into tactile memories perceived
But this roving feeling in my gut:
Hungry, ill, then intractable will
Empowers empty to give its fill:
An illusion of some ethereal glut-
This precise, vivid language, rarely-used,
Unenthralled, unwraps the shawl of years
Exposing in the clarity of muscle-squalls,
“Ah-ha! I remember! This isn’t new-
I once lived here.”
Maybe we belong
because we’re here
but we’ve linked belonging
to some intangible nostalgia,
some forgotten garden aroma
of “home”
Souls wafting similar fragrance
take the wandering vagrants
by the nose.
Those who’ve said farewell,
whose Home has retired
to either heaven or hell,
transplant their definition
beyond the earthly conditions.
Everyone feels like they’re hurting,
or working, or searching
for a place they belong-
some fantasy of found-family:
Maybe it’s all wrong.
Maybe present is accounted for,
and there’s nothing deeper to be found
than sharing the same ground,
in the same days.
Maybe we belong wherever we are,
just as much as the next dumb soul.
Maybe the concept of home, or love, or whole
merely reduces into shared ideals
when everything deconstructs
into parts we juggle.
Maybe I got stuck, and struggle
to see what’s real.
viewingcamelot 